Are the Gospels reliable?

Quote: FrGamble

I think your information about the language people spoke at the time is wrong?

What language did Jesus and his disciples
speak?

"Aramaic
Language of Jesus. It is generally agreed by historians that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic (Jewish Palestinian Aramaic), the common language of Judea in the first century AD, most likely a Galilean dialect distinguishable from that of Jerusalem."

Your own pope:

"Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told the pope, through an interpreter. "Aramaic," the pontiff immediately corrected. "He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," offered Netanyahu.

Quote:

I think this will give us a better foundation to determine if eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels

Seriously? There is a ton, and I mean a
ton, written on this that agrees there
are no eyewitness accounts. Why are
you beating this dead horse.

Hearsay Accounts are Not Eyewitness Accounts

The first major problem for Literalist Christians is that they have no way of authenticating any of the gospels. One reason for this is that no one knows who actually wrote them. While they were eventually attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John decades or centuries after they were written, educated Literalists admit that all four were, in fact, originally written anonymously.

The startling fact is that none of our canonical gospels identify their respective authors (the "titles" of the "books" in our Bibles were added by editors long after the "books" themselves were written). In fact, the idea that the Gospels even represent eyewitness accounts arose decades, if not centuries, after they were written, when some later Christians in other countries came to view them as “memoirs of the apostles.” The gospels themselves don't claim to be eyewitness accounts or memoirs at all.

The simple truth is that there is no verifiable basis for the historical claim that the gospels preserve reliable, eyewitness testimony about the events of Jesus' life. In fact, when viewed as evidence of the historical events described therein, they are incredibly weak sources--much weaker than one would expect from a "divinely inspired" biography of Christ. They were written anonymously at unknown times in unknown places. They don't identify the sources of their information. They present us with multiple levels of anonymous hearsay. They describe a highly unlikely series of events. They offer contradictory accounts of the events in questions.

Quote: Evenbob

The first major problem for Literalist Christians is ...

Fundamentalists have no problem with what you are listing because they claim the Bible is the inerrant word of God. I guess the scribes sat there with their quills and God told them what to write.

I could lambast these people too but what is the point?

Just to be clear, we all realize that a
Catholic priest is going to school us
on if the gospels are reliable. If
I want to know who makes the best
truck, should I visit the biggest Ford
dealer in town? Gee, what will he say.

Of course a priest will tell us the
gospels are 150% reliable. Shall
we ask my baptist minister bro-in-law
next, who's been preaching the gospel
for 42 years in his church? Gee, what
will he say.

Only an unbiased 3rd party historian
can judge the gospels, and they have.
Guess what they say.

Here's 3min of what we're up against:

The good thing about a dialogue is that you don't just have a used car salesman approach. Everyone from me, EB, and Ehrman all have our ideas and thoughts. Sharing and challenging them help us to learn.

Quote: FrGamble

. Everyone from me, EB, and Ehrman all have our ideas and thoughts..

Except Ehrman has decades of
real forensic investigation, he isn't hoping
or guessing or parroting what he's been
told to believe. Like he says, when he
attended Moody, he'd been taught all
his life that the gospels were inerrant,
they were flawless. He came to realize
that was an outright lie, they're loaded to
the brim with every error of every kind.
Totally unreliable as anything but a relic
of the past, a curiosity.

Ehrman seems to have lost his mind after encountering Higher Criticism. I think Fundamentalists should just avoid it.

Quote: odiousgambit

Ehrman seems to have lost his mind after encountering Higher Criticism. .

He WAS higher criticism, then he started studying.
You have to apply early to take his class at
the U of NC, they're always full right away.

Ehrman has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1988, after four years of teaching at Rutgers University. At UNC he has served as both the Director of Graduate Studies and the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He was the recipient of the 2009 J. W. Pope "Spirit of Inquiry" Teaching Award, the 1993 UNC Undergraduate Student Teaching Award, the 1994 Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement, and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Award for excellence in teaching.
Ehrman currently serves as co-editor of the series New Testament Tools, Studies, and Documents (E. J. Brill), co-editor-in-chief for the journal Vigiliae Christianae, and on several other editorial boards for journals and monographs. Ehrman formerly served as President of the Southeast Region of the Society of Biblical Literature, chair of the New Testament textual criticism section of the Society, book review editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, and editor of the monograph series The New Testament in the Greek Fathers (Scholars Press).
He began studying the Bible and the Biblical languages at Moody Bible Institute, where he earned the school's three-year diploma in 1976. He is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, where he received his bachelor's degree. He received his PhD and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He received magna cum laude for both his BA in 1978 and PhD in 1985

Quote: Evenbob

Except Ehrman has decades of
real forensic investigation, he isn't hoping
or guessing or parroting what he's been
told to believe.

I think we want to avoid this type of aggressive unfounded attacks. I'm certainly not guessing nor am I just parroting what I've been told. If you think otherwise maybe you should support it with evidence or reason?

Quote:

Like he says, when he
attended Moody, he'd been taught all
his life that the gospels were inerrant,
they were flawless.

I think inerrant is different than flawless. I have always been taught that the Scriptures may contain historical or scientific error that is not essential to the passing on of inerrant spiritual truths. What this means is that the Bible teaches without error spiritual truths but is not a history or science textbook. It does happen to be the greatest source for history of Ancient Near East and for Judaism at that time, but that was not its purpose.

Quote:

He came to realize
that was an outright lie, they're loaded to
the brim with every error of every kind.

Again this kind of exaggeration and unjustified statement is not helpful to the discussion.

Quote: FrGamble

Again this kind of exaggeration and unjustified statement is not helpful to the discussion.

Wjhaever, dude. You start a thread and your
only contribution to it is to criticize others
who ARE contributing?

Give me some time, it is a weekend you know. Also maybe it was our posting without really thinking things through that led to a better dialogue albeit a little slower.

I can respond that I did think it was a given that Jesus and those at that time spoke Aramaic. However, you seemed to suggest that the people of that time and place didn't speak and know Greek. This is incorrect. They were not Americans who only speak one language. They would have known Greek as well as Aramaic and Hebrew (which is close to Aramaic). This was because Greek was the language of commerce.