The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[drfuzzy]

Yes, that's the myth.  A lot of people still believe it, as you do.  I do not.  I examine the history and contradictions of the book because when I was little I was told that it was infallible.  I like collecting information.  I don't particularly care what anyone thinks of the book -- unless they are rude enough to insist that I should believe the stories in it.

The Bible is not infallible because it cannot be prevented from teaching error. It simply says what it says.

People can be prevented from teaching error. Therefore, people can be infallible. Books are inerrant.

But that's probably splitting hairs.

Now, the Bible contains books that were written as history, allegory, poetry, etc. All sorts of literary styles. 

What caused you to stop thinking the Bible is either inerrant or "infallible"?

I have had a very long day.  I'm tired.  I have posted deconversion stories in other threads here.  But, I should give an answer.  So let's see . . . I started reading up on science.  Cosmology, genetics - - I'm no genius, we're talking Discover magazine type articles, not quantum physics.  I started listening to the readings in church, and having to re-check "did that REALLY say what I think it said?".  Yep.  And during one Easter Mass about 10 years ago, I realized that I didn't believe any of it, I couldn't MAKE myself believe it anymore.  
   Now, somewhere in my computer I have compiled a rather huge "reasons for atheism" file, but I get the impression that you would try to tear apart any ones I might post.  I'm not in the mood.  Asking me to believe in a deity feels very much (to me) like insisting that I believe in Santa Claus.  Deconversion wasn't a conscious choice.  It was a gradual realization.

[LadyForCamus]

Still getting worked up over Jesus, I see. Let it go man. I'm only giving my opinion. I'd love to not have to skip past all your posts like I do with so many other people.

That's right, rob.

You are ONLY giving your opinion. That's the whole problem with your posts...they are just the opinions of an ignorant man.

Wouldn't it make better sense to "give" what you know from reading good books by reputable authors - or better yet, the NT and the Early Church Fathers themselves?

In what way is the NT "better" than good books from reputable sources? That's hilarious!

[Wyrd of Gawd]

James is the most independent of all the texts in the NT. It's the most primitive it's written before the Christian doctrines were in any recognisable way distinct from Judaism.

And it doesn't contain any supernatural events.

Dousing sick people with special oil and rubbing them while praying to make them well sounds like some supernatural pixie stuff.

[GrandizerII]

We're not having any disagreement as to the history of the text, so I'm not sure what relevance the question has?  

Are you checking out entirely, on me, with the rest of that bullshit?  I really don't care whether or not fairies exist, as difficult as that may be for you to believe.  I just don't...and I'm struggling to see how this is any more relevant to my comments than the above was.

After awhile, the weight of evidence begins to suggest that the gospels are anything but fairy stories.

Which is why you do NOT want to evaluate that evidence honestly.

You'd rather live in a make-believe world of your own.

Some parts are fairy-tale-like ... such as the nativity accounts (especially Matthew's) ... and the Resurrection ...

The problem with both extreme sides is the agreement that the Gospels are either this or the opposite ... no inbetweens ...

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm fine with in-betweens, I'd expect in-betweens in any work of fiction.

[Aractus]

From this, we can see that Paul EXPECTED his letters to circulate, and that there were letters of his that were not canonized. After all, we have no Letter to the Laodiceans in the NT.

Circulate then and there yes, be copied for decades to come (or for that matter at all which I'll come to in a moment), no. It's interesting you note that the letter to the Laodiceans is lost since this does not go to your defence at all. Although it probably just duplicated much of Colossians and Corinthians anyway.

Additionally, I'm no scholar, but it is my understanding that when scribes completed a document (Paul composed his letters orally and only occasionally attached a greeting in his own handwriting), a second copy was made immediately so that the contents were not lost.

No, he says he does this in EVERY letter he sends. Which is how we know that they weren't intended to be copied:

"I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write." - 2 Thessalonians 3:17

It is to mark them as authentic - like someone signing their name. Thus we know that Paul didn't intend for others to copy his letters. Nor would he have made copies for circulation when he could write letters directed to other churches instead - which is what he clearly did. And besides, we have examples of letters being sent out from the same location to different churches - he sent both Corinthians and Galatians from Syria at or around the same time.

