Journey to the bible , findings and queries ?1
Each of the three monotheistic religions possess its own collection of Scriptures. For the faithful-be they Jews, Christians or Muslims-these documents constitute the foundation of their belief. For them they are the material transcription of a divine Revelation; directly, as in the case of Abraham and Moses, who received the commandments from God Himself, or indirectly, as in the case of Jesus and Muhammad, the first of whom stated that he was speaking in the name of the Father, and the second of whom transmitted to men the Revelation imparted to him by Archangel Gabriel.
If we take into consideration the objective facts of religious history, we must place the Old Testament, the Gospels and the Qur’an on the same level as being collections of written Revelation. Although this attitude is in principle held by Muslims, the faithful in the West under the predominantly Judeo-Christian influence refuse to ascribe to the Qur’an the character of a book of Revelation. Such an attitude may be explained by the position each religious community adopts towards the other two with regard to the Scriptures.
Judaism has as its holy book the Hebraic Bible. This differs from the Old Testament of the Christians in that the latter have included several books which did not exist in Hebrew. In practice, this divergence hardly makes any difference to the doctrine. Judaism does not however admit any revelation subsequent to its own.
Christianity has taken the Hebraic Bible for itself and added a few supplements to it. It has not however accepted all the published writings destined to make known to men the Mission of Jesus. The Church has made incisive cuts in the profusion of books relating the life and teachings of Jesus. It has only preserved a limited number of writings in the New Testament, the most important of which are the four Canonic Gospels. Christianity takes no account of any revelation subsequent to Jesus and his Apostles. It therefore rules out the Qur’an.
The Qur’anic Revelation appeared six centuries after Jesus. It resumes numerous data found in the Hebraic Bible and the Gospels since it quotes very frequently from the ‘Torah’[1] and the ‘Gospels.’ The Qur’an directs all Muslims to believe in the Scriptures that precede it (Sura 4, verse 136). It stresses the important position occupied in the Revelation by God’s emissaries, such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Prophets and Jesus, to whom they allocate a special position. His birth is described in the Qur’an, and likewise in the Gospels, as a supernatural event. Mary is also given a special place, as indicated by the fact that Sura 19 bears her name.
The above facts concerning Islam are not generally known in the West. This is hardly surprising, when we consider the way so many generations in the West were instructed in the religious problems facing humanity and the ignorance in which they were kept about anything related to Islam. The use of such terms as ‘Mohammedan religion’ and ‘Mohammedans’ has been instrumental -even to the present day- in maintaining the false notion that beliefs were involved that were spread by the work of man among which God (in the Christian sense) had no place. Many cultivated people today are interested in the philosophical, social and political aspects of Islam, but they do not pause to inquire about the Islamic Revelation itself, as indeed they should.
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In what contempt the Muslims are held by certain Christian circles! I experienced this when I tried to start an exchange of ideas arising from a comparative analysis of Biblical and Qur’anic stories on the same theme. I noted a systematic refusal, even for the purposes of simple reflection, to take any account of what the Qur’an had to say on the subject in hand. It is as if a quote from the Qur’an were a reference to the Devil!
-The Office for Non-Christian Affairs at the Vatican has produced a document result. from the Second Vatican Council under the French title Orientations pour un dialogue entre Chrétiens et Musulmans (Orientations for a Dialogue between Christians and Muslims),
Such preliminary steps towards a closer relationship between the Roman Catholic Curia and Islam have been followed by various manifestations and consolidated by encounters between the two. There has been, however, little publicity accorded to events of such great importance in the western world, where they took place and where there are ample means of communication in the form of press, radio and television. It is on account of this that they remain totally ignorant of what Islam is in reality, and retain notions about the Islamic Revelation which are entirely mistaken.
Before proceeding with our task, we must ask a fundamental question: How authentic are today’s texts? It is a question which entails an examination of the circumstances surrounding their composition and the way in which they have come down to us.
In the West the critical study of the Scriptures is something quite recent. For hundreds of years people were content to accept the Bible -both Old and New Testaments- as it was. A reading produced nothing more than remarks vindicating it. It would have been a sin to level the slightest criticism at it. The clergy were privileged in that they were easily able to have a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible, while the majority of laymen heard only selected readings as part of a sermon or the liturgy.
-Raised to the level of a specialized study, textual criticism has been valuable in uncovering and disseminating problems which are often very serious. How disappointing it is therefore to read works of a so-called critical nature which, when faced with very real problems of interpretation, merely provide passages of an apologetical nature by means of which the author contrives to hide his dilemma. Whoever retains his objective judgment and power of thought at such a moment will not find the improbabilities and contradictions any the less persistent. One can only regret an attitude which, in the face of all logical reason, upholds certain passages in the Biblical Scriptures even though they are riddled with errors.
-It can exercise an extremely damaging influence upon the cultivated mind with regard to belief in God. Experience shows however that even if the few are able to distinguish fallacies of this kind, the vast majority of Christians have never taken any account of such incompatibilities with their secular knowledge, even though they are often very elementary.
In Islam there are the same heavy emotionally minded cattle you find in the USA as well as the highly spiritual souls we can find in the West too . Well, the least people understand, the most unsure they are . The most unsure they are, the most violently intolerant they are .
Another fundamental difference in the Scriptures of Christianity and Islam is the fact that Christianity does not have a text which is both revealed and written down. Islam, however, has the Qur’an which fits this description.
-The Qur’an is the expression of the Revelation made to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel, which was immediately taken down, and was memorized and recited by the faithful in their prayers, especially during the month of Ramadan. Muhammad himself arranged it into Suras, and these were collected soon after the death of the Prophet, to form, under the rule of Caliph Uthman (12 to 24 years after the Prophet’s death), the text we know today.
-In contrast to this, the Christian Revelation is based on numerous indirect human accounts. We do not in fact have an eyewitness account from the life of Jesus, contrary to what many Christians imagine. The question of the authenticity of the Christian and Islamic texts has thus now been formulated.
-The confrontation between the texts of the Scriptures and scientific data has always provided man with food for thought.
-Islam has something relatively comparable to the Gospels in some of the Hadiths. These are the collected sayings of Muhammad and stories of his deeds. The Gospels are nothing other than this for Jesus. Some of the collections of Hadiths were written decades after the death of Muhammad, just as the Gospels were written decades after Jesus. In both cases they bear human witness to events in the past. We shall see how, contrary to what many people think, the authors of the four Canonic Gospels were not the witnesses of the events they relate. The same is true of the Hadiths referred to at the end of this book.
-Here the comparison must end because even if the authenticity of such-and-such a Hadith has been discussed and is still under discussion, in the early centuries of the Church the problem of the vast number of Gospels was definitively decided. Only four of them were proclaimed official, or canonic, in spite of the many points on which they do not agree, and order was given for the rest to be concealed; hence the term ‘Apocrypha’.
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CHRISTIANS DO HAVE A TEXT CALLED THE HOLY BIBLE AND GOD IS JESUS WHO IS 3 IN ONE!!!!!!!
Journey to the bible , findings and queries ?4
It was at first held that corroboration between the scriptures and science was a necessary element to the authenticity of the sacred text. Saint Augustine, in letter No. 82, which we shall quote later on, formally established this principle. As science progressed however it became clear that there were discrepancies between Biblical Scripture and science. It was therefore decided that comparison would no longer be made. Thus a situation arose which today, we are forced to admit, puts Biblical exegetes and scientists in opposition to one another. We cannot, after all, accept a divine Revelation making statements which are totally inaccurate. There was only one way of logically reconciling the two; it lay in not considering a passage containing unacceptable scientific data to be genuine. This solution was not adopted. Instead, the integrity of the text was stubbornly maintained and experts were obliged to adopt a position on the truth of the Biblical Scriptures which, for the scientist, is hardly tenable.
Like Saint Augustine for the Bible, Islam has always assumed that the data contained in the Holy Scriptures were in agreement with scientific fact. A modern examination of the Islamic Revelation has not caused a change in this position. As we shall see later on, the Qur’an deals with many subjects of interest to science, far more in fact than the Bible. There is no comparison between the limited number of Biblical statements which lead to a confrontation with science, and the profusion of subjects mentioned in the Qur’an that are of a scientific nature. None of the latter can be contested from a scientific point of view; this is the basic fact that emerges from our study
Scientists do not, for example, have even an approximate date for man’s appearance on Earth. They have however discovered remains of human works which we can situate beyond a shadow of a doubt at before the tenth millennium B.C. Hence we cannot consider the Biblical reality on this subject to be compatible with science. In the Biblical text of Genesis, the dates and genealogies given would place man’s origins (i.e. the creation of Adam) at roughly thirty-seven centuries B.C. The Biblical data concerning the antiquity of man are therefore inaccurate.
-This confrontation with science excludes all religious problems in the true sense of the word. Science does not, for example, have any explanation of the process whereby God manifested Himself to Moses. The same may be said for the mystery surrounding the manner in which Jesus was born in the absence of a biological father. The Scriptures moreover give no material explanation of such data.
It was only when I examined the text very closely in Arabic that I kept a list of them at the end of which I had to acknowledge the evidence in front of me: the Qur’an did not contain a single statement that was assailable from a modern scientific point of view.
I repeated the same test for the Old Testament and the Gospels, always preserving the same objective outlook. In the former I did not even have to go beyond the first book, Genesis, to find statements totally out of keeping With the cast-iron facts of modern science.
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ?5
On opening the Gospels, one is immediately confronted with a serious problem. On the first page we find the genealogy of Jesus, but Matthew’s text is in evident contradiction to Luke’s on the same question. There is a further problem in that the latter’s data on the antiquity of man on Earth are incompatible with modern knowledge.
The existence of these contradictions, improbabilities and incompatibilities does not seem to me to detract from the belief in God. They involve only man’s responsibility. No one can say what the original texts might have been, or identify imaginative editing, deliberate manipulations of them by men, or unintentional modification of the Scriptures. What strikes us today. when we realize Biblical contradictions and incompatibilities with well-established scientific data, is how specialists studying the texts either pretend to be unaware of them, or else draw attention to these defects then try to camouflage them with dialectic acrobatics.
The bible being a word of badly written and even worse edited fan fiction pretty much covers all of this
Journey to the bible , findings and queries ?Who is the author of the Old Testament?
Who is the author of the Old Testament?
One wonders how many readers of the Old Testament, if asked the above question, would reply by repeating what they had read in the introduction to their Bible. They might answer that, even though it was written by men inspired by the Holy Ghost, the author was God
Sometimes, the author of the Bible’s presentation confines himself to informing his reader of this succinct observation which puts an end to all further questions. Sometimes he corrects it by warning him that details may subsequently have been added to the primitive text by men, but that nonetheless, the litigious character of a passage does not alter the general “truth’ that proceeds from it. This “truth’ is stressed very heavily. The Church Authorities answer for it, being the only body, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, able to enlighten the faithful on such points.
When one refers however to works written by clergymen, not meant for mass publication, one realizes that the question concerning the authenticity of the books in the Bible is much more complex than one might suppose a priori. For example, when one consults the modern publication in separate installments of the Bible in French translated under the guidance of the Biblical School of Jerusalem , the tone appears to be very different. One realizes that the Old Testament, like the New Testament, raises problems with controversial elements that, for the most part, the authors of commentaries have not concealed.
