The Fallacy that Jesus said what is written in the gospels

[SeekingAllTruth]

To begin with there was no 're-writing' of Scripture sense at this time there only Hebrew Scripture and the authors used poetic license. As far as the RCC is concerned ;
The Apostles, bearing testimony to Jesus proclaimed first and foremost the death and resurrection of the Lord, faithfully recounting His life and words and, as regards the manner of their preaching, taking into account the circumstances of their hearers.
so now they (apostles) in their turn interpreted His words and deeds according to the needs of their hearers. "Devoting (themselves) to the ministry of the word," they made use, as they preached, of such various forms of speech as were adapted to their own purposes and to the mentality of their hearers; for it was "to Greek and barbarian, to learned and simple," that they had a duty to discharge. Keep in mind the writing of the Gospels was before the centralizing of the churches.
excerpts from 'The Historical Truth of the Gospels.'

We have no evidence of anything the apostles said or did. It's a blank slate. We only have what the gospel writers CLAIM the apostles said and did.

 

[Marcion]

What you are reading in the gospels are not Jesus' words, plain and simple. They had to be fabricated by the writers writing the gospels to give Jesus something to say. There's no other rational conclusion to reach. Why doesn't this simple deduction not occur to people who pin their entire lives on believing in Jesus?

I don't understand and I probably never will understand the illogic.

Many theologians agree that two of the three synoptic gospel authors used a collection of Jesus sayings which they call Q (from German 'Quelle' = Source).
This sayings collection is quite different in language and content from the rest of the Jesus sayings which may have been made up by the gospel writers themselves.

So most of the 'words of Jesus' were put into Jesus' mouth by the gospel authors, but the (reconstructed) sayings from Q may have been the real sayings of Jesus which however were partly adjusted to match their way of thinking (which differed from how Jesus thought).

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Many theologians agree that two of the three synoptic gospel authors used a collection of Jesus sayings which they call Q (from German 'Quelle' = Source).
This sayings collection is quite different in language and content from the rest of the Jesus sayings which may have been made up by the gospel writers themselves.

So most of the 'words of Jesus' were put into Jesus' mouth by the gospel authors, but the (reconstructed) sayings from Q may have been the real sayings of Jesus which however were partly adjusted to match their way of thinking (which differed from how Jesus thought).

But you talk as if we have copies of Q to be able to verify what's in it and how it compares to the gospels when we don't. Q is a hypothetical document. As such, all scholars can do is theorize what was contained in it. Lots of scholars believe that Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark (1st gospel) and borrowed from it, then embellished what wasn't in Mark to give it some "punch". Matthew's nonsensical raising of the dead saints from their tombs and marching into Jerusalem like a hoard of zombies is a perfect example. Look at the language Matthew employs:

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. Matthew 27:51-53

So what is Matthew trying to imply: the saints were raised to life and had to lay in their graves for 72 hours while Jesus lay in his and only AFTER Jesus rose on Easter Sunday could they get out of their graves and go into Jerusalem????????

The whole things reads like a bad Stephen King horror ripoff.

 

[Marcion]

But you talk as if we have copies of Q to be able to verify what's in it and how it compares to the gospels when we don't. Q is a hypothetical document. As such, all scholars can do is theorize what was contained in it. Lots of scholars believe that Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark (1st gospel) and borrowed from it, then embellished what wasn't in Mark to give it some "punch".

Actually, the core of the Q-sayings is quite agreed upon, of course there are also some sayings that some of them disagree on. But those are marginal.
As a whole the Q-text is so strikingly different in form and content from the texts created by the gospel authors themselves that it is quite clear that Q has its own singular author. And that author in my eyes is Jesus himself.

 

[stvdv]

The Synoptic Gospels , once you exclude the duplications of Jesus' speeches in the four gospels, the total number of words spoken by Jesus is 31,426.
How on earth did those scholars, writing 40-100 years after Jesus died, know the 31,426 precise words Jesus was speaking in the gospels?

Almost impossible.

Hence of course it's still called "Faith" or "Belief" instead of "Fact" .

There's only one logical conclusion to reach: What you are reading in the gospels are not Jesus' words, plain and simple. They had to be fabricated by the writers writing the gospels to give Jesus something to say. There's no other rational conclusion to reach. Why doesn't this simple deduction not occur to people who pin their entire lives on believing in Jesus?
I don't understand and I probably never will understand the illogic.