Then what do you make of the writings of Papias? Did he simply make all this up? I think this unlikely since the ECF's were quite keen on passing on what they had been taught VERY faithfully.

I also consider it unlikely that the early Christians went to mass on Sunday morning and someone stood up and said, "A reading from the Holy Gospel according to...um...someone."  

The early Church KNEW who the authors were. ...

No, he probably didn't make it up but he WAS mistaken. This is one problem with critical scholars that argue for late authorship of the gospels - if the synoptic gospels were written between 80-90AD then Papias was spectacularly incompetent - especially if he's writing as early as you'd like us to believe - but even if he's writing early second century he's got it spectacularly wrong.

Even on his claim though (that Mark is 100% accurate) we know Mark got things wrong. We also know Matthew WASN'T written in Hebrew. The very idea is laughable when you have whole sections of text that are word-for-word identical to Mark and Luke, such a thing would be impossible if Matthew was translated from Hebrew to Greek. Particularly the word-for-word/letter-for-letter plagiarism from Mark, as I suppose you could argue the case that Luke copied from Matthew and that's how they got their double-tradition.

The fact that there were known "forgeries" afoot doesn't negate the fact that some of the NT writings are also forged - or rather written in the name of someone who didn't actually write the text. Let's suppose for a moment that you're correct that they "knew" that the authors of Mark and Luke were Mark and Luke. Fine. That's not a problem. What is a problem is when we're told some 30-50 years after Mark has been written that "Mark got his knowledge from Peter" and "he didn't get anything wrong in his gospel". That's where it becomes a problem - when the claim is made the author personally knew one of the disciples. That claim is not made for Luke. And furthermore when we come to Matthew it's obvious to anyone that it's not written by one of the original 12. The fact that he has to plagiarise from Mark proves this. The author of Matthew is dependant upon pre-existing written and/or oral material about the ministry of Jesus. And Matthew was composed in Greek and not Hebrew. So the fact that Papias gets these things wrong proves that he's not a reliable source to ascertain who the authors are and what their relationship was to the disciples and other members of the early church.

You've omitted John (he was in Ephesus), Clement (he was in Rome), and a boatload of other folks named in the New Testament who were either scattered by the persecution that broke out after the day of Pentecost or who were not actually from Jerusalem to begin with (such as Priscilla, Aquila and Apollos). Since Clement is named in one of Paul's letters AND considered the fourth bishop of Rome, I don't think the idea of "rebuilding" is correct. It is more correct that the center of the Church shifted from Jerusalem to the heart of the Empire.

More to the point, Papias was born in AD 70, and he was a disciple of John. Consequently, when he tells us who the authors of the gospels were based on what he heard from John (and others presumably), then I think we CAN know what what happening between AD 50 and AD 130). He and others (such as Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Justin Martyr) tell us.

How do you know when Papias was born?

This may be the first time in my life that I'm going to invoke "Occam's Razor" since I think folks often do so to avoid considering all alternatives thoroughly. However, does it REALLY make sense to add a second anonymous person into the mix? Why stop there? Why not assert that it was actually a friend of someone who knew Luke? Or a friend of a friend of a friend of Luke? This would enable the skeptic to cast doubt on Luke-Acts completely.

See my point? Of all the gospels, Lucan authorship is probably the least contested.

Either is an equally plausible possibility when we consider that Luke-Acts are anonymous. If the author identified himself as Luke then his authorship probably be contested. But he doesn't.

Papias states that according to John the Elder, Mark was an associate of Peter and wrote down Peter's sayings - though not necessarily in the correct order. Luke, therefore, made an effort to write an "orderly" account.

Yes but he wrote that down in the early second century, at least 30 years after the gospels were written (and I'd argue more like 50 years). And he was wrong 0 just like many people frequently are.

Which is not quite the same as saying that the Apostle John (the unnamed disciple in several passages) was not involved in the authorship of the gospel which bears his name.