Many people are unaware, and Edmond Jacob points this out, that there were originally a number of texts and not just one. Around the Third century B.C., there were at least three forms of the Hebrew text: the text which was to become the Masoretic text, the text which was used, in part at least, for the Greek translation, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. In the First century B.C., there was a tendency towards the establishment of a single text, but it was not until a century after Christ that the Biblical text was definitely established.
If we had had the three forms of the text, comparison would have been possible, and we could have reached an opinion concerning what the original might have been. Unfortunately, we do not have the slightest idea. Apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls (Cave of Qumran) dating from a pre-Christian era near the time of Jesus, a papyrus of the Ten Commandments of the Second century A.D. presenting variations from the classical text, and a few fragments from the Fifth century A.D. (Geniza of Cairo) , the oldest Hebrew text of the Bible dates from the Ninth century A.D.
For the sake of completeness, let us mention that diverging Biblical conceptions are responsible for the fact that the various Christian churches do not all accept exactly the same books and have not until now had identical ideas on translation into the same language. The Ecumenical Translation of the Old Testament is a work of unification written by numerous Catholic and Protestant experts now nearing completion and should result in a work of synthesis. Thus the human element in the Old Testament is seen to be quite considerable. It is not difficult to understand why from version to version, and translation to translation, with all the corrections inevitably resulting, it was possible for the original text to have been transformed during the course of more than two thousand years.
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Joshua = Joshua – 1350 B.C.
Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel = Samuel/Nathan/Gad – 1000 – 900 B.C.
1 Kings, 2 Kings = Jeremiah – 600 B.C.
1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah = Ezra – 450 B.C.
Esther = Mordecai – 400 B.C.
Job = Moses – 1400 B.C.
Psalms = several different authors, mostly David – 1000 – 400 B.C.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon = Solomon – 900 B.C.
Isaiah = Isaiah – 700 B.C.
Jeremiah, Lamentations = Jeremiah – 600 B.C.
Ezekiel = Ezekiel – 550 B.C.
Daniel = Daniel – 550 B.C.
Hosea = Hosea – 750 B.C.
Joel = Joel – 850 B.C.
Amos = Amos – 750 B.C.
Obadiah = Obadiah – 600 B.C.
Jonah = Jonah – 700 B.C.
Micah = Micah – 700 B.C.
Nahum = Nahum – 650 B.C.
Habakkuk = Habakkuk – 600 B.C.
Zephaniah = Zephaniah – 650 B.C.
Haggai = Haggai – 520 B.C.
Zechariah = Zechariah – 500 B.C.
Malachi = Malachi – 430 B.C.
truth ·
Origins Of The Bible
Before it became a collection of books, it was a folk tradition that relied entirely upon human memory, originally the only means of passing on ideas. This tradition was sung.
-In Israel, as elsewhere, poetry preceded prose. Israel sang long and well; led by circumstances of his history to the heights of joy and the depths of despair, taking part with intense feeling in all that happened to it, for everything in their eyes had a sense, Israel gave its song a wide variety of expression”. They sang for the most diverse reasons we find the accompanying songs in the Bible: eating songs, harvest songs, songs connected with work, like the famous Well Song (Numbers 21, 17), wedding songs, as in the Song of Songs, and mourning songs. In the Bible there are numerous songs of war and among these we find the Song of Deborah (Judges 5, 1-32) exalting Israel’s victory desired and led by Yahweh Himself, (Numbers 10, 35); “And whenever the ark (of alliance) set out, Moses said, ‘Arise, oh Yahweh, and let thy enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee nee before thee”.
these words were either passed down from family to family or channelled through the sanctuaries in the form of an account of the history of God’s chosen people.
“animated by the need to tell a good story, the narration was not perturbed by subjects or times whose history was not well known”, from which he concludes:
“It is probable that what the Old Testament narrates about Moses and the patriarchs only roughly corresponds to the succession of historic facts. The narrators however, even at the stage of oral transmission, were able to bring into play such grace and imagination to blend between them highly varied episodes, that when all is said and done, they were able to present as a history that was fairly credible to critical thinkers what happened at the beginning of humanity and the world”.
-There is good reason to believe that after the Jewish people settled in Canaan, at the end of the Thirteenth century B.C., writing was used to preserve and hand down the tradition. There was not however complete accuracy, even in what to men seems to demand the greatest durability, i.e. the laws. Among these, the laws which are supposed to have been written by God’s own hand, the Ten Commandments, were transmitted in the Old Testament in two versions; Exodus (20,1-21) and Deuteronomy (5, 1-30). They are the same in spirit, but the variations are obvious. There is also a concern to keep a large written record of contracts, letters, lists of personalities (Judges, high city officials, genealogical tables), lists of offerings and plunder. In this way, archives were created which provided documentation for the later editing of definitive works resulting in the books we have today. Thus in each book there is a mixture of different literary genres: it can be left to the specialists to find the reasons for this odd assortment of documents
-The Old Testament is a disparate whole based upon an initially oral tradition. It is interesting therefore to compare the process by which it was constituted with what could happen in another period and another place at the time when a primitive literature was born.
This parallel between the birth of the Bible and a secular literature seems to correspond exactly with reality. It is in no way meant to relegate the whole Biblical text as we know it today to the store of mythological collections, as do so many of those who systematically negate the idea of God. It is perfectly possible to believe in the reality of the Creation, God’s transmission to Moses of the Ten Commandments, Divine intercession in human affairs, e.g. at the time of Solomon. This does not stop us, at the same time, from considering that what has been conveyed to us is the gist of these facts, and that the detail in the description should be subjected to rigorous criticism, the reason for this being that the element of human participation in the transcription of originally oral traditions is so great.
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ?The Books of the old testament?
The Old Testament is a collection of works of greatly differing length and many different genres. They were written in several languages over a period of more than nine hundred years, based on oral traditions. Many of these works were corrected and completed in accordance with events or special requirements, often at periods that were very distant from one another. This copious literature probably flowered at the beginning of the Israelite Monarchy, around the Eleventh century B.C. It was at this period that a body of scribes appeared among the members of the royal household. They were cultivated men whose role was not limited to writing. The first incomplete writings, mentioned in the preceding chapter, may date from this period. There was a special reason for writing these works down; there were a certain number of songs (mentioned earlier), the prophetic oracles of Jacob and Moses, the Ten Commandments and, on a more general level, the legislative texts which established a religious tradition before the formation of the law. All these texts constitute fragments scattered here and there throughout the various collections of the Old Testament
It was not until a little later, possibly during the Tenth century B.C., that the so-called ‘Yahvist'[6] text of the Pentateuch was written. This text was to form the backbone of the first five books ascribed to Moses. Later, the so-called ‘Elohist'[7] text was to be added, and also the so-called ‘Sacerdotal'[8] version. The initial Yahvist text deals with the origins of the world up to the death of Jacob. This text comes from the southern kingdom, Judah. At the end of the Ninth century and in the middle of the Eighth century B.C., the prophetic influence of Elias and Elisha took shape and spread. We have their books today. This is also the time of the Elohist text of the Pentateuch which covers a much smaller period than the Yahvist text because it limits itself to facts relating to Abraham, Jacob and
Joseph. The books of Joshua and Judges date from this time. The Eighth century B.C. saw the appearance of the writer prophets: Amos and Hosea in Israel, and Michah in Judah. In 721 B.C., the fall of Samaria put an end to the Kingdom of Israel. The Kingdom of Judah took over its religious heritage. The collection of Proverbs dates from this period, distinguished in particular by the fusion into a single book of the Yahvist and Elohist texts of the Pentateuch; in this way the Torah was constituted.Deuteronomy was written at this time. In the second half of the Seventh century B.C., the reign of Josiah coincided with the appearance of the prophet Jeremiah, but his work did not take definitive shape until a century later. Before the first deportation to Babylon in 598 B.C., there appeared the Books of Zephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk. Ezekiel was already prophesying during this first deportation. The fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. marked the beginning of the second deportation which lasted until 538 B.C.
The Book of Ezekiel, the last great prophet and the prophet of exile, was not arranged into its present form until after his death by the scribes that were to become his spiritual inheritors. These same scribes were to resume Genesis in a third version, the so-called ‘Sacerdotal’ version, for the section going from the Creation to the death of Jacob. In this way a third text was to be inserted into the central fabric of the Yahvist and Elohist texts of the Torah. We shall see later on, in the books written roughly two and four centuries earlier, an aspect of the intricacies of this third text. It was at this time that the Lamentations appeared. On the order of Cyrus, the deportation to Babylon came to an end in 538 B.C. The Jews returned to Palestine and the Temple at Jerusalem was rebuilt. The prophets’ activities began again, resulting in the books of Haggai, Zechariah, the third book of Isaiah, Malachi, Daniel and Baruch (the last being in Greek).
The period following the deportation is also the period of the Books of Wisdom:
Proverbs was written definitively around 480 B.C., Job in the middle of the Fifth century
B.C., Ecclesiastes or Koheleth dates from the Third century B.C., as do the Song of Songs,
Chronicles I & II, Ezra and Nehemiah; Ecclesiasticus or Sirah appeared in the Second
century B.C.; the Book of Wisdom and the Book of Maccabees I & II were written one
century before Christ. The Books of Ruth, Esther and Jonah are not easily datable. The same
is true for Tobit and Judith. All these dates are given on the understanding that there may
have been subsequent adaptations, since it was only circa one century before Christ that
form was first given to the writings of the Old Testament. For many this did not become
definitive until one century after Christ.
Thus the Old Testament appears as a literary monument to the Jewish people, from its origins to the coming of Christianity. The books it consists of were written, completed and revised between the Tenth and the First centuries B.C. This is in no way a personal point of view on the history of its composition. The essential data for this historical survey were taken from the entry The Bible in the Encyclopedia Universalis [9] by J. P. Sandroz, a professor at the Dominican Faculties, Saulchoir. To understand what the Old Testament represents, it is important to retain this information, correctly established today by highly qualified specialists.
A Revelation is mingled in all these writings, but all we possess today is what men have seen fit to leave us. These men manipulated the texts to please themselves, according to the circumstances they were in and the necessities they had to meet. When these objective data are compared with those found in various prefaces to Bibles destined today for mass publication, one realizes that facts are presented in them in quite a different way. Fundamental facts concerning the writing of the books are passed over in silence, ambiguities which mislead the reader are maintained, facts are minimalised to such an extent that a false idea of reality is conveyed. A large number of prefaces or introductions to the Bible misrepresent reality in this way. In the case of books that were adapted several times (like the Pentateuch), it is said that certain details may have been added later on. A
discussion of an unimportant passage of a book is introduced, but crucial facts warranting lengthy expositions are passed over in silence. It is distressing to see such inaccurate information on the Bible maintained for mass publication.
