Gospels written decades after events

[abucs]

A game of “broken telephone” that lasts for decades and decades. Oy.

.

This is silly.

As Peter Williams said in the video that i linked to, the telephone game is expressly designed to get a wrong result so that we can all laugh at what is produced.

Only 1 path is allowed, only 1 attempted vague message that must only be passed on verbally by whispering under hurried conditions into the ears of only 1 person who then repeats the charade over a long line participants.

Yeah, just like the bible.

These silly lines worked 40 years ago. Not today.

 

[abucs]

It’s not silly.
And Peter Williams didn’t “design” the telephone game, he’s not an expert on it.

.

If i said that he did design the telephone game then perhaps your response would make some sense?

Perhaps you can give a list of people you would consider experts on the telephone game and therefore suitably qualified in your mind to make an analogy using it?

Otherwise if you are finished talking around the subject then you could address his obvious point on how the telephone game analogy is indeed silly when referenced to reject the validity of the gospels.

 

[bmullins]

Why do two gospels give different days–two days apart from each other–for when Jesus died? Mark says it was the day after Passover meal was eaten; John says it was the day before the Passover meal.
Mark says he died at 9am, but according to John he wasn’t condemned to death until the afternoon.

These are just two of many contradictions in the bible. At least one of those dates/times would be considered an error, non?

.

.

No. None would be considered an error. We don’t read the bible for historical accuracy. Every gospel is written to convey who Jesus is, and to do so in light of who their audience is. For one it’s the Hebrew Messiah, for another it’s the descendent of Royalty, etc. We aren’t trying to reconcile them to get a historical account, hour by hour day by day, but to ask “who is this Jesus that they are trying to tell us about.” That’s what the data is for.

 

[Wesrock]

Why do two gospels give different days–two days apart from each other–for when Jesus died? Mark says it was the day after Passover meal was eaten; John says it was the day before the Passover meal.
Mark says he died at 9am, but according to John he wasn’t condemned to death until the afternoon.

These are just two of many contradictions in the bible. At least one of those dates/times would be considered an error, non?

.

.

First, Mark says Jesus died at the ninth hour. That is, nones, or 3PM. 6AM was zero hours. 9AM was the third hour. Noon was the sixth hour. 3PM was the ninth hour.

Second, there’s not an alleged two day difference between the synoptics and John. It is one day. Furthermore, the synoptics and John are not even necessarily in contradiction about the day Jesus died (Friday). The Pharisees were traditionally very strict with keeping the Passover on the exact Jewish calendar date. However, the Saduccees (the political and priestly class) were more liberal and flexible with the date. It would not be surprising for them to have delayed a day in celebration, to be kept on the Sabbath. To merge one holy day with another (the Sabbath).

Anyway, the tradition is that John had priestly connections, which would be connections with the Sadduccee class. When Peter goes with John after Jesus’ arrest, John gets him inside the courtyard.

Anyway, the point is, the Passover may very well have been celebrated on both days. There were 250,000 lambs to get through, after all, and massive amounts of migrants coming into Jerusalem. Jews from Judah and Galilee and the diaspora, plus Gentiles worshipping the Jewish God but not full converts to the Law (circumcision). That would be a lot to handle in one day, anyway. Jesus, being more in line with the Pharisees than the Saduccees, celebrated the Passover dinner on Thursday evening. However, John, not necessarily more in line with the Saduccees, still saw the importance in the symbolism of Jesus’ death occurring at the same time as the Passover preparation, and so highlighted this fact in his Gospel. Jesus as the Lamb of God is strongly emphasized in the Johannine tradition, after all.

And last, John also clearly states that Jesus died on a Friday. The others who were crucified had their legs broken so that they’d die faster, precisely because evening was approaching, and the bodies were not to be left out on the Sabbath.

catholic.com/magazine/articles/how-do-we-explain-the-passover-discrepancy

 

[Wesrock]

No. None would be considered an error. We don’t read the bible for historical accuracy. Every gospel is written to convey who Jesus is, and to do so in light of who their audience is. For one it’s the Hebrew Messiah, for another it’s the descendent of Royalty, etc. We aren’t trying to reconcile them to get a historical account, hour by hour day by day, but to ask “who is this Jesus that they are trying to tell us about.” That’s what the data is for.

For other books we may be able to say this, but the Church has affirmed that the Gospels were written as historically accurate. Perhaps there have been textual transmission errors, but these are real, historical events, and if it’s stated something happened at a particular day at a particular time, that’s the historical truth, barring copying errors.

