Merging the Gospels...

[cynatnite]

My uncle is a RW nutjob and his contention is that the best clear story of Jesus is by merging the Gospels together to form a timeline of events.

What say you? :)

[wyldwolf]

1. aren't there contradictions?

[MineralMan]

2. They're not contradictions...they are misunderstandings

by mere humans, you see. The Bible is perfect and error-free. It is in the exact form passed down by God in the King's English. Every daggoned jot and tittle is flawless.

N.B.: I refer only to the King James Version of 1611. All others are false.

[elocs]

4. If police interview witnesses at a crime scene, will there be contradictions?

Certainly, but that does not mean that they are deliberately lying. From all that can be learned from the witnesses the story is pieced together. If the story of the birth of Jesus was a con job, then certainly there would have been an attempt to make all of the tellings be in agreement with one another.

[dmallind]

11. So....three of the "witnesses"

(none of whom saw a damn thing themselves of course) just happened not to notice the dead rising from their graves and the sky turning black after the crucifixion? Or the mass genocide of newborns under Herod (who died 10 years before the census incidentally)? Is that what you mean?

That's some pretty flawed witnessing there. On what basis can we then trust them for anything aat all?

[Sanctified]

12. Matthew and John were both written by actual Eye Witnesses. n/t

[dmallind]

17. Not accepted at all.

Even if proof were available (and the consensus among credible experts seems to be that no such proof or even supposition is currently accepted) that would make the alarming inconsistencies even worse, since Matthew mentions the slaughter of the newborns that nobody else does - including Josephus who detailed Herod's tyranny minutely. Did John then not notice a generational slaughter or did he think that wasn't important in a story about the kid who set it off?

[TechBear_Seattle]

18. Really? No serious Biblical scholar makes that claim

The overwhelming consensus is that Matthew and Luke both draw on a document called Q, a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus. Both Matthew and Luke also draw from Mark, but each contain different sections of Mark with some overlap. You may wish to study the so-called "synoptic problem."

Then there John, which has almost nothing in common with the other three Gospels, places events in completely different orders (for example, the Last Supper, with the institution of the Eucharist, took place early in Jesus' ministry and not just before his crucifixion), includes events and doctrines not found anywhere else in the New Testament (for example, that Jesus was the creator of the universe; see John 1:1-14) and excludes many events and teachings which, according to the other three Gospels, were key events and doctrines.

[elocs]

14. Bottom line: if this was a con job, all of stories would line up perfectly.

They don't, but some people just don't like Christianity and it seems their point in living is to pick apart the Bible. Oh well. Maybe I should go into the gun forum and post about gun control or how all guns should be confiscated, but what would be the point of doing that?

[dmallind]

19. Bottom line - of it were a syncretic mishmash of doctrinally cherrypicked stories

you would see lots of different details, lots of different points of view, lots of contradictions and lots of ambiguous omissions and inclusions, which is what we see.

[Goblinmonger]

20. Interesting

So because the stories about this guy are all f'ed up, then that actually proves that they (collectively? in spirit?) are correct and that there was a Jesus who is the son of god and that contrary to any historical documentation, the things in those four different stories actually happened.

I have never heard that theory before. So since there are all different kinds of stories about Zeus and what he can and cannot do and what he did or did not do, then there was a Zeus? I like this theory of yours. Sets the burden of proof bar pretty darn low.

[JerseygirlCT]

9. Well, I imagine if you asked four people to tell you the same

story, you'd end up with contradictions. As what we have is not (as some wish to believe) dictation handed down from God's mouth... human error is a big part of it. Plus the fact that these accounts were all recorded well after the happenings recorded.

[Goblinmonger]

21. And that those writing

never saw the events.

And that there is no proof for a historical Jesus...don't forget that.

[TechBear_Seattle]

24. But at least you would end up with the same basic story

Even that much consistency is not found within the four Gospels.

[JerseygirlCT]

25. I don't know about that.

Guess that's sort of subjective, depending on what you think the pertinent parts are...

At any rate, for me, there's a difference between factual and truthful. I find truth in there - regardless of the provable, objective or historical facts, you know?

[TrogL]

28. The purpose of the Gospels is not narration

All four have a narrative flow but their primary purpose is the promilgation of faith from a specific standpoint. You'll notice that John's take on Christ is considerably different.

[patrice]

3. Isn't that what most people do naturally anyway?

Contradictions and all . . . .

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. You should remind him...

That there was once a time that both churches, Roman Catholic and Protestant, would have considered such dabbling in The Bible "sophistry", blaphemous, The Work of Satan, and those involved would have been excommunicated and far, far worse.

Remember: Big Business protects its brands, trademarks and copyrights.