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The Torah Or Pentateuch
Judaism and Christianity for many centuries considered that the author was Moses himself. Perhaps this affirmation was based on the fact that God said to Moses (Exodus 17, 14): “Write this (the defeat of Amalek) as a memorial in a book”. From the First century B.C. onwards, the theory that Moses wrote the Pentateuch was upheld; Flavius Josephus and Philo of Alexandria maintain it Today, this theory has been completely abandoned; everybody is in agreement on this point. The New Testament nevertheless ascribes the authorship to Moses
Father de Vaux reminds us that the “Jewish tradition which was followed by Christ and his Apostles” was accepted up to the end of the Middle Ages. The only person to contest this theory was Abenezra in the Twelfth century. It was in the Sixteenth century that Calstadt noted that Moses could not have written the account of his own death in Deuteronomy (34, 5-12). The author then quotes other critics who refuse to ascribe to Moses a part, at least, of the Pentateuch. It was above all the work of Richard Simon, father of the Oratory, Critical History of the Old Testament (Histoire critique du Vieux Testament) 1678, that underlined the chronological difficulties, the repetitions, the confusion of the stories and stylistic differences in the Pentateuch. The book caused a scandal. R. Simon’s line of argument was barely followed in history books at the beginning of the Eighteenth century. At this time, the references to antiquity very often proceeded from what “Moses had written”.
By publishing, in 1753, his Conjectures on the original writings which it appears Moses used to compose the Book of Genesis (Conjectures sur les Mèmoires originaux dont il parait que Moyse s’est servi pour composer le livre de la Genèse), he placed the accent on the plurality of sources. He was probably not the first to have noticed it, but he did however have the courage to make public an observation of prime importance: two texts, each denoted by the way in which God was named either Yahweh or Elohim, were present side by side in Genesis. The latter therefore contained two juxtaposed texts. Eichorn (1780-1783) made the same discovery for the other four books; then Ilgen (1798) noticed that one of the texts isolated by Astruc, the one where God is named Elohim, was itself divided into two. The Pentateuch literally fell apart. The Nineteenth century saw an even more minute search into the sources. In 1854, four sources were recognised. They were called the Yahvist version, the Elohist version, Deuteronomy, and the Sacerdotal version. It was even possible to date them:
writes Father de Vaux. More recently, it has been thought that “many of the constitutions or laws contained in the Pentateuch had parallels outside the Bible going back much further than the dates ascribed to the documents themselves” and that “many of the stories of the Pentateuch presupposed a background that was different from-and older than-the one from which these documents were supposed to have come”. This leads on to “an interest in the formation of traditions”. The problem then appears so complicated that nobody knows where he is anymore.
The multiplicity of sources brings with it numerous disagreements and repetitions. Father de Vaux gives examples of this overlapping of traditions in the case of the Flood, the kidnapping of Joseph, his adventures in Egypt, disagreement of names relating to the same character, differing descriptions of important events. Thus the Pentateuch is shown to be formed from various traditions brought together more or less skillfully by its authors. The latter sometimes juxtaposed their compilations and sometimes adapted the stories for the sake of synthesis. They allowed improbabilities and disagreements to appear in the texts, however, which have led modern man to the objective
study of the sources.
As far as textual criticism is concerned, the Pentateuch provides what is probably the most obvious example of adaptations made by the hand of man. These were made at different times in the history of the Jewish people, taken from oral traditions and texts handed down from preceding generations We must bear in mind that the Sacerdotal tradition dates from the time of the deportation to Babylon and the return to Palestine starting in 538 B.C. There is therefore a mixture of religious and purely political problems
in the case of the Creation, the Flood and the period that goes from the Flood to Abraham, occupying as it does the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we can see alternating in the Biblical text a section of the Yahvist and a section of the Sacerdotal texts. The Elohist text is not present in the first eleven chapters. The overlapping of Yahvist and Sacerdotal contributions is here quite clear.
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I learned in my literature of ancient israel class that Moses could not be the author of deuteronomy since his death is mentioned in that part of the bible. Most scholars believe there were 4 authors of the torah and the historical books and these 4 authors eventually combined their writings into one. This is why some references contradict each other and why God is known by different terms in the books
Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? The Historical Books?
The Historical Books
In the narration however, historical accuracy has rather beenbrushed aside: a work such as the Book of Joshua complies first and foremost with theological intentions. With this in mind, E. Jacob underlines the obvious contradiction between archaeology and the texts in the case of the supposed destruction of Jericho and Ay.
The Book of Judges is centered on the defense of the chosen people against surrounding enemies and on the support given to them by God. The Book was adapted several times, as Father A. Lefèvre notes with great objectivity in his Preamble to the Crampon Bible. The various prefaces in the text and the appendices bear witness to this. The story of Ruth is attached to the narrations contained in Judges.
The Book of Samuel and the two Books of Kings are above all biographical collections concerning Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon. Their historic worth is the subject of debate. From this point of view E. Jacob finds numerous errors in it, because there are sometimes two and even three versions of the same event. The prophets Elias, Elisha and Isaiah also figure here, mixing elements of history and legend. For other commentators, such as Father A. Lefèvre, “the historical value of these books is fundamental.”
In these works care is taken to adapt history to the needs of theology. E. Jacob notes that the author “sometimes writes history according to theology”. “To explain the fact that King Manasseh, who was a sacrilegious persecutor, had a long and prosperous reign, he postulates a conversion of the King during a stay in Assyria (Chronicles II, 33/11) although there is no mention of this in any Biblical or non- Biblical source”. The Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah have been severely criticized because they are full of obscure points, and because the period they deal with (the Fourth century B.C.) is itself not very well known, there being few non-Biblical documents from it.
The Books of Tobit, Judith and Esther are classed among the Historical Books. In them very big liberties are taken with history. proper names are changed, characters and events are invented, all for the best of religious reasons. They are in fact stories designed to serve a moral end, peppered with historical improbabilities and inaccuracies. The Books of Maccabees are of quite a different order. They provide a version of events that took place in the Second century B.C. which is as exact a record of the history of this period as may be found. It is for this reason that they constitute accounts of great value. The collection of books under the heading ‘historical’ is therefore highly disparate. History is treated in both a scientific and a whimsical fashion.
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-We have, therefore, a collection of works with highly disparate contents written over at least seven centuries, using extremely varied sources before being amalgamated inside a single work. How was this collection able, over the centuries, to constitute an inseparable whole and-with a few variations according to community-become the book containing the Judeo-Christian Revelation? This book was called in Greek the ‘canon’ because of the idea of intangibility it conveys.
-The amalgam does not date from the Christian period, but from Judaism itself, probably with a primary stage in the Seventh century B.C. before later books were added to those already accepted. It is to be noted however that the first five books, forming the Torah or Pentateuch, have always been given pride of place. Once the proclamations of the prophets (the prediction of a chastisement commensurate with misdemeanour) had been fulfilled, there was no difficulty in adding their texts to the books that had already been admitted. The same was true for the assurances of hope given by these prophets. By the Second century B.C., the ‘Canon’ of the prophets had been formed.
We must once again mention the Song of Songs, allegorical chants mostly about Divine love, the Book of Proverbs, a collection of the words of Solomon and other wise men of the court, and Ecclesiastes or Koheleth, where earthly happiness and wisdom are debated.
-Christianity, which was initially Judeo-Christianity, has been carefully studied-as we shall see later on-by modern authors, such as Cardinal Daniélou. Before it was transformed under Paul’s influence, Christianity accepted the heritage of the Old Testament without difficulty. The authors of the Gospels adhered very strictly to the latter, but whereas a ‘purge’ has been made of the Gospels by ruling out the ‘Apocrypha’, the same selection has not been deemed necessary for the Old Testament. Everything, or nearly everything, has been accepted.
Who would have dared dispute any aspects of this disparate amalgam before the end of the Middle Ages-in the West at least? The answer is nobody, or almost nobody. From the end of the Middle Ages up to the beginning of modern times, one or two critics began to appear; but, as we have already seen, the Church Authorities have always succeeded in having their own way. Nowadays, there is without doubt a genuine body of textual criticism,
but even if ecclesiastic specialists have devoted many of their efforts to examining a multitude of detailed points, they have preferred not to go too deeply into what they euphemistically call difficulties’. They hardly seem disposed to study them in the light of
modern knowledge. They may well establish parallels with history-principally when history and Biblical narration appear to be in agreement-but so far they have not committed themselves to be a frank and thorough comparison with scientific ideas. They realize that this would lead people to contest notions about the truth of Judeo-Christian Scriptures, which have so far remained undisputed.
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? The Old Testament and Science Findings?
The Old Testament and Science Findings
Few of the subjects dealt within the Old Testament, and likewise the Gospels, give rise to a confrontation with the data of modern knowledge. When an incompatibility does occur between the Biblical text and science, however, it is on extremely important points. As we have already seen in the preceding chapter, historical errors were found in the Bible and we have quoted several of these pinpointed by Jewish and Christian experts in exegesis. The latter have naturally had a tendency to minimize the importance of such errors. They find it quite natural for a sacred author to present historical fact in accordance with theology and to write history to suit certain needs. We shall see further on, in the case of the Gospel according to Matthew, the same liberties taken with reality and the same commentaries aimed at making admissible as reality what is in contradiction to it. A logical and objective mind cannot be content with this procedure.
-From a logical angle,it is possible to single out a large number of contradictions and improbabilities. The existence of different sources that might have been used in the writing of a description may be at the origin of two different presentations of the same fact. This is not all; different adaptations, later additions to the text itself, like the commentaries added a posteriori, then included in the text later on when a new copy was made-these are perfectly recognized by specialists in textual criticism and very frankly underlined by some of them. In the case of the Pentateuch alone, for example, Father de Vaux in the General Introduction preceding his translation of Genesis pages 13 and 14), has drawn attention to numerous disagreements. We shall not quote them here since we shall be quoting several of them later on in this study. The general impression one gains is that one must not follow the text to the letter.
-Here is a very typical example:
In Genesis (6, 3), God decides just before the Flood henceforth to limit man’s lifespan to one hundred and twenty years, “… his days shall be a hundred and twenty years”. Further on however, we note in Genesis (11, 10-32) that the ten descendants of Noah had lifespans that range from 148 to 600 years (see table in this chapter showing Noah’s descendants down to Abraham). The contradiction between these two passages is quite obvious. The explanation is elementary. The first passage (Genesis 6, 3) is a Yahvist text, probably dating as we have already seen from the Tenth century B.C. The second passage in Genesis (11, 10-32) is a much more recent text (Sixth century B.C.) from the Sacerdotal version. This version is at the origin of these genealogies, which are as precise in their information on life spans as they are improbable when taken en masse.
It is in Genesis that we find the most evident incompatibilities with modern science. These concern three essential points:
1) the Creation of the world and its stages;
2) the date of the Creation of the world and the date of man’s appearance on earth;
3) the description of the Flood.
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? The Creation of the World?
The Creation of the World
Chapter 1, verses 1 & 2:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”
-It is quite possible to admit that before the Creation of the Earth, what was to become the Universe as we know it was covered in darkness. To mention the existence of water at this period is however quite simply pure imagination. We shall see in the third part of this book how there is every indication that at the initial stage of the formation of the universe a gaseous mass existed. It is an error to place water in it.