Now, that does not mean the authors relayed every event in the chronological order it happened in. That’s not opening up everything, mind, but, say, Jesus’ particular argument with one Pharisee, while written before a certain parable, might have actually occurred later and after that parable. Or maybe the two events happened on different days, and the author is arranging the order to suit his purposes. Jesus probably gave the same parable multiple times throughout his ministry, too, as he visited different places. But each event in the Gospels are real, historical events. We can’t reorder everything, of course. For example, the order of major events of his Passion are intended to be taken in the order they are given. Jesus’ Baptism and the miracle at Cana and his temptations in the desert are clearly at the start of his ministry. But the order he gave his teachings? The tellings of particular events and confrontations in the two to three years of his ministry? We can outline some of them, tracing his path. But the point is the Gospels aren’t intended to be read in a strict order for much of these sequences. If Luke gives a parable before X event, but Matthew has X event before the giving of the parable, that’s not something to fret over.

 

[steve53]

The definitive source to go to for Jewish ritual in the early part of the first century A.D. would be Josephus. He trained as a Priest in the Second Temple as a young man, and we know he was born in A.D. 37- this would be only one year after Jesus was crucified using a late crucifixion date.

The Passover was strictly set by the succession of new moons by the High Priesthood, and it is not likely that Priests would shift days around out of convenience. These were VERY religious and traditional people. They truly believed in God, and in fact that God actually lived in the Inner Sanctuary of the Second Temple.

The movement of the moon and the stars were windows into heaven and tracking them revealed what the future had in store for men. The Priests were expert Astrologers, as well as Astronomers. Without artificial lighting, the night sky was brilliant with starlight.

Anyway, from Josephus, after the Paschal meal the five days of Passover would begin.

I would recommend Hagan’s “Year of the Passover” for more details. He uses Josephus as a benchmark and examines each of the Gospels in turn.

 

[JB_Brother_4446]

Why do two gospels give different days–two days apart from each other–for when Jesus died? Mark says it was the day after Passover meal was eaten; John says it was the day before the Passover meal.
Mark says he died at 9am, but according to John he wasn’t condemned to death until the afternoon.

These are just two of many contradictions in the bible. At least one of those dates/times would be considered an error, non?

.

.

Simple. John was dealing with Roman time. The judgement of Jesus ended at 6 AM.

 

[Abu]

THE TRUTH AND SALVIFIC PURPOSE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE
ACCORDING TO DEI VERBUM, ARTICLE 11
by Fr Brian W. Harrison, O.S.
rtforum.org/lt/lt59.html
Extract:
“In short, what is essentially guaranteed to be true by virtue of divine inspiration, according to the sentence of Dei Verbum, 11, we are considering, is not the isolated propositions taken in their ‘surface’ meaning and without regard to their historical and literary context, but rather (as the next article of Dei Verbum puts it) “that meaning which the sacred writers really intended, and which God, by their words, wanted to make known.” 55 The discernment of that divine and human meaning is what the Church understands by a proper ‘literal’ interpretation of the text - which is not to be confused with a ‘literalist’ interpretation.

“The teaching of Vatican Council II in Dei Verbum, 11, is thus in complete harmony with the traditional Catholic understanding of the revealed truth that the books of Scripture are inspired by God and free from all error. When properly understood, this teaching also clarifies the hermeneutical criteria which need to be kept in mind in order to defend this dogma in its traditional sense. It is unfortunate and ironic that some scholars who are quick to claim the backing of Vatican II for their opinion that the biblical authors sometimes err (at least in their ‘statements’ if not in their ‘affirmations’ or ‘teachings’) are found to defend this opinion by appealing to that very text which anticipates and refutes it: the text, that is, which reminds us that, since biblical truth was given to us “for the sake of our salvation,” and not in order to teach us natural science or history for their own sakes, Sacred Scripture cannot fairly be judged to be in error when it sometimes presents historical or scientific truth in a less complete, less detailed, more popular, or more imprecise (i.e., merely approximate) fashion than would be acceptable in modern texts dedicated formally to those disciplines.”