[vixengrl]

6. Well, the "begats" are hard to synch up.

He's either of the house of David through his mom (okay, could be son of God via Virgin Birth) or Joseph (okay, not a Virgin Birth, maybe adopted?). Generations are hard to count. He might've been born of a virgin. Or not.

Meh: here's links--

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html

http://www.skeptically.org/bible/id6.html

I say, the Gospels were written after the person called Jesus either did or did not live--by a centrury or more. (There were prophet and magician types in the region; for all we know, we've got a composite made of different figures who taught, said progressive, religious-reforming things, and hung out with different people, including tax collectors, prostitutes, and zealots, and caused grief with the religious status quo. Very man about town, our Josh, if the whole of it was true. No wonder the Man had to pick him up on a bogus beef.) Therefore, depending upon their motives, they told the story according to whatever axe they had to grind, and signed their Gospel with whatever name they thought would resonate with their intended audience. At one point, there were more Gospels than you could shake a stick at. Then, once the Church got organized, they pulled together the four closest Gospels and said, "That ought to be about right."

If the four we have, have inconsistencies when lined up, imagine what the Gospels looked like before the child gospels and the Gnostic gospels and the stuff in the Dead Sea scrolls and all got trimmed out. I reckon he never put them together himself, or thought about how they were put together side by side in the first place by fallible people trying to build a Church out of...like, tax collectors, prostitutes, zealots, gentiles (yikes) and so on. It actually invites more questions when you look at it that way.

[TlalocW]

7. Okay, there's the joke

2000 years ago, a nice man said that we should love our neighbors, and we've been killing each other over exactly how he said ever since.

Now you want to merge all the Gospels? :)

TlalocW

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Seeing as the Gospels were written at different times,

all well after the life of Jesus, I don't know that this is the case. Back then, oral tradition found its way into written tradition with a lot of editing along the way. And there are many stories of Jesus that circulated in what are now known as the "Lost Books" of the Bible. And please don't forget the stories of Jesus as related in the Qur'an!

[Sanctified]

10. The Gospels were written for different groups and...

in my opinion should be read separately as intended.

[cosmik debris]

13. People create the craziest excuses to make the Bible palatable.

And it never seems to occur to them that if you have to make up excuses, it may not be that good in the first place.

If the Bible is all that great, why can't you take it at face value?

[COStorm]

26. Yup...

Yes they do...

But you need to remember, that's all they have. So they desperately hold on to it. They won't accept any error in the Bible because they have no where else to go.

Their relationship should be with God...not a book.

[cosmik debris]

27. All they have is chains

binding them to a book of myths and making them dependent on their superstition.

[BDW1964]

15. There are more than four gospels

The four in the Bible are only the ones selected by committees for inclusion in Cannon. There are other gospels, some which have been rediscovered. Unfortunately, combining the four canonical gospels would be extremely problematic in some respects. Matthew, Mark and Luke all are similar and probably are extrapolations off of an earlier gospel "Q" and oral traditions. John is completely different and has a much more Orthodox slant with heavy Greco-Roman philosophical influences. All of the four canonical gospels were written at least 70 - 150 years after the accepted era of Jesus and none are written by eyewitnesses, which is why they are titled "The Gospel According to X", not "The Gospel by X". Those four gospels were written after the Pauline Epistles and the other epistles, which are merely letters from apostolic figures. It is from these epistles, mainly the Pauline Epistiles, that Orthodox Christian doctrine was established. Thus, these being earlier documents, the selected gospels, which were composed later, were selected because they conform to that Pauline Orthodox paradigm. Other gospels and early Christian writings that supported competing versions of Christianity, as opposed to Imperial Roman Christianity, were suppressed, often violently. It is only by chance that these were later rediscovered.

Christianity has never been a "One Truth". There were always competing interpretations and traditions. Even the canonical Bible alludes to these alternative Christianities and beliefs.

[knitter4democracy]

16. Even the Church says no and always has.

The Syncretic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were all written for different audiences and for different reasons. Matthew's obviously more for the Jewish reader, Luke's more for the Gentile reader, and Mark is obviously earlier and more simplistic (and probably based on Gospel X, the earliest one that most theologians believe existed before the others that the others used as a base). The Gospel of St. John, though, is theological and metaphorical far more so than just a relating of events and really doesn't fit as well with the others.

Tell your uncle he should take a religion class at his church's local college. That's where I learned all that, at my Nazarene college. It might blow his mind to find out what his church really teaches. ;)

[Goblinmonger]

22. There is some pretty strong argument

that Mark is based on Greek myths.

[knitter4democracy]

23. Sure, it's in there.

I go with the theory of archetypes on that, though.

[TrogL]

29. Kewl, so do I, but explain your reasoning