-Verses 3 to 5:
“And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”
The light circulating in the Universe is the result of complex reactions in the stars
At this stage in the Creation, however, according to the Bible, the stars were not yet formed. The “lights’ of the firmament are not mentioned in Genesis until verse 14, when they were created on the Fourth day, “to separate the day from the night”, “to give light upon earth”; all of which is accurate. It is illogical, however, to mention the result (light) on the first day, when the cause of this light was created three days later. The fact that the existence of evening and morning is placed on the first day is moreover, purely imaginary; the existence of evening and morning as elements of a single day is only conceivable after the creation of the earth and its rotation under the light of its own star, the Sun!
Verses 6 to 8:
“And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.”
– The myth of the waters is continued here with their separation into two layers by a firmament that in the description of the Flood allows the waters above to pass through and flow onto the earth. This image of the division of the waters into two masses is scientifically unacceptable.
Verses 9 to 13:
“And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, ——————————- a third day.”
-The fact that continents emerged at the period in the earth’s history, when it was still covered with water, is quite acceptable scientifically. What is totally untenable is that a highly organized vegetable kingdom with reproduction by seed could have appeared before the existence of the sun (in Genesis it does not appear until the fourth day), and likewise the establishment of alternating nights and days.
Verses 20 to 30:
“And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly
above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.’——————————–))
-This passage contains assertions which are unacceptable , According to Genesis, the animal kingdom began with the appearance of creatures of the sea and winged birds. The Biblical description informs us that it was not until the next day-as we shall see in the following verses-that the earth itself was populated by animals.
*** The description of the Creation finishes in the first three verses of Chapter 2: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host (sic) of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation;
-It is quite clear that the ‘rest’ that God is said to have taken after his six days’ work is a legend. We must bear in mind that the description of the creation examined here is taken from the so-called Sacerdotal version, Whereas the Yahvist text of the Creation, written several centuries before the Sacerdotal text, makes no mention of God’s sabbath,
It may be seen therefore that the Sacerdotal description of the Creation stands out as an imaginative and ingenious fabrication. Its purpose was quite different from that of making the truth known.
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This isn’t proof of anything other than the fact that you can type; or, rather, copy and paste.
Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? The Flood
Chapters 6, 7 and 8 are devoted to the description of the Flood. In actual fact, there are two descriptions; they have not been placed side by side, but are distributed all the way through. Passages are interwoven to give the appearance of a coherent succession of varying episodes. In these three chapters there are, in reality, blatant contradictions; here again the explanation lies in the existence of two quite distinct sources: the Yahvist and Sacerdotal versions.
-Man’s corruption had become widespread, so God decided to annihilate him along with all the other living creatures. He warned Noah and told him to construct the Ark into which he was to take his wife, his three sons and their wives, along with other living creatures. The two sources differ for the latter. one passage (Sacerdotal) says that Noah was to take one pair of each species; then in the passage that follows (Yahvist) it is stated that God ordered him to take seven males and seven females from each of the so-called ‘pure’ animal species, and a single pair from the ‘impure’ species. Further on, however, it is stated that Noah actually took one pair of each animal. Specialists, such as Father de Vaux, state that the passage in question is from an adaptation of the Yahvist description.
-Rainwater is given as the agent of the Flood in one (Yahvist) passage, but in another (Sacerdotal), the Flood is given a double cause: rainwater and the waters of the Earth.
-The Yahvist version does not tell us when the event took place in Noah’s life, but the Sacerdotal text tells us that he was six hundred years old. The latter also provides information in its genealogies that situates him in relation to Adam and Abraham.
If we calculate according to the information contained in Genesis, Noah was born 1,056 yearsafter Adam (see table of Abraham’s Genealogy) and the Flood therefore took place 1,656years after the creation of Adam. In relation to Abraham, Genesis places the Flood 292 years before the birth of this Patriarch.
-According to Genesis, the Flood affected the whole of the human race and all living creatures created by God on the face of the Earth were destroyed. Humanity was then reconstituted by Noah’s three sons and their wives so that when Abraham was born roughly three centuries later, he found a humanity that Was already re-formed into separate communities. How could this reconstruction have taken place in such a short time? This simple observation deprives the narration of all verisimilitude.
Furthermore, historical data show its incompatibility with modern knowledge. Abrahamis placed in the period 1800-1850 B.C., and if the Flood took place, as Genesis suggests in its genealogies, roughly three centuries before Abraham, we would have to place him somewhere in the Twenty-first to Twenty-second century B.C. Modern historical knowledge confirms that at this period, civilizations had sprung up in several parts of the world; for their remains have been left to posterity.
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GOD WAS TIRED OF SINNING SO HE RID THE WORLD OF IT..
There are two ways to study the bible:
1. Hunt and peck for the cutesy things that make you smile and feel warm inside. Dismiss any and all of the horror that god did to people. or
2. Accept it for what it is….the musings, tales, myths, and legends of a group of bronze age goat herders, writing at a time of zero science. Many of those myths and legends were stolen from other bronze age tribes…. the Adam and Eve story comes from the Huluppu Tree…google it. The Flood story comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh, a tale from Sumer, and a copy job right down to the dove. Stuff like this goes on and on and on.
Take a courses on bible from a college or a course on line. You’ll learn a ton. Grad courses in rel. studies, U of Chicago, Divinity School.
Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? A critical Examination
One is struck by the diverse nature of Christian commentators’ reactions to the existence of these accumulated errors, improbabilities and contradictions. Certain commentators acknowledge some of them and do not hesitate in their work to tackle thorny problems. Others pass lightly over unacceptable statements and insist on defending the text word for word. The latter try to convince people by apologetic declarations, heavily reinforced by arguments which are often unexpected, in the hope that what is logically unacceptable will be forgotten.
-In the Introduction to his translation of Genesis, Father de Vaux acknowledges the existence of critical arguments and even expands upon their cogency. Nevertheless, for him the objective reconstitution of past events has little interest.
-A large number of Christian commentators have found it more ingenious to explain errors, improbabilities and contradictions in Biblical descriptions by using the excuse that the Biblical authors were expressing ideas in accordance with the social factors of a different culture or mentality
Another way of making acceptable what would be rejected by logic when applied to a litigious text, is to surround the text in question with apologetical considerations The reader’s attention is distracted from the crucial problem of the truth of the text itself and deflected towards other problems.
Present-day specialists, on the contrary, go to great trouble to defend the Biblical text from any accusation of error. In his introduction to Genesis, Father de Vaux explains the reasons compelling him to defend the text at all costs, even if, quite obviously, it is historically or scientifically unacceptable.
The Biblical commentator rejects any verification of Biblical descriptions through geology, paleontology or prehistorical data. “The Bible is not answerable to any of these disciplines, and were one to confront it with the data obtained from these sciences, it would only lead to an unreal opposition or an artificial concordance.
-the Second Vatican Council “has avoided providing rules to distinguish between error and truth in the Bible. Basic considerations show that this is impossible, because the Church cannot determine the truth or otherwise of scientific methods in such a way as to decide in principle and on a general level the question of the truth of the Scriptures”.
-At a time when it was not yet possible to ask scientific questions, and one could only decide on improbabilities or contradictions, a man of good sense, such as Saint Augustine, considered that God could not teach man things that did not correspond to reality. He therefore put forward the principle that it was not possible for an affirmation contrary to the truth to be of divine origin, and was prepared to exclude from all the sacred texts anything that appeared to him to merit exclusion on these grounds.
Later, at a time when the incompatibility of certain passages of the Bible with modern knowledge has been realized, the same attitude has not been followed. This refusal has been so insistent that a whole literature has sprung up, aimed at justifying the fact that, in the face of all opposition, texts have been retained in the Bible that have no reason to be there.
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? The gospels
Many readers of the Gospels are embarrassed and even abashed when they stop to think about the meaning of certain descriptions. The same is true when they make comparisons between different versions of the same event found in several Gospels. This observation is made by Father Roguet in his book Initiation to the Gospels (Initiation à l’Evangile)[17]. With the wide experience he has gained in his many years of answering perturbed readers’ letters in a Catholic weekly, he has been able to assess just how greatly they have been worried by what they have read. His questioners come from widely varying social and cultural backgrounds. He notes that their requests for explanations concern texts that are “considered abstruse, incomprehensible, if not contradictory, absurd or scandalous’. There can be no doubt that a complete reading of the Gospels is likely to disturb Christians profoundly.
-Not sovery long ago, the majority of Christians knew only selected sections of the Gospels that were read during services or commented upon during sermons. With the exception of the Protestants, it was not customary for Christians to read the Gospels in their entirety. Books of religious instruction only contained extracts; the in extensor text hardly circulated at all. At a Roman Catholic school I had copies of the works of Virgil and Plato, but I did not have the New Testament. The Greek text of this would nevertheless have been very instructive:
-it was only much later on that I realized why they had not set us translations of the holy writings of Christianity. The latter could have led us to ask our teachers questions they would have found it difficult to answer.
In editions of the Bible produced for widespread publication, introductory notes more often than not set out a collection of ideas that would tend to persuade the reader that the Gospels hardly raise any problems concerning the personalities of the authors of the various books, the authenticity of the texts and the truth of the descriptions. In spite of the fact that there are so many unknowns concerning authors of whose identity we are not at all sure, we find a wealth of precise information in this kind of introductory note. Often they present as a certainty what is pure hypothesis, or they state that such-and-such an evangelist was an eyewitness of the events, while specialist works claim the opposite. The time that elapsedbetween the end of Jesus’ ministry and the appearance of the texts is drastically reduced. They would have one believe that these were written by one man taken from an oral tradition, when in fact specialists have pointed out adaptations to the texts.
Neither Matthew nor John speaks of Jesus’s Ascension. Luke in his Gospel places it on the day of the Resurrection and forty days later in the Acts of the Apostles of which he is said to be the author. Mark mentions it (without giving a date) in a conclusion considered unauthentic today. The Ascension therefore has no solid scriptural basis. Commentators nevertheless approach this important question with incredible lightness
The Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Synopse des Quatre Evangiles) by Fathers Benoît and Boismard, teachers at the Biblical School of Jerusalem, (1972 edition)[19], informs us in volume, pages 451 and 452, that the contradiction between Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles may be explained by a ‘literary artifice’: this is, to say the least, difficult to follow ! . In all probability, Father Roguet in his Initiation to the Gospel, 1973, (pg. 187) has not been convinced by the above argument. The explanation he gives us is curious, to say the least:
Father Kannengiesser warns that ‘one should not take literally’ facts reported about Jesus by the Gospels, because they are ‘writings suited to an occasion’ or ‘to combat’, whose authors ‘are writing down the traditions of their own community about Jesus
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? The Four gospels
-In the writings that come from the early stages of Christianity, the Gospels are not mentioned until long after the works of Paul. It was not until the middle of the Second century A.D., after 140 A.D. to be precise, that accounts began to appear concerning a collection of Evangelic writings, In spite of this, “from the beginning of the Second century A.D., many Christian authors clearly intimate that they knew a. great many of Paul’s letters.