 

[JB_Brother_4446]

THE TRUTH AND SALVIFIC PURPOSE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE
ACCORDING TO DEI VERBUM, ARTICLE 11
by Fr Brian W. Harrison, O.S.
rtforum.org/lt/lt59.html
Extract:
“In short, what is essentially guaranteed to be true by virtue of divine inspiration, according to the sentence of Dei Verbum, 11, we are considering, is not the isolated propositions taken in their ‘surface’ meaning and without regard to their historical and literary context, but rather (as the next article of Dei Verbum puts it) “that meaning which the sacred writers really intended, and which God, by their words, wanted to make known.” 55 The discernment of that divine and human meaning is what the Church understands by a proper ‘literal’ interpretation of the text - which is not to be confused with a ‘literalist’ interpretation.

“The teaching of Vatican Council II in Dei Verbum, 11, is thus in complete harmony with the traditional Catholic understanding of the revealed truth that the books of Scripture are inspired by God and free from all error. When properly understood, this teaching also clarifies the hermeneutical criteria which need to be kept in mind in order to defend this dogma in its traditional sense. It is unfortunate and ironic that some scholars who are quick to claim the backing of Vatican II for their opinion that the biblical authors sometimes err (at least in their ‘statements’ if not in their ‘affirmations’ or ‘teachings’) are found to defend this opinion by appealing to that very text which anticipates and refutes it: the text, that is, which reminds us that, since biblical truth was given to us “for the sake of our salvation,” and not in order to teach us natural science or history for their own sakes, Sacred Scripture cannot fairly be judged to be in error when it sometimes presents historical or scientific truth in a less complete, less detailed, more popular, or more imprecise (i.e., merely approximate) fashion than would be acceptable in modern texts dedicated formally to those disciplines.”

I think the OP was asking WHEN the Gospels were written.

 

[spina1953]

I understand many scholars think the Gospels were written near the end of the 1st. century. Myself although i can not prove it by any means think they were written much earlier say by the mid 1st. century. St. Paul we know wrote his Epistles the earlyest about 49 AD, so I think it is not out of the the question to think it might have been earlier rather than later.

 

[Abu]

Even Adolf von Harnack, a rationalist historian of high repute among Rationalist and Protestants, wrote that the Synoptic Gospels were written before 70 A.D. – before the fall of Jerusalem, and accepted the tradition that St Luke derived his information on the infancy of Jesus from Mary His Mother. Theologische Quartalsch, Tubingen 1929, IV, p 443-4].
[See Sheehan/Joseph, *Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, The Saint Austin Press, 2002, p 89, 93]

Not only are the facts of Jesus’ miracles recorded by His own Apostles who were present – Saints Matthew and John were companions of Christ, and Saints Mark and Luke lived in constant contact with His contemporaries.

Very revealing is The Hebrew Christ, Claude Tresmontant, Franciscan Herald Press, 1989, on the origins and dating of the Gospels. As Bishop John Charles Thomas writes in the foreword: “There is nothing in the least unscientific in postulating that there was only a brief period of oral transmission before some of the Gospel materials began to be set down.”

 

[PJM]

What’s the response to the claim that the Gospels probably weren’t 100% accurate because they were written decades after the events?

John 14:26
But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you

John 16:13
But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak; and the things that are to come, he shall shew you

2nd Timothy 3: 16-17
[16]** All scripture, {IS} inspired of God**, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, [17] That the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work.

Amen:thumbsup:

 

[JB_Brother_4446]

Even Adolf von Harnack, a rationalist historian of high repute among Rationalist and Protestants, wrote that the Synoptic Gospels were written before 70 A.D. – before the fall of Jerusalem, and accepted the tradition that St Luke derived his information on the infancy of Jesus from Mary His Mother. Theologische Quartalsch, Tubingen 1929, IV, p 443-4].
[See Sheehan/Joseph, *Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine

, The Saint Austin Press, 2002, p 89, 93]

Not only are the facts of Jesus’ miracles recorded by His own Apostles who were present – Saints Matthew and John were companions of Christ, and Saints Mark and Luke lived in constant contact with His contemporaries.

Very revealing is The Hebrew Christ, Claude Tresmontant, Franciscan Herald Press, 1989, on the origins and dating of the Gospels. As Bishop John Charles Thomas writes in the foreword: “There is nothing in the least unscientific in postulating that there was only a brief period of oral transmission before some of the Gospel materials began to be set down.”

Or Mark might have borrowed his sources from Luke and Matthew.

 

[Pedro_1987]

The Aboriginal people of Australia who have lived there for somewhere around 40,000 to 60,000 years have had their Dreamtime stories about creation handed down to them orally since time immemorial…60 years are nothing where oral traditions are passed on

And we have no way of knowing the original story.