He wasn't involved, but it is clear that it is most likely written by disciples of John. The theology is very different to the rest of the New Testament which suggests it was written independently of the Pauline branch of Christianity.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The English committee that wrote the Bible  gave the Gospels English names to show that it was an elaborate joke.  BTW, all of the "J" words were created in the Late Middle Ages after an Italian guy created the letter "J".

I'm not sure where you "learned" this theory, but there's simply no truth in it.

I recommend you read a good book on the history of the canon of scripture.

Are you really that dense that you think the Bible existed before the English wrote it?  They wrote the thing as a fancy gift prank to the Pope.  The Bible didn't exist before 700 AD.  The most that anyone had was a handful of ragged scrolls and verbal stories.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

And I hand that recommendation right back at your not so humble self. Maybe starting out with what the classical age understood as history and then moving on to the different concils compiling and rejecting scripts until they found something like a canon. Which, by the way, was forbidden to read in it's entirety for any layman in the Middle Ages.

Reading's always good. Especially when it comes to history. Prevents stupid questions.

The scriptures were forbidden to the laity in the Middle Ages?

Boy, this is a classic. Let's play.

What is your basis for this claim?

Here's an article about it.

"Why Christians Were Denied Access to Their Bible for 1,000 Years"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-st...03545.html

[Aractus]

That's what the resurrection is all about. Jesus is risen from the dead.

No they're not, they're two different statements. In Genesis there are examples of people who are "raised" by God to be in heaven (or as it puts it "walk with God"), Enoch for example. So we know the Jewish understanding of being raised to the celestial realm was not to be physically resurrected here on Earth. Mark is written before any of the other gospels - I'd say by around 55AD or so, but others say 70-80AD. In any case he does not have an understanding of a physical resurrection where Jesus then appears to people in his raised body. Paul doesn't know about this either - which is why I contend that Mark was written around the same time as Paul's Epistles. The only two things that Paul mentions are "visions of Jesus" and "receiving by divine revelation" which he claims to frequently do, and it's anyone's guess what that means. But it probably meant he was taking some kind of hallucinogen to invoke a "spiritual experience" and believed that he received things by revelation that way, as there are plenty of other examples of this throughout the centuries.

He never once claims to have met the resurrected/risen Jesus. It's Luke who makes that claim in Acts 9, but as it's at best a second-hand account we can ignore it. Especially since Paul himself never corroborates the account - he simply says he received a "revelation about Jesus" (Galatians 1:12).

And now, the REST of the story (key passages in bold):

---

The attitude of the Church as to the reading of the Bible in the vernacular may be inferred from the Church's practice and legislation. It has been the practice of the Church to provide newly-converted nations, as soon as possible, with vernacular versions of the Scriptures; hence the early Latin and oriental translations, the versions existing among the Armenians, the Slavonians, the Goths, the Italians, the French, and the partial renderings into English. As to the legislation of the Church on this subject, we may divide its history into three large periods:

(1) During the course of the first millennium of her existence, the Church did not promulgate any law concerning the reading of Scripture in the vernacular. The faithful were rather encouraged to read the SacredBooks according to their spiritual needs (cf. St. Irenæus, Against Heresies III.4).

