Claim from MSNBC

[aloha918]

I was reading an article the other day on MSNBC and it talked about how the gospel authors could not have gotten the story of Xmas because who would have told them.....i thought this was kinda interesting......what ya all think

[jasJis]

Who would have told the Gospel Authors?

ummm. Mary, Jesus, Jesus' cousins, maybe Joseph (we don't know when he died), others who knew the family and shared the story.

[cmotherofpirl]

I think Mary might know something about it

[Don John of Austria]

I think that is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.

[popestpiusx]

Definately absurd.

[God Conquers]

[quote]I was reading an article the other day on MSNBC and it talked about how the gospel authors could not have gotten the story of Xmas because who would have told them[/quote]

:heymon: :slam: :deformed:


The Inkeeper, shepherds, wise men, Mary, Joseph, other friends and family....

Not to mention Jesus lived with them for THREE FREAKING YEARS!

[Socrates]

It has always been Catholic tradition that the Blessed Mother was in the care of St. John the Evangelist after the death of Christ. "Woman, behold thy son. Son, behold thy mother."

The liberal "Bible scholars" who the mainstream media always rely on assume, a priori (and contrary to evidence), that the gospels were not written by the four evangelists, but were written down centuries later.

Their reason for this - the gospels contain miracles such as the Virgin Birth of Christ, and other things, that to an atheistic scholar, "obviously aren't true."

Circular reasoning.

[artemisjade]

[quote name='aloha918' date='Dec 7 2004, 10:37 AM'] I was reading an article the other day on MSNBC and it talked about how the gospel authors could not have gotten the story of Xmas because who would have told them.....i thought this was kinda interesting......what ya all think [/quote]
It's an interesting point. Considering that the authors lived as much as 50 years after Jesus, where did they get the story?

[Socrates]

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all contemperaries of Jesus. And there is no evidence proving they weren't the authors.

And even 50 years is well within living memory. Mary lived with the apostles, and would have told them about the birth of Christ.

(artemisjade, read the entire thread.)

Edited December 7, 2004 by Socrates

[artemisjade]

[quote name='Socrates' date='Dec 7 2004, 12:43 PM'] Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all contemperaries of Jesus.  And there is no evidence proving they weren't the authors.

And even 50 years is well within living memory.  Mary lived with the apostles, and would have told them about the birth of Christ. 

(artemisjade, read the entire thread.) [/quote]
[quote]The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the
apostles described in the Gospel stories.[/quote]

[quote]Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.[/quote]

Edited December 7, 2004 by artemisjade

[jasJis]

No body is saying the abostles were eye-witnesses of the Nativity of Our Lord. We are saying they were living contemporaries of the eye-witnesses.

Do the math. Jesus was in his early 30's during his ministry. Mary, his mother was around and would have been in her mid to late 40's. Let's say a few of their family or friends lived until their 50's which is equivalent to our 80's now. [Average life expectancy is currently mid 70's now. We all probably know people who are late 90's or early 100's]. These other people would know the stories.

Let's say John was 17 when he hung out w/ Jesus and didn't write things out for 40 years. Wow, he was old for the time and could have been 60 which is not impossible or unreasonable? Also factor in the scholarly "guess" that it wasn't written until 40 years later. What if they're off by 5 years as they guess back over 2,000 years. That would make the margin of error .25% or the difference between 99.75% and 100% accurate.

[Socrates]

These scholars (who are unbeleivers, for the most part) base their claims that the gospels were written "after the war" on Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of the temple (because they do not beleive that Jesus could actually prophesy - therefore the gospel must have been written after the event prophesied).

More circular reasoning. NO concrete evidence.

[aloha918]

this is just what it said...not something i believe...hahahaha....its a shame that some people do though

[artemisjade]

[quote name='Socrates' date='Dec 7 2004, 01:05 PM'] These scholars (who are unbeleivers, for the most part) base their claims that the gospels were written "after the war" on Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of the temple (because they do not beleive that Jesus could actually prophesy - therefore the gospel must have been written after the event prophesied).

More circular reasoning. NO concrete evidence. [/quote]
[quote]The following are mostly the date ranges given by the late Raymond E. Brown, in his book An Introduction to the New Testament, as representing the general scholarly consensus in 1996:


'Matthew': c. 70–100 as the majority view, with conservative scholars arguing for a pre-70 date, particularly if they do not accept Mark as the first gospel written.
'Mark': c. 68–73
'Luke': c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85
'John': c. 90–110. Brown does not give a consensus view for John, but these are dates as propounded by C K Barrett, among others. The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition[/quote]

Raymond E Brown was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.

[Socrates]

Raymond E. Brown is a heretic, whose teachings go against those of the Church. I had to do a report on his works back in college, and all of his statements can be proven false.

Just because someone is a Catholic priest doesn't mean he is true to the faith.