Was the story Of Jesus exaggerated during it's time during oral tradition

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So Paul has the oldest document from the new testament. This dated from around 50 to 60 AD. So this would mean that about twenty odd years after the death of Jesus. In the time before this, could the story have been not entirely fabricated, but just exaggerated in some spots. There is also the chance of an unknown earlier written source telling the same stories. It is also possible that these stories of his divinity were not written down to avoid persecution. That would make sense to me, but then again what do I know I’m a 14 year old doutbing catholic. Please share your opinions with me as to what you think of this matter.
 
Help_me_please said:
So Paul has the oldest document from the new testament. This dated from around 50 to 60 AD. So this would mean that about twenty odd years after the death of Jesus. In the time before this, could the story have been not entirely fabricated, but just exaggerated in some spots. There is also the chance of an unknown earlier written source telling the same stories. It is also possible that these stories of his divinity were not written down to avoid persecution. That would make sense to me, but then again what do I know I’m a 14 year old doutbing catholic. Please share your opinions with me as to what you think of this matter.
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Good evening,

I’d like to lead into my answer to you with an experience when I was about your age, and my observation on that experience, after I grew up.

It’s before I converted to Roman Catholic, but religion isn’t the point here. The teacher told us she was going to show how things got garbled with an oral tradition. She then told us, in so many words, for the person at one end of the line of chairs with youngsters in them, to whisper a short sentence into the ear of the person next to him. And, each person was to whisper that sentence into the ear of the one next to them and so on, and she actually added, the teacher, and see how garbled it comes out!
Well, we did the exercise and the end was different from the beginning, of course.

I hope you see what I tried to point out, and I have faithfully portrayed this experience.

It wasn’t until years later, in senior high school, that I learned about the power of suggestion.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Poisoned the well”?. It means, to have prejudiced the outcome.

That teacher from my early experience, I now realize, poisoned the well of her experiment. She suggested twice, basically, for us to garble the message. So, we did.

Bear with me.

For that experiment to have been valid, there had to be three groups and three instructors in three different rooms. The first group and instructor do as our teacher and our group did.
The second group and instructor goes like, the instructor says: “I’m going to whisper a sentence in the ear of the first student. Each student is to whisper that sentence into the next student’s ear and on down the line. When the last student hears the sentence, I want him/her to say it out loud. And, we’ll see how it comes out.”

The third group’s instructor says, “Alright. We have studied how oral tradition was preserved in song and rhyme and had to be kept straight. We have studied that oral tradition was how complex knowledge was passed along before people could write. We have studied how medieval Irish bards memorized and passed along their ballads, with little or no change through out the centuries. Now, I am going to whisper a sentence into the first student’s ear. I will whisper it slowly, so he/she can get it right. I want each student to make an effort to keep that sentence right, all the way down the line, as it is whispered into ear after ear. When it gets to the end of the line, let’s see if we all kept it right.”

See the difference? The instructors in rooms one and three used the power of suggestion to get their students to do what that instructor’s bias said should happen. Only the instructor in room two did not prejudice the class.

Now, directly to your question. I am sure that the Apostles and their disciples did their best to testify to exactly what happened.
I sincerely believe, that you have run across an authority figure with the prejudice of the first instructor in my example.
So, you have learned a sad, but important, lesson. Modern authority figures can be prejudiced, or influenced by secular prejudices.

The Christian faith and message, from the beginning with Adam and Eve to now, has been protected by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth.
A lot of Genesis was written from oral tradition. But, I believe that Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy were written by eye witnesses.
The New Testament, for the most part, is written by eye witnesses to the miracles, execution and proof of death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe it’s true.

I believe that people try to say it’s not true because they either doubt or are afraid of the truth.

I hope I’ve helped you.

God loves you,
Don
 
Which sections of the story of Jesus do you think could have been exaggerated?
 
To the person above me I meen the parts with all of the miracles
 
Help_me_please said:
So Paul has the oldest document from the new testament. This dated from around 50 to 60 AD. So this would mean that about twenty odd years after the death of Jesus. In the time before this, could the story have been not entirely fabricated, but just exaggerated in some spots. There is also the chance of an unknown earlier written source telling the same stories. It is also possible that these stories of his divinity were not written down to avoid persecution. That would make sense to me, but then again what do I know I’m a 14 year old doutbing catholic. Please share your opinions with me as to what you think of this matter.
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Paul did start writing his letters as early as 50 A.D. (1 Thessalonians), but Paul was preaching the Gospel (the good news of Jesus Christ) orally for probably 15 years prior to that. Paul’s conversion to Christianity was probably only 2-5 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, so his instruction in the faith (from our Lord at his conversion and with his training by the Christian community in Antioch immediately after his conversion) is fresh.