-The Gospels, later to become official, i.e. canonic, did not become known until fairly late, even though they were completed at the beginning of the Second century A.D. According to the Ecumenical Translation, stories belonging to them began to be quoted around the middle of the Second century
“Before 140 A.D.” we read in the commentaries this translation of the Bible contains,there was, in any case, no account by which one might have recognised a collection of evangelic writings”. This statement is the opposite of what A. Tricot writes (1960) in the commentary to his translation of the New Testament: “Very early on, from the beginning of the Second century A.D., it became a habit to say “Gospel’ meaning the books that Saint Justin around 150 A.D. had also called “The Memoirs of the Apostles’.” Unfortunately, assertions of this kind are sufficiently common for the public to have ideas on the date of the Gospels which are mistaken.
-The Gospels did not form a complete whole ‘very early on’; it did not happen until more than a century after the end of Jesus’s mission. The Ecumenical Translation of the Bible estimates the date the four Gospels acquired the status of canonic literature at around 170 A.D.
-If however the four Gospels in question cannot reasonably be regarded as the ‘Memoirs’
of the apostles or companions of Jesus, where do they come from?
-“spokesmen of the early Christian community which wrote down the oral tradition. For thirty or forty years, the Gospel had existed as an almost exclusively oral tradition: the latter only transmitted sayings and isolated narratives. The evangelists strung them together, each in his own way according to his own character and theological preoccupations. They linked up the narrations and sayings handed down by the prevailing tradition
-The apostles illustrated the truth of the faith they were preaching by describing the events in the life of Jesus. Their sermons are what caused the descriptions to be written down. The sayings of Jesus were transmitted, in particular, in the teaching of the catechism of the early Church.”
-the Second Vatican Council was able to declare of the latter that the books which compose it “contain material which is imperfect and obsolete”, but it has not expressed the same reservations about the Gospels.
-It is quite clear that we are here faced with contradictory statements: the declaration of the Council on the one hand, and more recently adopted attitudes on the other.
-“Our Holy Mother, the Church, has firmly maintained and still maintains with the greatest constancy, that these four Gospels, which it unhesitatingly confirms are historically authentic, faithfully transmit what Jesus, Son Of God, actually did and taught during his life among men for their eternal salvation until the day when He was taken up into the heavens. The sacred authors therefore composed the four Gospels in such a way as to always give us true and frank information on the life of Jesus”.
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Why did Clements of Roman quote the gospels multiple times in letter to the Romans as being accepted scripture in 97 AD, if they were not mentioned until 140 AD? Sorry, but your mistaken in your statements.
There is some evidence that would move them closer to the time of Jesus, but I have never heard anyone suggest that they are later. Perhaps there is a bit of wiggle room for John, but not the other ones.
You say the gospels were written later? Well, let’s talk about why you believe this is so, because I’m not aware of any evidence for that at all
Furthermore, as you are most probably aware, the Council of Nicea in 325 was a “culling” process whereby all but one of the many disparate Christian sects were deemed heretical by Emperor Constantine and the prevailing sect in the Western Roman Empire is the one that holds sway today (notwithstanding that it too has split into many different factions).
Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? Matthew
What sort of person was Matthew?
-“Matthew alias, Levi, was a customs officer employed at the tollgate or customs house at Capharnaum when Jesus called him to be one of His disciples.” This is the opinion of the Fathers of the Church, Origen, Jerome and Epiphanies. This opinion is no longer held today. One point which is uncontested is that the author is writing “for people who speak Greek, but nevertheless know Jewish customs and the Aramaic language.”
-Everyone agrees in thinking that Matthew wrote his Gospel using the same sources as Mark and Luke. His narration is, as we shall see, different on several essential points. In spite of this, Matthew borrowed heavily from Mark’s Gospel although the latter was not one of Jesus’s disciples (O. Culmann).
-Jesus addresses His teachings first and foremost to His own people. This is how He speaks to the twelve Apostles “go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans[27] but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 10, 5-6). “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. (Matthew 15, 24). At the end of his Gospel, in second place, Matthew extends the apostolic mission of Jesus’s first disciples to all nations. He makes Jesus give the following order. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28, 19), but the primary destination must be the ‘house of Israel’. A. Tricot says of this Gospel, “Beneath its Greek garb, the flesh and bones of this book are Jewish, and so is its spirit; it has a Jewish feel and bears its distinctive signs”.
-Matthew takes very serious liberties with the text. We shall see this when we discuss the Old Testament in relation to the genealogy of Jesus which is placed at the beginning of his Gospel. He inserts into his book descriptions which are quite literally incredible. This is the adjective used in the work mentioned above by Father Kannengiesser referring to an episode in the Resurrection. the episode of the guard. He points out the improbability of the story referring to military guards at the tomb, “these Gentile soldiers” who “report, not to their hierarchical superiors, but to the high priests who pay them to tell lies”.
-Matthew relates in his narration the events accompanying the death of Jesus. They are another example of his imagination. “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised))
-This passage from Matthew (27, 51-53) has no corresponding passage in the other Gospels. It is difficult to see how the bodies of the saints in question could have raised from the dead at the time of Jesus’s death.
The most notable improbability is perhaps to be found in Matthew. It is the most difficult to rationalize of all that the Gospel authors claim Jesus said. He relates in chapter 12, 38-40 the episode concerning Jonah’s sign:
-Jesus therefore proclaims that he will stay in the earth three days and three nights. So Matthew, along with Luke and Mark, place the death and burial of Jesus on the eve of the Sabbath. This, of course, makes the time spent in the earth three days (treis êmeras in the Greek text), but this period can only include two and not three nights (treis nuktas in the Greek text[30]).
Gospel commentators frequently ignore this episode. Father Roguet nevertheless points out this improbability when he notes that Jesus “only stayed in the tomb” three days (one of them complete) and two nights. He adds however that “it is a set expression and really means three days”. It is disturbing to see commentators reduced to using arguments that do not contain any positive meaning. It would be much more satisfying intellectually to say that a gross error such as this was the result of a scribe’s mistake!
Apart from these improbabilities, what mostly distinguishes Matthew’s Gospel is that it is the work of a Judeo-Christian community in the process of breaking away from Judaism while remaining in line with the Old Testament. From the point of view of Judeo-Christian history it is very important.
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? Mark
This is the shortest of the four Gospels. It is also the oldest, but in spite of this it is not a Book written by an apostle. At best it was written by an apostle’s disciple. O. Culmann has written that he does not consider Mark to be a disciple of Jesus.
The paucity of information on this point has led commentators to dwell on details that seem rather extravagant: using the pretext, for example, that Mark was the only evangelist to relate in his description of the Passion the story of the young man who had nothing but a linen cloth about his body and, when seized, left the linen cloth and ran away naked (Mark 14, 51-52), they conclude that the young man must have been Mark, “
-O. Culmann considers that “many turns of phrase corroborate the hypothesis that the author was of Jewish origin,” but the presence of Latin expressions might suggest that he had written his Gospel in Rome
-The text itself unquestionably reveals a major flaw. it is written with a total disregard to chronology. Mark therefore places, at the beginning of his narration (1, 16-20), the episode of the four fishermen whom Jesus leads to follow him by simply saying “I will make you become fishers of men”, though they do not even know Him. The evangelist shows, among other things, a complete lack of plausibility.
-As Father Roguet has said, Mark is ‘a clumsy writer’, ‘the weakest of all the evangelists’; he hardly knows how to write a narrative. The commentator reinforces his observation by quoting a passage about how the twelve Apostles were selected. Here is the literal translation:
“And he went up into the hills, and called to him those whom he desired; and they came to him. And he made that the twelve were to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons; and he made the twelve and imposed the name Simon on Peter” (Mark, 3, 13-16).
He contradicts Matthew and Luke, as has already been noted above, with regard to thesign of Jonah. On the subject of signs given by Jesus to men in the course of His mission Mark (8, 11-13) describes an episode that is hardly credible:
“The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven, to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and said, ‘Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation.’ And he left them, and getting into the boat again he departed to the other side.”
There can be no doubt that this is an affirmation coming from Jesus Himself about his intention not to commit any act which might appear supernatural. Therefore the commentators of the Ecumenical Translation, who are surprised that Luke says Jesus will only give one sign (the sign of Jonah; see Matthew’s Gospel) , consider it ‘paradoxical’ that Mark should say “no sign shall be given to this generation” seeing, as they note, the “miracles that Jesus himself gives as a sign” (Luke 7,22 and 11,20). Mark’s Gospel as a whole is officially recognised as being canonic. All the same, the final section of Mark’s Gospel (16,1920) is considered by modem authors to have been tacked on to the basic work: the Ecumenical Translation is quite explicit about this.
This final section is not contained in the two oldest complete manuscripts of the Gospels, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus that date from the Fourth century A.D.
Father Kannengiesser makes the following comments on the ending. “The last verses must have been suppressed when his work was officially received (or the popular version of it) in the community that guaranteed its validity Neither Matthew, Luke or a fortiori John saw the missing section.
Nevertheless, the gap was unacceptable. A long time afterwards, when the writings of Matthew, Luke and John, all of them similar, had been in circulation, a worthy ending to Mark was composed. Its elements were taken from sources throughout the other Gospels. It would be easy to recognize the pieces of the puzzle by enumerating Mark (16,9-20). One would gain a more concrete idea of the free way in which the literary genre of the evangelic narration was handled until the beginnings of the Second century A.D.” What a blunt admission is provided for us here, in the thoughts of a great theologian, that human manipulation exists in the texts of the Scriptures!
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? Luke
For O. Culmann, Luke is a ‘chronicler’, and for Father Kannengiesser he is a ‘true novelist’. In his prologue to Theophilus, Luke warns us that he, in his turn, following on from others who have written accounts concerning Jesus, is going to write a narrative of the same facts using the accounts and information of eye witnesses implying that he himself is not one-including information from the apostles’ preachings.
-From the very first line one can see all that separates Luke from the ‘scribbler’ Mark to whose work we have just referred. Luke’s Gospel is incontestably a literary work written in classical Greek free from any barbarisms. Luke was a cultivated Gentile convert to Christianity. His attitude towards the Jews is immediately apparent. As O. Culmann points out, Luke leaves out Mark’s most Judaic verses and highlights the Jews’ incredulity at Jesus’s words, throwing into relief his good relations with the Samaritans, whom the Jews detested. Matthew, on the other hand, has Jesus ask the apostles to flee from them. This is just one of many striking examples of the fact that the evangelists make Jesus say whatever suits their own personal outlook. They probably do so with sincere conviction. They give us the version of Jesus’s words that is adapted to the point of view of their own community.
Who was Luke? An attempt has been made to identify him with the physician of the same name referred to by Paul in several of his letters. The Ecumenical Translation notes that “several commentators have found the medical occupation of the author of this Gospel confirmed by the precision with which he describes the sick”. This assessment is in fact exaggerated out of all proportion. Luke does not properly speaking ‘describe’ things of this kind; “the vocabulary he uses is that of a cultivated man of his time”. There was a Luke who was Paul’s travelling companion, but was he the same person? O. Culmann thinks he was.
