The Gospels: Fact or Fiction?

  • Thread starter Thread starter USMC_Convert
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Michael_Mayo said:
Why do you bring sexual immorality into a discussion about hermeneutics?
Click to expand...
I wondered the same. And I personally think that the greatest problem facing the West today is the “liberal” (used in the classical sense) abandonment of what has gone before. A society that has formally abandoned its culture and its identity is like a ship without a rudder. Anything goes. Sexual immorality has been around forever; Ed thinks it didn’t begin until Playboy began publication in the 1950s.
 
Tim_D said:
I wondered the same. And I personally think that the greatest problem facing the West today is the “liberal” (used in the classical sense) abandonment of what has gone before. A society that has formally abandoned its culture and its identity is like a ship without a rudder. Anything goes. Sexual immorality has been around forever; Ed thinks it didn’t begin until Playboy began publication in the 1950s.
Click to expand...
This is off topic but I wonder if “the greatest problem” is more akin to loss of virtue. I mean virtue in the sense of practicing conscience, conscience becoming clearer, stronger and more accurate. Then we can discern “what has gone before” take what was good and discard what was not. Then we can grow and improve.

Bringing it back to the Gospels: all the Gospels give us a solid ethic to live be they fact or fiction. If we follow them as a whole I think the Holy Spirit will help us with the discernment and interpretation of particular verses.
 
Michael_Mayo said:
This is off topic but I wonder if “the greatest problem” is more akin to loss of virtue. I mean virtue in the sense of practicing conscience, conscience becoming clearer, stronger and more accurate. Then we can discern “what has gone before” take what was good and discard what was not. Then we can grow and improve.

Bringing it back to the Gospels: all the Gospels give us a solid ethic to live be they fact or fiction. If we follow them as a whole I think the Holy Spirit will help us with the discernment and interpretation of particular verses.
Click to expand...
There is no fiction in the Gospels.

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
There is no fiction in the Gospels.
Click to expand...
If you mean “fiction” in the same sense that Treasure Island is fiction, then yes, you are correct.

If you mean "fiction"in the sense that everything that is related happened in the precise literal way as conveyed by the ancient author, then no, you are not correct.
 
Tim_D said:
If you mean “fiction” in the same sense that Treasure Island is fiction, then yes, you are correct.

If you mean "fiction"in the sense that everything that is related happened in the precise literal way as conveyed by the ancient author, then no, you are not correct.
Click to expand...
You are obviously correct. Everything cannot have happened the precise literal way it is described in the Gospels, because the Gospels describe the same events differently.

In my view, the modern reader is too enraptured with literal facticity, and too resistant to real meaning.
 
TMC said:
You are obviously correct. Everything cannot have happened the precise literal way it is described in the Gospels, because the Gospels describe the same events differently.

In my view, the modern reader is too enraptured with literal facticity, and too resistant to real meaning.
Click to expand...
I’d say so.
 
Catholics, a strange people, an alien people, …
There is this thing called “Apostolic Succession” where you fully trust the person who told you. And that person fully trusts the veracity of the person who told him… back to the original “trusters” trusting Peter, James, John, etc, who were eye-witnesses.

I trust my Priest and Bishop who delivered what they received to me.
So, I trust everything in the Gospels and the rest of the Scriptures that they safeguarded and gave to me, so that I will deliver it to those whom I am fortunate enough to teach.

Those not part of this People, of course, do not trust the people whom I trust, but trust their own investigative abilities and acculturated minds.
 
John_Martin said:
Catholics, a strange people, an alien people, …
There is this thing called “Apostolic Succession” where you fully trust the person who told you. And that person fully trusts the veracity of the person who told him… back to the original “trusters” trusting Peter, James, John, etc, who were eye-witnesses.

I trust my Priest and Bishop who delivered what they received to me.
So, I trust everything in the Gospels and the rest of the Scriptures that they safeguarded and gave to me, so that I will deliver it to those whom I am fortunate enough to teach.

