Please Explain the Biblical Canon

[ChrisV]

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It makes sense to me that at the time when they created the canon, they were far better suited to understanding the truth of what actually happened at the time.

Think about it for a second, if joe blow writes a book about Jesus Christ saying he was a ham sandwich... If any book that was written about Jesus Christ was considered correct then you would have more reason to be skeptical. But at a time relatively close to his death they decided which books were accurate and which books were not. I'm willing to trust that the consistency found in the gospels is correct above the other lone books that suggest things that contradict these.

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The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

[PairTheBoard]

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[ QUOTE ]
It makes sense to me that at the time when they created the canon, they were far better suited to understanding the truth of what actually happened at the time.

Think about it for a second, if joe blow writes a book about Jesus Christ saying he was a ham sandwich... If any book that was written about Jesus Christ was considered correct then you would have more reason to be skeptical. But at a time relatively close to his death they decided which books were accurate and which books were not. I'm willing to trust that the consistency found in the gospels is correct above the other lone books that suggest things that contradict these.

[/ QUOTE ]

The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

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I think the writings closest to contemporary with the events were the Letters of Paul. He didn't know Jesus himself but he knew people who did.

You can definitely see some bells and whistles getting added when you campare accounts of the resurrection. There was probably some Oral Drift over 40 years and some theological infusion. But you take what you can get and read it with those things in mind.

PairTheBoard

[the_scalp]

[ QUOTE ]
The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

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First: "plagurized" is incorrect terminiology. "Adapted" is fairer. Early writers didn't have the taboos around borrowing (even word-for-word) the work of others that modern writers do.

Second: I would be far more willing to trust ancient 30-years-after-the-fact biographies than I would modern ones. Becasue of the anomolies of early-Christian culture (low literacy, poo education) it was an extremely oral society. That is -- it would not at all be strange for oral texts to be preserved in complete entirety for years and years with very little drift. The Iliad was an oral tale for generations (hundreds of years) before it was ever recorded -- but the historical event to which it refers was (relatively recently) discovered to have actually happened.

Also, your date for Mark (70 C.E.) is based entirely on a passage where Jesus predicts the fall of Jerusalem (which didn't happen, historically, until 70. Skeptics would, of course, accept this as proof that the words weren't recorded until after the "predicted" event. Believers do not accept this as conclusive proof of a late date (DUCY).

Furthermore, textual embellishment happens. It could be that Mark was written much earlier and the line about the fall of Jerusalem was added later. The Gospel story's substance (as found in Mark and adopeted by Matthew and Luke) is far earlier than the earliest publication of the book of Mark.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

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First: "plagurized" is incorrect terminiology. "Adapted" is fairer. Early writers didn't have the taboos around borrowing (even word-for-word) the work of others that modern writers do.

Second: I would be far more willing to trust ancient 30-years-after-the-fact biographies than I would modern ones. Becasue of the anomolies of early-Christian culture (low literacy, poo education) it was an extremely oral society. That is -- it would not at all be strange for oral texts to be preserved in complete entirety for years and years with very little drift. The Iliad was an oral tale for generations (hundreds of years) before it was ever recorded -- but the historical event to which it refers was (relatively recently) discovered to have actually happened.

Also, your date for Mark (70 C.E.) is based entirely on a passage where Jesus predicts the fall of Jerusalem (which didn't happen, historically, until 70. Skeptics would, of course, accept this as proof that the words weren't recorded until after the "predicted" event. Believers do not accept this as conclusive proof of a late date (DUCY).

Furthermore, textual embellishment happens. It could be that Mark was written much earlier and the line about the fall of Jerusalem was added later. The Gospel story's substance (as found in Mark and adopeted by Matthew and Luke) is far earlier than the earliest publication of the book of Mark.

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I have no idea why you think that the fact that these people were illiterate means they had super amazing powers of oral replication, and that they could keep these stories accurate in any meaningful way over generations. Yes, the Iliad happened...they managed to get it right that there was a big war. Thats about it. Lets not go crazy here, these people were probably just as terrible at Chinese Whispers as we are.

[the_scalp]

"Chinese whispers"? . . . wow.

Societies with oral traditions instead of written traditions just ARE better at orally remembering long narratives with very little drift.

I don't have the facts around me right now, but sociologists and historians a few decades ago found some oral tribe in Eastern Europe somewhere that had uncanny word-for-word accuracy of some long saga over generations and generations (the tribe had no recording, but one was unearthed and checked against the tribe's current work). Don't underestimate the power of learning and repeating by rote. Just because those in our culture don't do it anymore, doesn't mean that humanity isn' capable. Many prisoners memorize the ENTIRE BIBLE word for word -- these are not geniuses, just regular people. Imagine a society where your best and brightest were your oral historians, where your recitations were scutinized for word-slippage and transmission inaccuracies by those from whom you were learning the story. That's the society in which the ancients moved and lived. This isn't one of those 'up-for-debate' things. Ancient societies could remember whole stories with surprising accuracy. Maybe even better accuracy than manually written/rerecorded stuff.

[PairTheBoard]

Good points the_scalp. Although I wonder if the practice of keeping oral records was still as prevalent around the time of Jesus. The technology of writing was developed by then and the jewish scriptures were all written down. I really don't know. Probably some kind of mixed bag. Regardless, 30 or 40 years is just not that long a time. There were almost certainly people who had known Jesus, still living and active in the Central Church at Jerusalem up until its destruction in the 60's. Those who had been in their 20's when they knew Jesus would not be that old in 65 AD. People still lived to old age in those days if they were given a chance to.

PairTheBoard