In the ‘First Letter to the Corinthians’, (chap. 15:3) Paul says “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received…” and then he goes on and talks about Christ’s resurrection and the witnesses who observed it. This is an example of a teaching that Paul received on a few years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

As for miracles, all four Gospels teach about the miracles and signs that Jesus performed while in the presence of his apostles and others. Thousands of people were following Jesus at the time of his public ministry and they were not just following him because he made claims that he could not back up, they were following him because of the deeds (curing the blind, the lame, and bring people back from death) that he was performing in their presence. After Jesus’ death and resurrection when the apostles (incl. Paul) were proclaiming the Gospel (which included these miracles), there were thousands of people who were still alive and could have disputed these claims, but we have no evidence of this.

And lastly, the Apostles went to their deaths still proclaiming that Jesus Christ had risen from the tomb after his death on the cross and had appeared to them. This is why the Gospel message can be trusted, this is why it has endured for two thousand years, outlasting all the great empires of the past.
 
donsnow said:
Now, directly to your question. I am sure that the Apostles and their disciples did their best to testify to exactly what happened.
I sincerely believe, that you have run across an authority figure with the prejudice of the first instructor in my example.
So, you have learned a sad, but important, lesson. Modern authority figures can be prejudiced, or influenced by secular prejudices.
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Why would the apostles *not *aggrandize their leader? If they truly believed he was so important, they would want to have a convincing and impressive story to tell other people.
donsnow said:
The Christian faith and message, from the beginning with Adam and Eve to now, has been protected by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth.
A lot of Genesis was written from oral tradition. But, I believe that Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy were written by eye witnesses.
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They were not. Modern scholars have concluded that it would be pretty much impossible for the exodus to have happened as described in the bible based on what we know from archaeology. Most of the evidence points to an exodus story written several centuries after the fact in order to aggrandize Israel and demean Egypt.
 
Help_me_please said:
To the person above me I meen the parts with all of the miracles
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Certainly many scholars would argue that some of the miracle stories were legends. However, most scholars agree that the historical Jesus did things that were understood to be miracles, particularly healings, and that his earliest followers genuinely believed that He had risen bodily from the dead. I question the reasons for dismissing some of the other miracles, like the walking on water, as legendary–the walking on water occurs in Matthew, Mark, and John, which meets the key criterion of “multiple attestation,” since John is viewed as an independent source (most people think Matthew was using Mark heavily, so if something’s in Matthew and Mark that doesn’t usually count as two separate witnesses).

I think you can make a decent case, from a historical perspective, for the stories about Jesus’ birth being later legends. This is theologically problematic, of course, because the virginal conception is a central article of our faith. I don’t have a big problem with this–I can accept something by faith that I would not necessarily accept if thinking purely as a historian.

But the bottom line is that we have no evidence for a “historical Jesus” who didn’t work miracles (well, unless you privilege the “Gospel of Thomas” very highly, which I find to be a dubious approach, though some scholars do go this route).

Edwin
 
All the people who don’t believe the miracles of the bible have a good chance of one day being able to not believe them in Hell!

Either Jesus is God or Jesus isn’t–either He performed miracles and rose from the dead or He didn’t.

Either you believe or you don’t–either you go to Heaven or you go to Hell. The only one who pushes the idea that you don’t have to believe and that you’ll still go to heaven is the devil himself–and his “scholarship” isn’t worth anything!
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
They were not. Modern scholars have concluded that it would be pretty much impossible for the exodus to have happened as described in the bible based on what we know from archaeology. Most of the evidence points to an exodus story written several centuries after the fact in order to aggrandize Israel and demean Egypt.
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This is clearly untrue. While there is no definitive proof it occurred there is no definitive proof it did not either. From the Ipuwer Papyrus which lists all the same plagues that occurred in Exodus, the Shiphra Papyrus, and Apar-el’s tomb. (Not to mention the extensive mapping that the Israelite recorded in their temples). There is very good evidence that it very well could have and probably did happen.
 
You only need to accept and believe the first sentence in the Bible fully and totally,

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth’

If God can create the universe, and if he can create life from clay, then every miracle after creation was minor by comparison, talking snakes, healing the sick, raising the dead, no big deal for the creator of the universe.

When Jesus spent his time on Earth, he lived by the greatest commandments, to love all his neighbours as he loves himself.

Does Jesus continue to love each and every one of us as he loves himself, he died for me and you.

Blessings

Eric
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
Why would the apostles *not *aggrandize their leader? If they truly believed he was so important, they would want to have a convincing and impressive story to tell other people.