Those not part of this People, of course, do not trust the people whom I trust, but trust their own investigative abilities and acculturated minds.
Click to expand...
Trust, yes, and with great care and attention “To search out the intention of the sacred writers” by taking into account “literary forms.”
  1. However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.
To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms.” For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html
 
Michael_Mayo said:
Trust, yes, and with great care and attention “To search out the intention of the sacred writers” by taking into account “literary forms.”
  1. However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.
To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms.” For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html
Click to expand...
What you quote is instruction, a pedagogy, from the superior (in apostolic succession) to the messenger of the Gospel (who is the ‘interpreter’ in apostolic succession) in how to work with the Scripture, and trains them in the use of Literary, Historical, Text, and Form Criticism, etc., during their education (Seminary, etc.). It is not “general principle” suggested to the world so all can come to their own conclusions about validity and content of Scripture. The Church authored the Scripture and set its scope; the author always knows the meaning, while the reader does not necessarily unless the author explain it. (the writers were People of God - thus, the Church; and the selectors of the collection of texts is also the Church to which this same Spirit of God animates)

Catholics have always been viewed with a bit (or more) of incredulity because we accept “the Pope’s interpretation”, “the Church’s interpretation”, of the Bible and don’t decide on the meaning and intent by individual investigation.
 
The gospel accounts and the books of the prophets - the whole old testament - have to be taken into account - which is missing when some groups speak of Jesus - its all for-told and was fulfilled in Jesus. This Jesuit seems to of forgotten and is denying the prophets of the old testament when they for-tell the coming of Christ and what he was to suffer.

So saying that the Gospel account is fake you are also denouncing and denying the prophets of the old testament
 
The authors were more concerned with theology than historical data.

Did Jesus die after the Passover feast as in Mark 14:12, 15:25
Or before as in John 19:14?

Did the Holy family return to Nazareth immediately as in Luke 2:13 or go to Egypt as in Luke 2:39?

There are quite a few more standard questions like this but I do not think we need to retry to bend over backwards to try to stretch some kind of reconciliation. Christ lived, he died, he is risen, and he will come again. So let us be more focused on his teachings than the historical details.
 
hu324b said:
You havn"t watch the program have you - I has seen them all - I am referimg to tv program that the original poster is discussing not people here
Click to expand...
If we are talking about the same ones like, Dominic Crossan and Elain Pagels, I don’t think they are calling them fake at all. Rather, they are telling us about the reality of the early church and the process of how what we call the “Bible” came about.

Now it is true that folks like the, was it called the Jesus Seminar(?). Threw everything into doubt. A good response to them wat Luke Timothy Johnson.

amazon.com/Real-Jesus-Misguided-Historical-Traditional/dp/0060641665

I think he does one of the best jobs of balancing the benefits of the historical critical, textual critical methods and our living faith in the living Jesus.
 
You need the old testament and Gospels together in examining the Life of Christ to understand it the right way
 
Karen107 said:
The funny thing is that the show produced in this century yet makes claims that they know better than the accountings found in the gospels from when it happened. It’s so hard to watch these movies when they are so blatantly false.
Click to expand...
Right with you sister.

Intellectually such programs are a nonsense that look like they are made by petulant teenagers for ignorant consumers.

Little wonder the perception of much of the media is in the toilet.
 
You cant blame scholars for trying to make sense of scripture. PBS was showing “The Last Days of Jesus”. It asked the questions: How could Jesus overturn the money changer tables and not be arrested right there? And why did Judas betray him? How could the cruel Pontius Pilate be so patient with Jesus?

It proposed a theory that Herod Antipas and Lucius Aelius Sejanus had a deal. Sejanus was a very powerful Roman. Herod was willing to let Jesus do anything he wanted so that the Jewish high priests would eventually be overthrown. But at a critical point Tiberius denounced Sejanus. That undermined both Herod and Pilate fearing their won execution along with Sejanus. And so Pilate is not sure what to do with Jesus. The High priests get their way because Tiberius also issued a proclamation to respect existing religious structures.

Judas may have been a zealot who now saw that the support of Jesus (Herod) was now undermined and Jesus was going no where. So he sold him out to the Pharisees.

It is all theory but it is based on other historical documents.

The other thing was that the entry into Jerusalem with the palms could have only happened during the Feast of Booths, six month before Passover.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top