Almost impossible. I can think of 2 options:
1) It might be that there were savants at that time, who coincidentally heard all the words of Jesus. Highly unlikely
2) It might be that Jesus appeared to them as in innervoice or innervision and imposed His knowledge on them. Highly unlikely, because you must be very pure to receive and interpret Divine messages pure (as in flawless)

But both seem unlikely to me, though possible, hence I don't agree with your '1 logical conclusion', and being scientific, I would phrase it like:"I can't take the verses to be Jesus' or God's exact Words and probably I will never know for sure", and that's cool with me

1 in a million people. Savant syndrome is a rare condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average. The skills that savants excel at are generally related to memory.

 

[Dogknox20]

It was supposed to be the start of a conversation but the Christian never responded.

I wonder why.

Here's the gist of what I said:

The Greek scholars who wrote the gospels, far as we know, didn't have any sources--notes or documents from which to draw on when writing down Jesus' words in the gospels. Here's a statistic:

The Synoptic Gospels , once you exclude the duplications of Jesus' speeches in the four gospels, the total number of words spoken by Jesus is 31,426.

How on earth did those scholars, writing 40-100 years after Jesus died, know the 31,426 precise words Jesus was speaking in the gospels?

Even making the astounding assumption John was the writer of the gospel that bears his name (he wasn't the writer according to historians--all the gospels are anonymous) trying to believe John could remember just the 4 chapters of the last supper discourse of Jesus in chapters 14-17 after 60 years when John would have been close to 100 years old is impossible to believe when you look at it from a logical point of view. Could any of us remember word-perfect a debate we watched a month ago and then write it down? And what makes it even more unbelievable you are reading Jesus' words is the fact the writers were not even there when Jesus spoke. It's completely unrealistic to believe the words you are reading are Jesus' when the writers weren't even eyewitnesses to what Jesus said in his last 3 years.

There's only one logical conclusion to reach:

What you are reading in the gospels are not Jesus' words, plain and simple. They had to be fabricated by the writers writing the gospels to give Jesus something to say. There's no other rational conclusion to reach. Why doesn't this simple deduction not occur to people who pin their entire lives on believing in Jesus?

I don't understand and I probably never will understand the illogic.

SeekingAllTruth good to meet you... I point out.. The Jews memorized the Old Testament and wrote down what they had memorized in script/letters... Comparing the letters of others they could tell what God said, by comparing the many small differences. There are so many letters written about Jesus and his words, putting them all together would be easy to get to the true words of Jesus! Think of the "Secret told to a circle of people" when it gets back to the start it is altered but if everyone in the circle had written accounts of the words of Jesus the words would be proven to be true! ALSO....
Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide his Church forever "Into all truth"! Jesus' words and His Church survive the ages thus proving it is in God' hands! If the Church failed then you would have a legitimate argument! The Church Jesus established on ROCK not on sand has roots back to Jesus 2000 years!

 

[1213]

...
What you are reading in the gospels are not Jesus' words, plain and simple. They had to be fabricated by the writers writing the gospels to give Jesus something to say. ...

Sorry, I disagree with you. But, I would like to know, if it was fabrication, why did they do it? I don’t think they would have had any reason to fabricate anything like that.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

SeekingAllTruth good to meet you... I point out.. The Jews memorized the Old Testament and wrote down what they had memorized in script/letters... Comparing the letters of others they could tell what God said, by comparing the many small differences. There are so many letters written about Jesus and his words, putting them all together would be easy to get to the true words of Jesus! Think of the "Secret told to a circle of people" when it gets back to the start it is altered but if everyone in the circle had written accounts of the words of Jesus the words would be proven to be true! ALSO....
Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide his Church forever "Into all truth"! Jesus' words and His Church survive the ages thus proving it is in God' hands! If the Church failed then you would have a legitimate argument! The Church Jesus established on ROCK not on sand has roots back to Jesus 2000 years!

Dogknox, with all due respect there are NO letters extant written about Jesus and his words. The first thing that surfaces that is recognized by scholars are the 7 authentic epistles by Paul and he is writing 25-35 years after the crucifixion. Furthermore, he says NOTHING about Jesus words because he never heard Jesus speak. The first things to surface after Paul are the gospels and we know of NO written sources the anonymous gospel writers had to draw on to piece together what Jesus might or might not have said. The best they could do is go by stories circulating around the empire for 50-100 years before they began writing. Your words are pretty and inspiring, i.e "the gospel of Jesus stand because it is the true word of God bla bla" but there is absolutely No historical foundation behind anything you say, sorry.