(2) The next five hundred years show only local regulations concerning the use of the Bible in the vernacular. On 2 January, 1080, Gregory VII wrote to the Duke of Bohemia that he could not allow the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the country. The letter was written chiefly to refuse the petition of the Bohemians for permission to conduct Divine service in the Slavic language. The pontiff feared that the reading of the Bible in the vernacular would lead to irreverence and wrong interpretation of the inspired text (St. Gregory VII, "Epist.", vii, xi). The second document belongs to the time of the Waldensian and Albigensianheresies. The Bishop of Metz had written to Innocent III that there existed in his diocese a perfect frenzy for the Bible in the vernacular. In 1199 the pope replied that in general the desire to read the Scriptures was praiseworthy, but that the practice was dangerous for the simple and unlearned ("Epist., II, cxli; Hurter, "Gesch. des. Papstes Innocent III", Hamburg, 1842, IV, 501 sqq.). After the death of Innocent III, the Synod ofToulouse directed in 1229 its fourteenth canon against the misuse of Sacred Scripture on the part of the Cathari: "prohibemus, ne libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti laicis permittatur habere" (Hefele, "Concilgesch", Freiburg, 1863, V, 875). In 1233 the Synod of Tarragona issued a similar prohibition in its second canon, but both these laws are intended only for the countries subject to the jurisdiction of the respective synods(Hefele, ibid., 918). The Third Synod of Oxford, in 1408, owing to the disorders of the Lollards, who in addition to their crimes of violence and anarchy had introduced virulent interpolations into the vernacular sacred text, issued a law in virtue of which only the versions approved by the local ordinary or the provincial council were allowed to be read by the laity (Hefele, op. cit., VI, 817).

(3) It is only in the beginning of the last five hundred years that we meet with a general law of the Church concerning the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. On 24 March, 1564, Pius IV promulgated in his Constitution, "Dominici gregis", the Index of Prohibited Books. According to the third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular by pious and learned men, according to the judgment of the bishop, as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate. The fourth rule places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their pastor can profit by this practice. Sixtus V reserved this power to himself or the Sacred Congregation of the Index, and Clement VIII added this restriction to the fourth rule of the Index, by way of appendix. Benedict XIV required that the vernacular version read by laymen should be either approved by the Holy See or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned and pious authors. It then became an open question whether this order of Benedict XIV was intended to supersede the former legislation or to further restrict it. This doubt was not removed by the next three documents: the condemnation of certain errors of the Jansenist Quesnel as to the necessity of reading the Bible, by the Bull "Unigenitus" issued by Clement XI on 8 Sept., 1713 (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", nn. 1294-1300); the condemnation of the same teaching maintained in the Synod of Pistoia, by the Bull "Auctorem fidei" issued on 28 Aug., 1794, by Pius VI; the warning against allowing the laity indiscriminately to read theScriptures in the vernacular, addressed to the Bishop of Mohileff by Pius VII, on 3 Sept., 1816. But the Decree issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Index on 7 Jan., 1836, seems to render it clear that henceforth the laity may read vernacular versions of the Scriptures, if they be either approved by the Holy See, or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned Catholic authors. The same regulation was repeated by Gregory XVI in his Encyclical of 8 May, 1844. In general, the Church has always allowed the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, if it was desirable for the spiritual needs of her children; she has forbidden it only when it was almost certain to cause serious spiritual harm.

---

Okay, if that's what you believe then you have a very poor understanding of textual transmission and availability in the Middle Ages. The RCC fought to keep the Bible in Latin.

I've read repeated claims that the Bible was on scrolls of papyrus and parchment in the early centuries and that (somehow) precluded people from obtaining personal copies. This claim is rubbish. At least 2/3rds of the surviving Biblical papyrus manuscripts that exist today were codacies. But even if they weren't it wouldn't matter, Jews were quite content with using scrolls for many centuries before and after the arrival of Christianity, their entire cannon was canonised on scrolls without the use of any codacies (hence how they became 22 scrolls), but just like a codex containing one book (or a collection of smaller books) of the New Testament can be individually copied, so too could the individual constitute parts of the Hebrew cannon.

But the other thing is that we have examples of less-than-professional early texts (for example that lack majuscule lettering) of the New Testament, showing there was indeed a need and use of "personal copies".

So the Catholic church refused people the use of the Bible in its original languages, and also refused access to English translations. The only version authorised by the RCC was the Latin Vulgate. And they enforced this brutally - copies of the Tyndale Bible were burned, and William Tyndale was strangled and then burned on a stake. After being defrocked that is, which brings me nicely back to my point that even the church clergy were not allowed to read the bible in its original language - they were to use the Vulgate. This was formally delcared at the Council of Trent in the mid 16th century.

