Posted on 03/21/2005 6:30:05 PM PST by Invincibly Ignorant
One hallmark of modern-day Christian fundamentalists is their insistence that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are literally true in every detail and a blueprint for legislators. Yet there must be moments when even these zealots notice that the four evangelists often contradict each other on facts and morals. Some may wish it to be otherwise, but the Gospels are quite simply not gospel.
At the other end of the faith spectrum, the evident disharmony between the quartet of accounts is often used to dish the whole idea of a historical Jesus. That, too, misunderstands these ancient texts. They have an undoubted historical worth, but only if you first accept that they are hearsay accounts, written between 20 and 60 years after Christ’s death by individuals who were not among his close associates. There is a core of history in there, but it is buried beneath many other layers — the teachings of figures such as Paul and Peter, polemics against the opponents of the early church, references back to the Hebrew Scriptures inserted to give Jesus a divine seal of approval, and the tinkering of later generations of Christian translators and editors.
Many academics have diligently worked away on the gospels separating the wheat from the chaff, but few can rival Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish studies at Oxford. His background gives him a certain objectivity. As a former Catholic priest who has returned to his Jewish roots, he tends to see the events described without party political bias. He is also a populariser, unafraid to challenge and unwilling to patronise. Over the past four decades, Vermes has been picking away with forensic skill at the Gospels to reveal them in a truer light. In The Passion, he distils that accumulated wisdom into a brief, punchy and thought-provoking account of Jesus’s last hours.
He works his way through his own 13 Stations of the Cross to show that many familiar details of the Good Friday story rest on the say so of only one of the four Gospel writers. The Virgin Mary’s presence at the foot of the Cross, for instance, is only detailed by John. The others have Jesus abandoned by her — hardly the stuff on which to build the cult that now surrounds her in Catholicism. Only Luke has Jesus utter the celebrated words “ Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (often quoted by Christians as evidence that forgiveness is the distinguishing virtue of their faith) and only Matthew dwells on Judas, his receipt of 30 pieces of silver and his subsequent suicide.
Vermes also contrasts what the Gospels tell us with other surviving accounts of the Holy Land in the first century. These cast doubt, for instance, on the annual amnesty that saw Barabbas freed (Vermes shows that a mistranslation has left him in the popular mind a murderous monster rather than a Jewish revolutionary). They paint a different picture of a tough, unpleasant Pilate from the generally non-judgmental account of him in the Gospels. And they contradict the account of the Jewish legal process given by all four Gospel writers.
Here, Vermes’s detective work takes on a bigger context. Did all the Gospel writers distort their account to blame the Jews rather than the Roman colonisers for the death of Jesus? It would seem so. It was therefore arguably these writers who gave rise to 2,000 years of Christian anti-semitism.
The central tension that Vermes highlights is that between history and faith. How can a historical document also be the basis of a religion? The Gospels try to square the circle by both recording events and shaping them to determine readers’ response. While absolute objectivity may be impossible, this biased approach has left them increasingly scorned in our secular age. Which, Vermes states, is a loss.
To get into this beguiling book, you will need first to overlook a rather clumsy play by the publisher for the same audience who saw Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The subtitle of the book and its glossy jacket ape the feel of “book of the film” editions. But once you are inside the pages, you realise it is the polar opposite of Gibson’s muddled literalism and gore. This is subtle, teasing and erudite stuff. It may be ultimately inconclusive, as of course it has to be, but it will give Easter a whole new dimension for all but the most closed of minds.
Tell that to Mamonides and the Kabbalists. So answer me, did God tell you this? Where does this ill-informed revelation come from?
No united Jewish political group appears to have emerged, save for the quixotic and much-disputed Khazars, in the 1900 years hence, until the beginning of the Zionist movement.
Man you're ignorant.
G-d did maintain the Jewish people as a discernible entity,
Thank goodness. They survived people with attitudes such as yours that tried for 2,000 years to snuff them out.
but this need not be attributed to His direct intervention in Jewish medieval history, but to the Wisdom of His Law.
But perhaps I'm wrong about all this.
Perhaps? Lol. I guess.
...and for all those who do not have recourse to thee, especially the enemies of the Church.
Pointing out that three of the gospels do not report her presence is a simple statement of fact.
OTOH, it is my opinion that "Mary the mother of James" is also the mother of Jesus, so that would mean that Mark and Matthew do report her presence there.
Well, you would be in error then.
A Muslim would make the claim that God was behind the rise of Islam, and the success of its rapid spread.
Truth is not determined by the number of people who adhere to a certain set of beliefs.
Truth is determined by military success?
In your opinion, sure.
In this case, that's a matter of faith, isn't it?
His definition, not mine. You can be supercessionist and not anti-semitic. Just because promises made to Israel are claimed by gentile believers doesn't mean you have hatred for Jews. Anymore than disagreeing with a catholic makes me anti-catholic.
You still haven't addressed numberous points I've made on the subject
Name one.
Sure. You keep ignoring me when I ask you if God told you He left the Jewish "picture" (whatever that is) after the 1st century.
We've been over this before. Earlier, you wrote: spoken as the true suppercessionist that you seem to be.
I addressed this above. His definition, not mine. Compared to Catholecism, we don't all have to be on the same page.
If I'm a disengenuous troll you're a disengenuousa------
The Truth is raining in!
Hey we agree on something.
Which is it? First you say he "left the Jewish picture" and know you don't know whether he did or not.
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