The date of Luke’s Gospel can be estimated according to several factors: Luke used Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels. From what we read in the Ecumenical Translation, it seems that he witnessed the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus’s armies in 70 A.D. The Gospel probably dates from after this time. Present-day critics situate the time it was written at .circa 80-90 A.D., but several place it at an even earlier date.
The various narrations in Luke show important differences when compared to his predecessors. An outline of this has already been given. The Ecumenical Translation indicates them on pages 181 et sec. O. Culmann, in his book, The New Testament (Le Nouveau Testament) page 18, cites descriptions in Luke’s Gospel that are not to be found anywhere else. And they are not about minor points of detail.
The descriptions of Jesus’s childhood are unique to Luke’s Gospel. Matthew describes Jesus’s childhood differently from Luke, and Mark does not mention it at all.
Matthew and Luke both provide different genealogies of Jesus: the contradictions are so large and the improbabilities so great, from a scientific point of view, that a special chapter of this book has been devoted to the subject. It is possible to explain why Matthew, who was addressing himself to Jews, should begin the genealogy at Abraham, and include David in it, and that Luke, as a converted Gentile, should want to go back even farther. We shall see however that the two genealogies contradict each other from David onwards.
Jesus’s mission is described differently on many points by Luke, Matthew and Mark. An event of such great importance to Christians as the institution of the Eucharist gives rise to variations between Luke and the other two evangelists.[31] Father Roguet notes in his book Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à l’Evangile) page 75, that the words used to institute the Eucharist are reported by Luke (22,19-24) in a form very different from the wording in Matthew (26,26-29) and in Mark (14,22-24) which is almost identical. “On the contrary” he writes, “the wording transmitted by Luke is very similar to that evoked by Saint Paul” (First Letter to the Corinthians, 11,23-25) .
As we have seen, in his Gospel, Luke expresses ideas on the subject of Jesus’s Ascension which contradict what he says in the Acts of the Apostles. He is recognized as their authorand they form an integral part of the New Testament. In his Gospel he situates theAscension on Easter Day, and in the Acts forty days later. We already know to what strange commentaries this contradiction has led Christian experts in exegesis.
Answers
The unknown author of Luke clearly used Matthew, he even quotes some large sections of it. Matthew rewrote Mark, but occasionally copying small sections of Mark. So Matthew is NOT an eye witness account, and Mark is fiction based on the Old Testament. Which makes Luke (and Matthew) ultimately based on a work of fiction.
As to being a witness to the fall of Jerusalem, the author of Luke may have used an eyewitness account. Acts, by the same author, clearly shows familiarity with Antiquities by Josephus, which puts Acts after 95 AD, and suggests Luke used the Jewish War by the same author for his account of the fall of Jerusalem. This dates Luke to 75 AD or later.
As Mark was also written after the fall of Jerusalem, this gives us tentative dates for Mark ca 75 AD, Matthew ca 80-90 AD, with Luke 85-95 AD.
Who was the author?
This is a highly debated question and extremely varying opinions have been expressed on this subject.A. Tricot and Father Roguet belong to a camp that does not have the slightest misgivings: John’s Gospel is the work of an eyewitness, its author is John, son of Zebedee and brother of James. Many details are known about this apostle and are set out in works for mass publication. Popular iconography puts him near Jesus, as in the Last Supper prior to the Passion.
Father Kannengiesser, in his study on the Resurrection, arrives at the conclusion that none of the New Testament authors, save Paul, can claim to have been eyewitnesses toJesus’s Resurrection. John nevertheless related the appearance to a number of the assembled apostles, of which he was probably a member, in the absence of Thomas (20,19-24), then eight days later to the full group of apostles (20,25-29).
The Ecumenical Translation of the Bible states that the majority of critics do not accept the hypothesis that the Gospel was written by John.
But Why this suspicion as the Gospel of John is written in Greek language with refined style and committed to the rules of the Greek language and all the critics agreed their eloquence, while it is not available to John the Apostle fisherman described in Acts of the Apostles that he had little knowledge
Everything points however towards the fact that the text we know today hadseveral authors: “It is probable that the Gospel as it stands today was put into circulation by the author’s disciples who added chapter 21 and very likely several annotations (i.e. 4,2 and perhaps 4,1; 4,44; 7,37b; 11,2; 19,35). With regard to the story of the adulterous woman (7,53-8,11), everyone agrees that it is a fragment of unknown origin inserted later (but nevertheless belonging to canonic Scripture)”. Passage 19,35 appears as a ‘signature’ of an ‘eyewitness’ (O. Culmann), the only explicit signature in the whole of John’s Gospel; but commentators believe that it was probably added later.
It is not necessary to mention all the hypotheses suggested by experts in exegesis. The remarks recorded here made by the most eminent Christian writers on the questions of theauthorship of the fourth Gospel are sufficient to show the extent of the confusion reigning on the subject of its authorship.
It is of course quite conceivable that John, who was writing after the other evangelists, should have chosen certain stories suitable for illustrating his own theories. One should not be surprised by the fact that certain descriptions contained in the other Gospels are missing in John. The Ecumenical Translation picks out a certain number of such instances (page 282). Certain gaps hardly seem credible however, like the fact that the Institution of the Eucharist is not described. It is unthinkable that an episode so basic to Christianity, one indeed that was to be the mainstay of its liturgy, i.e. the mass, should not be mentioned by John, the most pre-eminently meditative evangelist. The fact is, he limits himself, in the narrative ofthe supper prior to the Passion, to simply describing the washing of the disciples’ feet, the prediction of Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial.
In contrast to this, there are stories which are unique to John and not present in the other three. The Ecumenical Translation mentions these (page 283). Here again, one could infer that the three authors did not see the importance in these episodes that John saw in them. It is difficult however not to be taken aback when one finds in John a description of the appearance of Jesus raised from the dead to his disciples beside the Sea of Tiberias (John 21,1-14). The description is nothing less than the reproduction (with numerous added details) of the miracle catch of fish which Luke (5,1-11) presents as an episode that occurred during Jesus’s life.
In his description Luke alludes to the presence of the Apostle John who, as tradition has it, was the evangelist, Since this description in John’s Gospel forms part of chapter 21, agreed to be a later addition, one can easily imagine that the reference to John’s name in Luke could have led to its artificial inclusion in the fourth Gospel. The necessity of transforming a description from Jesus’s life to a posthumous description in no way prevented the evangelical text from being manipulated.
– Another important point on which John’s Gospel differs from the other three is in theduration of Jesus’s mission. Mark, Matthew and Luke place it over a period of one year
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? Sources of the gospels
Sources Of The Gospels
The problem of sources was approached in a very simplistic fashion at the time of the Fathers of the Church. In the early centuries of Christianity, the only source available was the Gospel that the complete manuscripts provided first, i.e. Matthew’s Gospel. The problem of sources only concerned Mark and Luke because John constituted a quite separate case. Saint Augustine held that Mark, who appears second in the traditional order of presentation, had been inspired by Matthew and had summarized his work. He further considered that Luke, who comes third in the manuscripts, had used data from both; his prologue suggests this, and has already been discussed.
From the Fathers of the Church until the end of the Eighteenth century A.D., one and a half millenia passed without any new problems being raised on the sources of the evangelists: people continued to follow tradition. It was not until modem times that it was realized, on the basis of these data, how each evangelist had taken material found in the others and compiled his own specific narration guided by his own personal views.
A book by Fathers Benoit and Boismard, both professors at the Biblical School of Jerusalem (1972-1973), called the Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Synopse des quatres Evangiles) stresses the evolution of the text in stages parallel to the evolution of the tradition. This implies the consequences set out by Father Benoit in his introduction to Father Boismard’s part of the work
Some readers of this work will perhaps be surprised or embarrassed to learn that certain of Jesus’s sayings, parables, or predictions of His destiny were not expressed in the way we read them today, but were altered and adapted by those who transmitted them to us. This may come as a source of amazement and even scandal to those not used to this kind of historical investigation.”
The alterations and adaptations to the texts made by those transmitting them to us were done in a way that Father Boismard explains by means of a highly complex diagram. It is a development of the so-called ‘Two Sources Theory’, and is the product of examination and comparison of the texts which it is not possible to summarize here. Those readers who are interested in obtaining further details should consult the original work published by Les Editions du Cerf, Paris.
Four basic documents-A, B, C and Q-represent the original sources of the Gospels (see
general diagram). Page 76.
Document A comes from a Judeo-Christian source. Matthew and Mark were inspired by it.
Document B is a reinterpretation of document A, for use in Pagancum-Christian churches: all the evangelists were inspired by it except Matthew.
Document C inspired Mark, Luke and John.
Document Q constitutes the majority of sources common to Matthew and Luke; it is the , Common Document’ in the ‘Two Sources’ theory referred to earlier.
The results of this scriptural research are of great importance. They show how the Gospel texts not only have a history (to be discussed later) but also a ‘pre-history’, to use Father Boismard’s expression. What is meant is that before the final versions appeared, they underwent alterations at the Intermediate Document stage. Thus it is possible to explain, for example, how a well-known story from Jesus’s life, such as the miracle catch of fish, is shown in Luke to be an event that happened during His life, and in John to be one of His appearances after His Resurrection.
The conclusion to be drawn from the above is that when we read the Gospel, we can no longer be at all sure that we are reading Jesus’s word. Father Benoit addresses himself to the readers of the Gospel by warning them and giving them the following compensation: “If the reader is obliged in more than one case to give up the notion of hearing Jesus’s voicedirectly, he still hears the voice of the Church and he relies upon it as the divinely appointed interpreter of the Master who long ago spoke to us on earth and who now speaks to us in is glory”.
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One would be mistaken in thinking that once the Gospels were written they constituted The basic Scriptures of the newly born Christianity and that people referred to them the same way they referred to the Old Testament. At that time, the foremost authority was the oral tradition as a vehicle for Jesus’s words and the teachings of the apostles. The first writings to circulate were Paul’s letters and they occupied a prevalent position long before the Gospels.
They were, after all, written several decades earlier. It has already been shown, that contrary to what certain commentators are still writing today, before 140 A.D. there was no witness to the knowledge that a collection of Gospel writings existed. It was not until circa 170 A.D. that the four Gospels acquired the status of canonic literature
In the early days of Christianity, many writings on Jesus were in circulation. They were not subsequently retained as being worthy of authenticity and the Church ordered them to be hidden, hence their name ‘Apocrypha’. Some of the texts of these works have been well reserved because they “benefited from the fact that they were generally valued”, to quote the Ecumenical Translation. The same was true for the Letter of Barnabas, but unfortunately others were “more brutally thrust aside” and only fragments of them remain.
They were considered to be the messengers of error and were removed from the sight of the faithful. Works such as the Gospels of the Nazarenes, the Gospels of the Hebrews and the Gospels of the Egyptians, known through quotations taken from the Fathers of the Church, were nevertheless fairly closely related to the canonic Gospels. The same holds good for Thomas’s Gospel and Barnabas’s Gospel.
