Is the bible a newspaper from the past that just followed jesus?

Newspapers are usually about recent events, written by reporters who have usually been at the scene and/or did some investigating.

The New Testament was written several years later, after the stories had been circulating for a while. How many years later? Depends on whose story you believe.

How do we know it’s true, and is there proof? Again, it’s controversial. We don’t have absolute knowledge that it’s true, just the words shared by people who claimed to be there, or people who knew people who claimed to be there. Are they accurate? Your guess is as good as mine. Some people will see proof because they believe there’s proof to see, whereas others see no proof while looking at the same evidence.

Actually, it follows a buch of other people, too.

Written by fox news.

Most of the Bible dealing with Jesus was written long, long after Jesus (if he existed at all) died. It’s no more newspaper reporting than someone today writing a novel about the Renaissance.

@laureth…I hate to be the cynic but you just also made a very powerful argument about the veracity of modern media.

Modern media is often more about moneymaking than about reporting. (Just sayin’.)

I agree. I was only pointing out that your last two paragraphs could have been taken, verbatim, from damage control memos issued both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

in response to the vicious pharisee media i mentioned above

First of all, you’re only referring to the gospels, which make up about half of the New Testament… which makes up about a 1/7 of the Bible as a whole.

Secondly, scholars generally date the gospels to sometime after 70 A.D. because they seem to refer to an event that happened then—the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. They also clearly were not written by “eyewitnesses” as they refer to scenes in, for example, Pontius Pilate’s bedroom.

Mark is generally considered to be the earliest gospel. Matthew and Luke both contain large portions of the text from Mark’s gospel. In addition, Matthew and Luke contain identical text that is not found in Mark’s gospel—this text is referred to as “Q” by scholars, and is simply all the identical (or very similar) lines found in Matthew and Luke but not Mark.

The long and the short of all this is that Mark, Matthew and Luke were all clearly put together from a number of earlier sources (in Matthew and Luke’s case, one of those sources was Mark). You can read these three gospels side by side, or synoptically, and encounter many of the same verses in the same order. So Mark, Matthew, and Luke are called the “synoptic gospels.”

John is different. It presents a very different picture of Jesus than the synoptic gospels. For example, the synoptics all have Jesus spending significant time battling and casting out demons. There are no demons in John’s gospel. John’s gospel is also much more influenced by gnostic ideas than the synoptics. It also doesn’t contain many similar verses and the “plot” is slightly different. So scholars generally think that John comes from a different tradition than the synoptics.

Now, the names “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John” are all characters in the gospels. But we actually have no idea who the authors of these texts are. The earliest versions of the gospels are unsigned and undated. The idea that the four gospels were written by these four people/characters is a later Christian tradition first put forth in the second century, long after Jesus died and long after the gospels had been circulating. Most scholars doubt that they were actually written by any of these people.

One final point. “History,” as written and practiced in ancient Rome, was very different from the standards of history we have today. For example, the idea of “quoting” people did not exist. Thucydides, possibly the greatest (and most skeptical) historian of the ancient world, made up entire gigantic speeches and attributed them to the leaders he was writing about. Ancient history was also filled with gullible legends. Herodotus routinely reported fantastic events from “eyewitnesses” that were plainly the ancient equivalent of urban legends. Josephus, a Jewish historian contemporary with the gospel-writers, wrote a history of the war between the Jews and the Romans where he reported that a floating army with chariots appeared in the sky, “witnessed by many,” even though it “would seem as a fable.”

The gospels come from this tradition—except that, unlike Josephus, Thucydides, and other “legitimate” ancient histories, they are all unsigned, undated, and redacted by cult followers.

No.

@Qingu
Well composed and helpful Post. +5

@Qingu thanks, I have actually learnt something new today :)

extra question: is there any connection between John the Apostle, John the Evangelist and John of the Apocalypse? 3 different people, right? I’ve never been 100% sure of this.

@Jack79, John the Apostle, according to 2nd-century Christian tradition, is identified with John the Evangelist (i.e. the dude who supposedly “wrote” the gospel). Most scholars think this is bunk. There is a brief passage in the gospel where the author, unnamed, seems to testify as a witness and possibly identify himself as the “apostle who Jesus loved.” Many scholars believe this is one of the few later additions to the gospel texts.

Now, most scholars think the author of the gospel of John is the same as the author of John’s epistles. The style is very similar. It may not have been a single person, though, and some people have proposed a “Johanine school” that composed all of these works.

The author of Revelation is an entirely different matter. He identifies himself in the work as “John of Patmos” (Patmos was an island). There’s nothing in the work itself to indicate that the author considers himself as John the apostle. The style of Revelation is also very different from the style of both the gospel and the epistles of John. So most scholars think the author is unrelated and the name is just a coincidence. I think a lot of Christians agree with this assessment as well, though a brief foray into Wikipedia does say that “Christian tradition” identifies John of Patmos with the apostle John.

TL&DR: In reality, there is probably no connection between these three people/characters. However, the person/people who wrote the gospel of John also probably wrote the epistles of John.

yes, that’s what confused me too, because I thought that at least 2 of them may have been the same person, but the Revelation is so different from the gospels. Thanks.

and yes, I’ve been to Patmos

@Qingu – coming from the Christian tradition, and a Jesuit high school in which we studied the book of Revelation (superficially), I grew up with the understanding that John of the Gospels was later banished to Patmos and was there that he wrote the apocalyptic text as a reaction to the persecution of early Christians.

Not that I am disputing your analysis, just offering a personal testimonial about the inherent misunderstanding.