My advice: don't take my word. Investigate it for yourself to see if everything I say is true. Or don't. Most Christians don't want to know the truth. They'd rather live in their safe comfortable little bubbleworld.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Sorry, I disagree with you. But, I would like to know, if it was fabrication, why did they do it? I don’t think they would have had any reason to fabricate anything like that.

Sure they did. They were trying to turn Jesus from a spiritual dying/rising god into a real live flesh and bone one who lived and died on earth, so they had to have words to put into his mouth. With no written sources from which to draw they had to make it up. What else could they do. They were selling Christianity to pagans, remember.

 

[exchemist]

I think you're posing a red herring here. We have no evidence whatsoever anybody took notes while Jesus was talking to preserve what he said. The people including the apostles following Jesus were peasants who were illiterate. The only people who could write back then were the educated elite and they didn't follow Jesus or care what he said. The overwhelming evidence would suggest Jesus' words were for the most part made up. Even the Jesus Seminar composed of about 50 biblical scholars concluded Jesus never said 80% of the stuff attributed to him.

"Seminar Rules Out 80% of Words Attributed to Jesus"

Seminar Rules Out 80% of Words Attributed to Jesus : Religion: Provocative meeting of biblical scholars ends six years of voting on authenticity in the Gospels.

Oh dear. You have evidently misinterpreted what I wrote. I did not suggest any such thing. But let's leave it. Other people seem to have understood what I meant.

 

[exchemist]

I think that the OP was referring to the Christians that believe that the Gospels literally record what Jesus said. The fundamentalists appear to do that quite often.

I think subsequent correspondence indicates there is more to it than that.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Actually, the core of the Q-sayings is quite agreed upon, of course there are also some sayings that some of them disagree on. But those are marginal.
As a whole the Q-text is so strikingly different in form and content from the texts created by the gospel authors themselves that it is quite clear that Q has its own singular author. And that author in my eyes is Jesus himself.

I'd love to read the Q. Do you have a link or reference?

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

I think that the OP was referring to the Christians that believe that the Gospels literally record what Jesus said. The fundamentalists appear to do that quite often.

Exactly.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

I think subsequent correspondence indicates there is more to it than that.

The matter is pretty simple: there is no corroborating evidence the gospel writers had any sources from which to draw the words they wrote in for Jesus. Example:

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Matthew 25

IMHO based on historical facts, we have no proof Jesus ever said any of this. All indications are that it came from the minds of the writers who constructed the Matthew gospel. The gospel writers weren't there so they couldn't have heard any of this. Nobody wrote it down that we know of. People were illiterate back then. We don't even know where Jesus purportedly said all this or when. We know absolutely nothing other than what the words actually say, therefore there is no force or power behind the words. They are empty promises and threats that no person in their right mind should take heed of or be the least concerned about going to this mythical hell because

the overwhelming evidence is Jesus never said any of this.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Jews memorized the Old Testament and wrote down what they had memorized in script/letters... Comparing the letters of others they could tell what God said, by comparing the many small differences.

We were so clever!

But I missed the part wherein you identify the source, the people, the time, and the specifics of the technique. I'm left with an image of a bunch old men sitting around the table and saying things like:

Oy vey! Hey, Muttel, look at the kether on that gimel. No way that could be kosher! It must be one of those Samaritan fakes.​

 

[Colt]

It was supposed to be the start of a conversation but the Christian never responded.

I wonder why.

Here's the gist of what I said:

The Greek scholars who wrote the gospels, far as we know, didn't have any sources--notes or documents from which to draw on when writing down Jesus' words in the gospels. Here's a statistic:

The Synoptic Gospels , once you exclude the duplications of Jesus' speeches in the four gospels, the total number of words spoken by Jesus is 31,426.

How on earth did those scholars, writing 40-100 years after Jesus died, know the 31,426 precise words Jesus was speaking in the gospels?

Even making the astounding assumption John was the writer of the gospel that bears his name (he wasn't the writer according to historians--all the gospels are anonymous) trying to believe John could remember just the 4 chapters of the last supper discourse of Jesus in chapters 14-17 after 60 years when John would have been close to 100 years old is impossible to believe when you look at it from a logical point of view. Could any of us remember word-perfect a debate we watched a month ago and then write it down? And what makes it even more unbelievable you are reading Jesus' words is the fact the writers were not even there when Jesus spoke. It's completely unrealistic to believe the words you are reading are Jesus' when the writers weren't even eyewitnesses to what Jesus said in his last 3 years.