Some of these apocryphal writings contain imaginary details, the product of popular fantasy. Authors of works on the Apocrypha also quote with obvious satisfaction passages which are literally ridiculous. Passages such as these are however to be found in all the Gospels. One has only to think of the imaginary description of events that Matthew claims took place at Jesus’s death. It is possible to find passages lacking seriousness in all the early writings of Christianity: One must be honest enough to admit this.
The abundance of literature concerning Jesus led the Church to make certain excisions while the latter was in the process of becoming organized. Perhaps a hundred Gospels were suppressed. Only four were retained and put on the official list of neo-Testament writings making up what is called the ‘Canon’.
The official list nevertheless varies with time during the first centuries of Christianity. For a while, works that were later considered not to bevalid (i.e. Apocrypha) figured in it, while other works contained in today’s New Testament Canon were excluded from it at this time. These hesitations lasted until the Councils ofHippo Regius in 393 and Carthage in 397. The four Gospels always figured in it however.
One might reply that other texts may be used for comparison, but how does one choose between variations that change the meaning? It is a well known fact that a very old scribe’scorrection can lead to the definitive reproduction of the corrected text. We shall see furtheron how a single word in a passage from John concerning the Paraclete radically alters its meaning and completely changes its sense when viewed from a theological point of view.
The scribes of some manuscripts sometimes took exceedingly great liberties with the texts. This is the case of one of the most venerable manuscripts after the two referred to above, the Sixth century Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. The scribe probably noticed the difference between Luke’s and Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, so he put Matthew’s genealogyinto his copy of Luke, but as the second contained fewer names than the first, he padded itout with extra names (without balancing them up).
Is it possible to say that the Latintranslations, such as Saint Jerome’s Sixth century Vulgate, or older translations (Vetus Itala),or Syriac and Coptic translations are any more faithful than the basic Greek manuscripts?They might have been made from manuscripts older than the ones referred to above and subsequently lost to the present day. We just do not know.
Answers
Whatever the case may be, we know that it was one of the primary sources of readings during the early christian churches because Origen started to discuss some of the controversies with it in 223 AD and its complete destruction was finally ordered by Athanasius in 367 AD.
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ?GENEALOGY OF JESUS
GENEALOGY OF JESUS
1. The Period from Adam to Abraham
Matthew began his genealogy with Abraham so we are not concerned with his text here. Luke alone provides information on Abraham’s ancestors going back to Adam: 20 names, 19 of which are to be found in Genesis (chapters 4, 5 and 11), as has already been stated.
Is it possible to believe that only 19 or 20 generations of human beings existed before Abraham? The problem has been examined in the discussion of the Old Testament. If one looks at the table of Adam’s descendants, based on Genesis and giving figures for the time element contained in the Biblical text, one can see that roughly nineteen centuries passed between man’s appearance on earth and the birth of Abraham. Today it is estimated that Abraham Was alive in circa 1850 B.C. and it has been deduced from this that the information provided by the Old Testament places man’s appearance on earth at roughly thirty-eight centuries B.C. Luke was obviously guided by these data for his Gospel. He expresses a blatant untruth for having copied them down and we have already seen the decisive historical arguments leading to this statement.
The idea that Old Testament data are unacceptable in the present day is duly admitted; they belong to the ‘obsolete’ material referred to by the Second Vatican Council. The fact, however that the Gospels take up the same scientifically incompatible data is an extremely serious observation which may be used to oppose those who defend the historical accuracy of the Gospel texts.
Commentators have quickly sensed this danger. They try to get round the difficulty by saying that it is not a complete genealogical tree, that the evangelist has missed names out. They claim that this was done quite deliberately, and that his sole “intention was to establish the broad lines or essential elements of a line of descent based on historical reality.”[35] There is nothing in the texts that permits them to form this hypothesis
2. The Period from Abraham to David.
Here the two genealogies tally (or almost), excepting one or two names: the difference may be explained by copiers’ errors. Does this mean that the evangelists are to be considered accurate? History situates David at circa 1000 B.C. and Abraham at 1800-1860 B.C.: 14 to 16 generations for roughly eight centuries. Can one believe this? One might say that for thisperiod the Gospel texts are at the very limit of the admissible.
3. The Post-David Period.
It is a great pity, but unfortunately the texts no longer tally at all when it comes to establishing Joseph’s line from David, and figuratively speaking, Jesus’s, for the Gospel. Leaving aside the obvious falsification in the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis concerning Luke, let us now compare what the two most venerable manuscripts have to offer: the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. In the genealogy according to Luke 42 names are placed after David (No. 35) down to Jesus (No. 77). In the genealogy according to Matthew 27 are mentioned after David (No. 14) down to Jesus (No. 41). The number of (fictitious) ancestors given to Jesus after David is therefore different in the two Gospels. The names themselves are different as well.
This is not all.
Matthew tells us that he discovered how Jesus’s genealogy split up after Abraham into three groups of 14 names; first group from Abraham to David; second from David to the deportation to Babylon; third from the deportation to Jesus. His text does indeed contain 14 names in the first two groups, but in the third-from the deportation to Jesus-there are only 13 and not 14, as expected; the table shows that Shealthiel is No. 29 and Jesus No. 41. There is no variation of Matthew that gives 14 names for this group.
What is surprising is not so much the existence of the omission itself (explained perhaps by a very old scribe’s error that was subsequently perpetuated), but the almost total silence of commentators on this subject. How can one miss this omission? W. Trilling breaks this pious conspiracy of silence
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Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? Descriptions Of The Passion?
Father Roguet himself notes that Passover is placed at different times in relation to Jesus’sLast Supper with His disciples in theSynoptic Gospels and John’sGospel.John places the Last Supper ‘before thePassover celebrations’and the other three evangelists place it during the celebrations themselves.Obvious improbabilities emerge from this divergence:a certain episode becomes impossible because of theposition of Passover in relation toit.When one knows theimportance it had in the Jewish liturgy and the importance of the meal where Jesus bids farewell to his disciples,how is it possible to believe that the memory of one event in relation to the other could have faded to such an extent in the tradition recorded later by the evangelists
On a more general level,the descriptions of the Passion differ from one evangelist to another,and more particularly between John and the first three Gospels.The Last Supper and the Passion in John’s Gospel are both very long,twice as long as in Mark and Luke,and roughly one and a half times as long as Matthew’s text.John records a very long speech of Jesus to His disciples which takes up four chapters(14 to17)of hisGospel.During this crowning speech,Jesus announces that He will leave His last instructions and gives them His last spiritual testament.There is no trace of this in the other Gospels.The same process can work the other way however;Matthew,Luke and Mark all relate Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane,but John does not mention it
Answers
The Institution Of The Eucharist.
The most important fact that strikes the reader of the Passion in John’s Gospel is that he makes absolutely no reference to the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper ofJesus with His Apostles. There is not a single Christian who does not know the iconography of the Last Supper, where Jesus is for the last time seated among His Apostles at table. The world’s greatest painters have always represented this final gathering with John sitting near Jesus, John whom we are accustomed to considering as the author of the Gospel bearing that name.
However astonishing it may appear to many , the majority of specialists do not consider John to have been the author of the fourth Gospel, nor does the latter mention the institution of the Eucharist. The consecration of the bread and wine, which become the body and blood of Jesus, is the most essential act of the Christian liturgy. The other evangelists refer to it, even if they do so in differing terms, as we have noted above. John does not say anything about it. The four evangelists’ descriptions have only two single points in common: the prediction of Peter’s denial and of the betrayal by one of the Apostles (Judas Iscariot is only actually named in Matthew and John). John’s description is the only one which refers to Jesus washing his disciples’ feet at the beginning of the meal.
One is surprised therefore both by John’s silence on what the other three evangelists relate and their silence on what, according to John, Jesus is said to have predicted.
The commentators of the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible, New Testament, do actually acknowledge this omission in John’s Gospel. This is the explanation they come up with to account for the fact that the description of the institution of the Eucharist is missing: “In general, John is not very interested in the traditions and institutions of a bygone Israel. This may have dissuaded him from showing the establishment of the Eucharist in the Passover liturgy”. Are we seriously to believe that it was a lack of interest in the Jewish Passover liturgy that led John not to describe the institution of the most fundamental act. in the liturgy of the new religion?
The experts in exegesis are so embarrassed by the problem that theologians rack their brains to find prefigurations or equivalents of the Eucharist in episodes of Jesus’s life
recorded by John. O. Culmann for example, in his book, The New Testament (Le Nouveau Testament), states that “the changing of the water into wine and the feeding of the five thousand prefigure the sacrament of the Last Supper (the ‘Eucharist’)”. It is to be remembered that the water was changed into wine because the latter had failed at a wedding in Cana. (This was Jesus’s first miracle, described by John in chapter 2, 1-12. He is the only evangelist to do so). In the case of the feeding of the five thousand, this was the number of people who were fed on 5 barley loaves that were miraculously multiplied.
When describing these events, John makes no special comment, and the parallel exists only in the mind of this expert in exegesis. One can no more understand the reasoning behind the parallel he draws than his view that the curing of a paralized man and of a man born blind ‘predict the baptism’ and that ‘the water and blood issuing from Jesus’s side after his death unite in a single fact’ a reference to both baptism and the Eucharist.
Another parallel drawn by the same expert in exegesis concerning the Eucharist is quoted by Father Roguet in his book Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à l’Evangile). “Some theologians, such as Oscar Culmann, see in the description of the washing of the feet before the Last Supper a symbolical equivalent to the institution of the Eucharist . It is difficult to see the cogency of all the parallels that commentators have invented tohelp people accept more readily the most disconcerting omission in John’s Gospel
Answers
Keep in mind that ALL scripture without exception, was written by superstitious people and superstition has no rules so is therefore invalid. Anything that can be imagined in your wildest dreams can be included in holy books and claimed to be divinely inspired.
Appearances Of Jesus Raised From The Dead.
A prime example of imagination at work in a description has already been given in the portrayal of the abnormal phenomena said to have accompanied Jesus’s death given in Matthew’s Gospel. The events that followed the Resurrection provided material for contradictory and even absurd descriptions on the part of all the evangelists.
Father Roguet in his Initiation to the Gospel (Initiation à l’Evangile), page 182, provides examples of the confusion, disorder and contradiction reigning in these writings:
“The list of women who came to the tomb is not exactly the same in each of the three Synoptic Gospels. In John only one woman came: Mary Magdalene. She speaks in the plural however, as if she were accompanied: ‘we do not know where they have laid him.’ In Matthew the Angel predicts to the women that they will see Jesus in Galilee. A few moments later however, Jesus joins them beside the tomb. Luke probably sensed this difficulty and altered the source a little. The Angel says: “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee . . .’ In fact, Luke only actually refers to three appearances . . .”-”John places two appearances at an interval of one week in the upper room at Jerusalem and the third beside the lake, in Galilee therefore. Matthew records only one appearance in Galilee.” The commentator excludes from this examination the last section of Mark’s Gospel concerning the appearances because he believes this was ‘probably written by another hand’.
All these facts contradict the mention of Jesus’s appearances, contained in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (15,5-7), to more than five hundred people at once, to James, to all the Apostles and, of course, to Paul himself.