They were not. Modern scholars have concluded that it would be pretty much impossible for the exodus to have happened as described in the bible based on what we know from archaeology. Most of the evidence points to an exodus story written several centuries after the fact in order to aggrandize Israel and demean Egypt.
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Good evening, TheTrueCentrist,

Your heading states “Yours” for religion. Well, the way you question my religion, it can’t be your religion.

The Apostles would not aggrandize the Gospel because what they had seen and heard was already to grand to exaggerate.

I do not accept modern scholars who belittle the Holy Bible’s teachings. I keep a journal. My writing style in that journal changes with the pressure I’m under and how well I’m handling or not handling that pressure.
Moses was communicating with God, managing over a million people and their livestock, counting women and children, praying, leading the elders and resting when he could. With my example in mind, it follows that at times his writing style would vary. I doubt modern scholars took that into consideration. So, I’m free to believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, with some editing from later scribes and rabbis.

God loves you,
Don
 
bmullins said:
This is clearly untrue. While there is no definitive proof it occurred there is no definitive proof it did not either. From the Ipuwer Papyrus which lists all the same plagues that occurred in Exodus, the Shiphra Papyrus, and Apar-el’s tomb. (Not to mention the extensive mapping that the Israelite recorded in their temples). There is very good evidence that it very well could have and probably did happen.
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The problem is that the bible claims various cities fell to the Israelites in a certain order. Finding destruction layers in ancient cities is something archaeology is pretty good at. Unfortunately, there is no pattern of destruction that would allow for the biblical account. Moreover, archaeology can trace certain aspects of cultures to see their changes over time. Things like pottery and eating habits (e.g. did people eat pork or not) have been studied in Canaan and do not show a sudden shift as one would expect when thousands of Israelites arrive. Instead there is a long term gradual transition from typical Canaanite culture to Israelite, suggesting that the Israelites were actually indigenous.

That you can find some parallels between some random artifacts does not constitute strong evidence for the exodus. In fact, your sources contradict each other. The Shiphra papyrus is a list of people from 1740BC, which is much earlier than most Exodus defenders are willing to date the Exodus (the earliest I’ve seen is 1600BC.) The Ipuwer Papyrus may date to 1700BC or 2100BC, although some people claim it might have come from the 13th century BC. Apar-el’s tomb is from around 1350BC. Therefore, these sources cannot all refer to the Exodus, because the Exodus cannot happen in the 1700s and 1300s simultaneously.
 
Jerry-Jet said:
Either you believe or you don’t–either you go to Heaven or you go to Hell. The only one who pushes the idea that you don’t have to believe and that you’ll still go to heaven is the devil himself–and his “scholarship” isn’t worth anything!
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Or neither place exists and you go nowhere. You could also get reincarnated, achieve nirvana or become a god.
 
WesleyF said:
Then in that case you surely need to watch the video link I posted! It doesn’t make sense to make such exaggerations.
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No one is claiming the apostles were motivated by greed. They could have been true believers in their new philosophies and believed their exaggerations were justified in order to spread their message more effectively. There are numerous examples of cults that arise without any apparent benefit to the members or the leaders, such as the “Restoration of the 10 Commandments” movement. The apostles might have known that their martyrdom would only draw more people to their beliefs, and therefore accepted it.
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
That you can find some parallels between some random artifacts does not constitute strong evidence for the exodus. In fact, your sources contradict each other. The Shiphra papyrus is a list of people from 1740BC, which is much earlier than most Exodus defenders are willing to date the Exodus (the earliest I’ve seen is 1600BC.) The Ipuwer Papyrus may date to 1700BC or 2100BC, although some people claim it might have come from the 13th century BC. Apar-el’s tomb is from around 1350BC. Therefore, these sources cannot all refer to the Exodus, because the Exodus cannot happen in the 1700s and 1300s simultaneously.
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How do you expect this to matter to anyone when by your own admission you just said different scholars date the Ipuwer Papyrus anywhere from 2100 B.C to 1300 B.C? Is that the kind of accuracy and precision we can come to expect?
 
Nate13 said:
How do you expect this to matter to anyone when by your own admission you just said different scholars date the Ipuwer Papyrus anywhere from 2100 B.C to 1300 B.C? Is that the kind of accuracy and precision we can come to expect?
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It is not a range. They do not say it could be from 2100 to 1300, they said it could be one or the other. The problem is that the papyrus is a copy, they do not have the original, therefore the date is mostly speculative based on the content.
 
Looking at it rationally, it’s more likely that the story of Jesus was downplayed in subsequent years. So opposite to exaggeration.
 
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