There's only one logical conclusion to reach:

What you are reading in the gospels are not Jesus' words, plain and simple. They had to be fabricated by the writers writing the gospels to give Jesus something to say. There's no other rational conclusion to reach. Why doesn't this simple deduction not occur to people who pin their entire lives on believing in Jesus?

I don't understand and I probably never will understand the illogic.

Because they had previous writings from people who were alive when Jesus was on earth. BTW, Jesus would have spoken predominantly Aramaic but would have known other languages as well.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Because they had previous writings from people who were alive when Jesus was on earth. BTW, Jesus would have spoken predominantly Aramaic but would have known other languages as well.

cOLTER, are you saying someone wrote down Jesus' words while he was saying them??????

 

[loverofhumanity]

It was supposed to be the start of a conversation but the Christian never responded.

I wonder why.

Here's the gist of what I said:

The Greek scholars who wrote the gospels, far as we know, didn't have any sources--notes or documents from which to draw on when writing down Jesus' words in the gospels. Here's a statistic:

The Synoptic Gospels , once you exclude the duplications of Jesus' speeches in the four gospels, the total number of words spoken by Jesus is 31,426.

How on earth did those scholars, writing 40-100 years after Jesus died, know the 31,426 precise words Jesus was speaking in the gospels?

Even making the astounding assumption John was the writer of the gospel that bears his name (he wasn't the writer according to historians--all the gospels are anonymous) trying to believe John could remember just the 4 chapters of the last supper discourse of Jesus in chapters 14-17 after 60 years when John would have been close to 100 years old is impossible to believe when you look at it from a logical point of view. Could any of us remember word-perfect a debate we watched a month ago and then write it down? And what makes it even more unbelievable you are reading Jesus' words is the fact the writers were not even there when Jesus spoke. It's completely unrealistic to believe the words you are reading are Jesus' when the writers weren't even eyewitnesses to what Jesus said in his last 3 years.

There's only one logical conclusion to reach:

What you are reading in the gospels are not Jesus' words, plain and simple. They had to be fabricated by the writers writing the gospels to give Jesus something to say. There's no other rational conclusion to reach. Why doesn't this simple deduction not occur to people who pin their entire lives on believing in Jesus?

I don't understand and I probably never will understand the illogic.

What the disciples recorded was what they remembered of the words of Jesus. But latter Prophets such as Muhammad, the Bab and Baha’u’llah do confirm some of these. A Prophet of God confirming a source, I believe, would be 100% authentic and accurate as God knew exactly what was said.

 

[Colt]

cOLTER, are you saying someone wrote down Jesus' words while he was saying them??????

Sure, why not? Jesus had followers who may well have taken notes. After the ascension there would be a natural inclination to write his sayings down, his memorable parables, compile the story of his life and teachings. That would be expected.

 

[Dogknox20]

Dogknox, with all due respect there are NO letters extant written about Jesus and his words. The first thing that surfaces that is recognized by scholars are the 7 authentic epistles by Paul and he is writing 25-35 years after the crucifixion. Furthermore, he says NOTHING about Jesus words because he never heard Jesus speak. The first things to surface after Paul are the gospels and we know of NO written sources the anonymous gospel writers had to draw on to piece together what Jesus might or might not have said. The best they could do is go by stories circulating around the empire for 50-100 years before they began writing. Your words are pretty and inspiring, i.e "the gospel of Jesus stand because it is the true word of God bla bla" but there is absolutely No historical foundation behind anything you say, sorry.

My advice: don't take my word. Investigate it for yourself to see if everything I say is true. Or don't. Most Christians don't want to know the truth. They'd rather live in their safe comfortable little bubbleworld.

SeekingAllTruth at first all there were was letters. There were hundreds of letters kicking around claiming to be the words of God! Know one knew for sure, people were getting conflicting teachings and understandings! It got hard to teach, preach without a common source! It was the one and only Holy Catholic Church that took on the job of sorting the mess out! She alone with the help of God; "The Holy Spirit" that decided the truly inspired words of God from the many phony letters. Even if every letter/manuscript had started with "This is the inspired words of God" we still would have needed an authority to decide the truly inspired words from the other phony letters that also would have started with "This letter is the inspired words of God"!
The Holy Catholic Church then took all the truly inspired letters and placed them into one book she named "The Bible"!

John 16:13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
SeekingAllTruth the Bible as endured over the years virtually unchanged; makes me believe God truly has his hands in the affairs of his Holy Catholic Apostolic Church!