Apart from this, there is a contradiction between Luke’s description, in the Acts of the Apostles, of Jesus’s appearance to Paul and what Paul himself succinctly tells us of it. This has led Father Kannengiesser in his book, Faith in the Resurrection, Resurrection of Faith (Foi en la Resurrection, Resurrection de la Foi), 1974, to stress that Paul, who was ‘the sole eyewitness of Christ’s resurrection, whose voice comes directly to us from his writings[39], never speaks of his personal encounter with Him Who was raised from the dead-‘. . . except for three extremely , ‘he refrains moreover from describing discreet references . . . it.’
The contradiction between Paul, who was the sole eyewitness but is dubious, and the Gospels is quite obvious. O. Culmann in his book, The New Testament (Le Nouveau Testament), notes the contradictions between Luke and Matthew. The first situates Jesus’s appearances in Judea, the second in Galilee
One should also remember the Luke-John contradiction. John (21, 1-14) relates an episode in which Jesus raised from the dead appears to the fishermen beside the Sea of Tiberias; they subsequently catch so many fish that they are unable to bring them all in. This is nothing other than a repetition of the miracle catch of fish episode which took place at the same spot and was also described by Luke (5, 1-11), as an event of Jesus’s life.
When talking of these appearances, Father Roguet assures us in his book that ‘their disjointed, blurred and disordered character inspires confidence’ because all these facts go to show that there was no connivance between the evangelists[40], otherwise they would definitely have coordinated their stories. This is indeed a strange line of argument. In actual fact, they could all have recorded, with complete sincerity, traditions of the communities which (unknown to them) all contained elements of fantasy. This hypothesis in unavoidable when one is faced with so many contradictions and improbabilities in the description of of events.
Answers
We’ll just pick up the honest hearted people after your lot have finished “teaching them”.
JEHOVAH’S WITNESS
I cannot imagine why people assume this is shocking news.
Journey to the bible , findings and queries ? Ascension Of Jesus?
Contradictions are present until the very end of the descriptions because neither John nor Matthew refer to Jesus’s Ascension. Mark and Luke are the only one to speak of it.
For Mark (16, 19), Jesus was ‘taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God’ without any precise date being given in relation to His Resurrection. It must however be noted that the final passage of Mark containing this sentence is, for Father Roguet, an ‘invented’ text, although for the Church it is canonic!
There remains Luke, the only evangelist to provide an undisputed text of the Ascension episode (24, 51): ‘he parted from them[41] and was carried up into heaven’. The evangelist places the event at the end of the description of the Resurrection and appearance to the eleven Apostles: the details of the Gospel description imply that the Ascension took place on the day of the Resurrection. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke (whom everybody believes to be their author) describes in chapter 1, 3 Jesus’s appearance to the Apostles, between the Passion and the Ascension, in the following terms:
“To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God.”
The placing of the Christian festival of the Ascension at forty days after Easter, the Festival of the Resurrection, originates from this passage in the Acts of the Apostles. The date is therefore set in contradiction to Luke’s Gospel: none of the other Gospel texts say anything to justify this in a different way.
The Christian who is aware of this situation is highly disconcerted by the obviousness of the contradiction. The Ecumenical Translation of the Bible, New Testament, acknowledges the facts but does not expand on the contradiction. It limits itself to noting the relevance the forty days may have had to Jesus’s mission.
Commentators wishing to explain everything and reconcile the irreconcilable provide some strange interpretations on this subject.
To those readers who are not quite able to grasp the theological subtlety of his argument (which has absolutely no Scriptural basis whatsoever), the author issues the following general warning, which is a model of apologetical verbiage:
“Here, as in many similar cases, the problem only appears insuperable if one takes Biblical statements literally, and forgets their religious significance. It is not a matter of breaking down the factual reality into a symbolism which is inconsistent, but rather of looking for the theological intentions of those revealing these mysteries to us by providing us with facts we can apprehend with our senses and signs appropriate to our incarnate spirit.”
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John is the only evangelist to report the episode of the last dialogue with the Apostles. It takes place at the end of the Last Supper and before Jesus’s arrest. It ends in a very long speech: four chapters in John’s Gospel (14 to 17) are devoted to this narration which is not mentioned anywhere in the other Gospels
This very touching farewell scene which contains Jesus’s spiritual testament, is entirely absent from Matthew, Mark and Luke. How can the absence of this description be explained? One might ask the following. did the text initially exist in the first three Gospels? Was it subsequently suppressed? Why? It must be stated immediately that no answer can be found; the mystery surrounding this huge gap in the narrations of the first three evangelists remains as obscure as ever.
The text of John’s Gospel is the only one to designate him as Parakletos in Greek, which in English has become ‘Paraclete’. The following are the essential passages:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete.” (14, 15-16)
What does ‘Paraclete’ mean? The present text of John’s Gospel explains its meaning as Follows:
“But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (14,26).
“he will bear witness to me” (15, 26).
“it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you……”(16, 7-8).
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me . . .” (16, 13-14).
On a cursory reading, the text which identifies the Greek word ‘Paraclete’ with the Holy Spirit is unlikely to attract much attention. This is especially true when the subtitles of the text are generally used for translations and the terminology commentators employ in works for mass publication direct the reader towards the meaning in these passages that an exemplary orthodoxy would like them to have.
It is a necessary question because a priori it seems strange to ascribe the last paragraph quoted above to the Holy Spirit: “for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” It seems inconceivable that one could ascribe to the Holy Spirit the ability to speak and declare whatever he hears . . . Logic demands that this question be raised, but to my knowledge, it is not usually the subject of commentaries
-Any serious textual criticism begins with a search for variations. Here it would seem that in all the known manuscripts of John’s Gospel, the only variation likely to change the meaning of the sentence Is in passage 14, 26 of the famous Palimpsest version written in Syriac [44]. Here it is not the Holy Spirit that is mentioned, but quite simply the Spirit. Did the scribe merely miss out a word or, knowing full well that the text he was to copy claimed to make the Holy Spirit hear and speak, did he perhaps lack the audacity to write something that seemed absurd to him?
According to John,
when Jesus says (14, 16): “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete”, what He is saying is that ‘another’ intercessor will be sent to man, as He Himself was at God’s side on man’s behalf during His earthly life.
According to the rules of logic therefore, one is brought to see in John’s Paraclete a human being like Jesus, possessing the faculties of hearing and speech formally implied in John’s Greek text. Jesus therefore predicts that God will later send a human being to Earth to take up the role defined by John, i.e. to be a prophet who hears God’s word and repeats his message to man. This is the logical interpretation of John’s texts arrived at if one attributes to the words their proper meaning.
The presence of the term ‘Holy Spirit’ in today’s text could easily have come from a later addition made quite deliberately. It may have been intended to change the original meaning which predicted the advent of a prophet subsequent to Jesus and was therefore in contradiction with the teachings of the Christian churches at the time of their formation; these teachings maintained that Jesus was the last of the prophets.
Answers
I know the Holy Spirit is real, and not because of any convoluted biblical exegesis. I know because God himself has spoken to me many times.
The word “Paraclete” means “one called along side to help”.
Such a helper is described in Romans 8:26 “The Holy Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf.”
The Helper is the Intercessor., as Jesus Christ is the High Priest of our confession and is also Interceding for us as stated in Heb.7:24-25; Romans 8:34.
John 16:13 “He will not speak on his own initiative but whatever he hears he will speak.”
John 8:26 “The things which I heard from Him these I speak to the world.”
Mat.10:19-20 “But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”
John 16:13 “The Spirit of Truth leads and guides into all Truth.”
1 John 2:27 “The anointing which you received from Him abides in you.
His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie.”
No, “Muhammad In Bible” is NOT “Parakletos”. Jesus was the Paraclete to come and he spoke about himself as if he were “another person” that would come. What he was getting his disciples to understand was that after he would be crucified and resurrected he would not be as he once was before he would die. Which is why Mary did NOT recognize him at the gravesite and the disciples had a hard time believing it was him and not a “phantom” or someone else.
He had to DIE before he could come back as the risen Lord. Once he did do that then he could be with them forever since he would no longer be subject to death. Also, with his immortal body he would be able to enter into the presence of God in Heaven and make “intercession” for them/us.
He apparently could not speak to them clearly about his impending death and resurrection but assured them that they would not be left as “orphans”. The MORTAL Jesus would be no longer and after three days and nights a new IMMORTAL Jesus would resurrect from the grave. For forty days afterwards he “comforted” his little flock and assured them that it was him through “many infallible proofs”. They returned back to Jerusalem greatly ENCOURAGED and waited for the “promise of the Father”.
Jesus was the “Comforter”, the “Paraclete”. No one else could fill or fulfill that role. The “promise of the Father”, about ten days after his being taken up into heaven, was God’s “gift” of “holy spirit” or “power from on high” which would enable the apostles to “speak the word” with AUTHORITY.
Neither Muhammad nor any other man could fit the role or authority of “Paraclete”, except for the risen Jesus himself
You are having difficulty understanding what Jesus meant about the Holy Spirit because it does not appear to have occurred to you that Jesus was speaking of the third Person in the Godhead. Of course, if you are a Muslim, you will be unable to even consider such an idea to be true, any more than you would consider it true that Jesus is the second Person in the Godhead.
You wrote, “it seems strange to ascribe the last paragraph quoted above to the Holy Spirit: “for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” It seems inconceivable that one could ascribe to the Holy Spirit the ability to speak and declare whatever he hears”. That is a classic example of sticking to human logic and disregarding the amazing truths about the Godhead revealed to us in the Scriptures.
But let me appeal to human logic here. Given all the other things Jesus said about the Holy Spirit, it is inconceivable that Muhammad could do all those many things. You quoted Jesus as saying about the Paraclete, “he will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you”. So why did Muhammed only speak 25 verses worth of information about Jesus? There is only a tiny bit about Jesus in the Qur’an. No Muslim can learn anything of any worth about what Jesus told His disciples, just by sticking to what Muhammed said about that! Now, if Muhammed had expounded in detail the teachings of Jesus, you would logically have a case and that would have to be addressed. But given Muhammed’s failure to teach anything more than a few sentences out of Jesus’ entire 3 year ministry, he cannot be that Paraclete.
All moot. You start with an unwarranted assumption that the Gospels are accounts of actual events.
EDIT – And the unwarranted assumption that the Quran is from a divine being.
And like just like a Christian apologist you need paragraphs in an attempt to resolve the vagaries or contradictions of a few lines, at least in your own mind. To those of us on the outside it is obvious that you are desperately looking for a way to preserve your fantasy in the face of the glaring problems that fantasy leads to.
I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you never read the Book of Acts, which follows just a few short pages in the Bible after the passages you were quoting in John’s Gospel “But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name”
Acts 1:5 (Jesus speaking) for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the HOLY SPIRIT NOT MANY DAYS FROM NOW.” (NRSV – emphasis mine)
Acts 2:1-4 (NRSV) The Coming of the Holy Spirit
1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 ALL OF THEM WERE FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT and began to speak in other languages, as the SPIRIT gave them ability. (Emphasis mine)
I do not see how you can for a second imagine that Muhammad was the Paraclete mentioned when the Holy Spirit appeared 700 years earlier.
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