Even that section of text that you quoted has horrific examples of inhumanity in it:

• "The pontiff feared that the reading of the Bible in the vernacular would lead to irreverence and wrong interpretation"
  
• "In 1199 the pope replied that in general the desire to read the Scriptures was praiseworthy, but that the practice was dangerous for the simple and unlearned"
  
• "According to the third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular [only] by pious and learned men [...] as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate."
  
• "The fourth rule places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their pastor can profit by this practice."
  
• "henceforth the laity may read vernacular versions of the Scriptures, if they be either approved by the Holy See, or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned Catholic authors."
  

Let's not make any mistake here - the RCC refused the laiety access to anything other than the Vulgate until the Douay–Rheims Bible which was published in the late 16th century and was translated directly from the Vulgate with no interest from the church in the Greek or Hebrew originals. This was the only Catholic-approved translation of the English Bible until the 20th century: and it wasn't even translated from Greek or Hebrew!! The bible that replaced the D-R version was the Jerusalem Bible and it wasn't translated until 1966. And it is a translation of La Bible de Jérusalem 1956 (the RCC-approved French translation) and hevily influenced by the Vulgate. But it was the first widely-available Catholic-approved Bible in English that did make use of the original language texts in its translations.

So long-story short, the RCC shackled the original Biblical texts as much as they could, even issuing a decree that the "Vulgate" is the authorised version of the Bible so that their doctrines wouldn't be threatened by people reading the original texts.

[Aractus]

-ish.....it identifies christ and lord in pretty short order, maybe somebody who was once jewish, - what we would identify today as a convert.  The speaker is definitely christian within the text , espousing clearly christian opinions throughout it's entirety.  As is to be expected given it's provenance.

Well I said he was Jewish and an early church leader didn't I? That implies he was a "Christian" or proto-Christian.

But at the time they were more a Jewish sect than they were a separate religion.

They routinely espouse what is  blasphemous in judaism. 

What specifically? in James is blasphemous in Judaism?

James is repeating alot of things about jesus.......the christ bit stands out.

No he isn't, he isn't telling us about the character of Jesus, but rather delivering teachings directly derived from those preached by Jesus. Do you notice that he says "hold to the faith that our lord held to" and not "hold to the faith that we have in our lord" which is what Christians now say?

but that's it's the history of actual events?

The writing of James is a historical event with a historical setting. The letter tells us what the beliefs and theology of the church that James was a part of in the first century were. Theists might try to reconcile this with the later teachings of Paul given to constitute churches outside of the Jewish lands, but what we sceptics can take from it is what the theology of the church was before Paul began messing about with them.

"You've heard this, now do this and don't do that on account of it."  Would that be fair, to you, if I described the general form of the text in that manner?

Well, not so much. It's just a series of teachings taken directly from what Jesus taught (in some instances you would call his citations quotations, had he bothered to mention that "Jesus said ...")

What I've been wondering is how we go from "you've heard this" to "this is history"? Not semantically or specifically in the minds of believers, but in actuality?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. But if it's how do we go from James to establishing the historicity of Jesus, the case is that we have a short epistle written in the mid first century, probably within 20 years of the execution of Jesus. It contains several teachings derived directly from teachings that are uniquely found to be attributable to Jesus in other texts (i.e. the four gospels). Therefore there had to have been an early proto-Christian church for James to write to, it had to have been in existence prior to Paul's interference with it, and there had to have been past teaching from Jesus available from which James could draw to write his letter. Therefore this one epistle demonstrates there had to have been a historical Jesus, and he had to have delivered at least some of the teachings attributed to him in the gospel accounts, such as the Sermon on the Mount as I've repeatedly mentioned. Without the Sermon on the Mount and other NT quotes of Jesus it is impossible to explain the composition of the Epistle of James, and why these teachings were not attributed to someone else - such as James himself. But James, in his letter, does not claim that these are his original thoughts. He is disinterested in personal attribution for these teachings, which is why he mentions Jesus in his introduction, and also why he barely says "I". Contrast this to Paul's Epistles which has "I" everywhere in them, and frequent references receiving teachings by "revelation".