5 ms·

Based on nothing other than that "people don't really change", I would guess that pretty soon after the death of Jesus, people started misattributing quotes to

Based on nothing other than that "people don't really change", I would guess that pretty soon after the death of Jesus, people started misattributing quotes to him. We have recent, extremely well documented historical figures like MLK, Einstein, and Gandhi, who have quotes commonly misattributed to them all the time, that are easily disproven with a a few minutes of searching. So, you've got an early church with a poor textual record and lots of people either making up quotes or misattributing them to Jesus, and probably kept making up new ones for decades after he died, and probably toward contradictory ends, and people get tired of it and decide to keep a list of accepted quotes from Jesus, so that people would stop making up new ones from that point on (and it doesn't appear to have worked -- the later gospels have additional quotes and stories -- in particular "He who is without sin cast the first stone" seems to have been a later addition.) Then after that, you have this list of canonical quotes going around, and of course people want the context, because you don't necessarily know how to interpret a quote without the context in which it was said, and so you get the gospels of Mark and Luke.

graemep 2y ago
The gospels were written not all that long after Jesus died -within the lifetimes of people who could remember him. > in particular "He who is without sin cast the first stone" seems to have been a later addition.) That is the consensus, but there are people who think otherwise - the alternative theory, which is at least plausible, is that it was offensive at the time to suggest a woman could get away with adultery. > We have recent, extremely well documented historical figures like MLK, Einstein, and Gandhi, who have quotes commonly misattributed to them all the time, that are easily disproven with a a few minutes of searching. One advantage they had over us is that writing and circulating information was an effort - they did not have social media! I would imagine believers would be motivated to be accurate.
- empath75 2y ago
  Not everyone involved in a religion is a believer. A lot of people get involved for their own purposes. But yes, the desire of believers to be accurate is why I'd expect something like Q to be written down eventually. Also, people misattributing quotes to people is not a recent phenomenon. Many commonly misattributed quotes have a long history going back 100s of years or more. It's only the massive amount of information we have about recent historical figures that allows us to definitively say that the misattributed quotes are wrong. If you go back more than a few hundred years, it gets very difficult.
- berkeleynerd 2y ago
  This is not at all the consensus of scholars working at public secular institutions not affiliated with religious institutions of higher learning. A late dating of the formation of the canon is just as viable if not more so among this academic community.
  - hyfbjtdeh 2y ago
    Cui bono? -- in both directions
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  "cast the first stone" -- This was actually a criticism that the law required the accusers to bring the woman AND the man and the eyewitnesses, and the eyewitnesses must cast the first stone. Their absence invalidated the trial.
  - graemep 2y ago
    The full phrase is "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". I do not know how that fits with eyewitnesses. How often would there be eyewitnesses to adultery anyway?
    - ahazred8ta 2y ago
      Deuteronomy: Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness. The hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  > The gospels were written not all that long after Jesus died That highly questionable. Even the very conservative secular scholars don't believe Mark was written before 70 and John before 90. And many secular scholars believe considerably later dates. > One advantage they had over us is that writing and circulating information was an effort - they did not have social media! I would imagine believers would be motivated to be accurate. I'm sorry but that is completely at odds with everything we know from that time. There is rampant falsification, editing and addition in ancient writings. That's why we have lots of letter from Paul, some talking about things that literally didn't even exist when Paul wrote. Thus even conservative scholars don't believe all the letters are written by Paul. We have tons of faked content from back then. The bible (both old and new) is full of it. People back then even the very best ancient historians simply admitted that they made up the speeches of great generals. And there is zero evidence that the gospel were written by series historians or anybody that even attempted that. The idea that we can trust the gospel because writing was effort and nobody would ever put effort into lying is just naive.
  - prewett 2y ago
    Since Mark 13 talks predicts the destruction of the Temple yet has no record of the fulfillment of that prophecy when the Temple was burned and destroyed and Jerusalem razed in 70, which would have been a cataclysmic event for the church, which would have had it's center in Jerusalem. Eusebius notes in his church history that no Christian died, because they left Jerusalem when the Roman army withdrew briefly because of the prophecy. So it's hard to date Mark to after 70, even if you don't believe that Mark was the written account Peter promised in one of his epistles (and presumed to be written by the Mark that acts talks of); Peter's death is usually dated to 64. > [lots of letters from Paul] talk about things that literally didn't even exist when Paul wrote Seems unlikely to me, and I've never heard any reference to them. But do you have any examples? Regarding faked content, making up the speeches of generals, etc: for one thing the Christians viewed these sayings as coming from God, so they had a definite interest in getting them right. One need not quote someone exactly to write something that is accurately reflects what he said. My dad talks about secretaries who CEOs, etc. would just say "answer this letter for me", and they knew exactly how he would respond and could write the letter for him. The apostles were alive for several decades and could correct things. Eusebius cites someone who had learned the faith from someone who was one or two people removed from the apostles, and he went and found the apostle John, and was overjoyed to find that what he had been taught was the same as what John said.
- timeon 2y ago
  > within the lifetimes of people who could remember him. We do not know. We have no records that are contemporary to him (if it was one person or it it was someone at all).
- zifpanachr23 2y ago
  And MLK, Einstein, Gandhi has the enormous advantage of the printing press and widespread access to the tools for writing as well as being in a substantially more literate time. I think it's remarkable how well something from 2000 years ago has held up despite the obvious deficiencies according to modern documentation and preservation standards. You can find far worse examples of ancient texts, they just usually don't generate as much research interest so people mostly don't argue about them publicly.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  If by "not long after" you mean 40 to 80 years.
  - graemep 2y ago
    I specified within lifetimes of people who know him, so 40 would fit that, 80 would be pushing it.
- goatlover 2y ago
  > One advantage they had over us is that writing and circulating information was an effort - they did not have social media! I would imagine believers would be motivated to be accurate. Or they were motivated to present their view of things as seen by the various pseudepigrapha, large number of Gospels by the late 2nd century, disagreements in the community evident in Paul's genuine letters, and theological differences between canonical Gospels, such as what Matthew and Luke left out or changed from Mark. In the 2nd Century, we have Church fathers railing against other Christian communities for heretical writings and teachings. There were Jewish Christians (Ebioinites) who likely saw Paul as a false prophet, There were the various so-called Gnostic communities who thought the were legitimate Christians, and the proto-orthodox. There was also Marcion with his Gospel and followers. Half the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are similar to sayings in the Synoptics, but with a twist. Five of the 12 letters attributed to Paul were likely written later by other authors claiming to be Paul with their own theological views. Luke says things about Paul in Acts that contradict what Paul himself says in his genuine letters.
mrandish 2y ago
> So, you've got an early church with a poor textual record and lots of people either making up quotes or misattributing them to Jesus, and probably kept making up new ones for decades after he died, and probably toward contradictory ends... Indeed, and I'd add the fact that the vast majority of people could neither read nor write so most information was subject to memory creep within each person and telephone game each time it was passed on. Also, very few people spoke more than one language and most people of that time never traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born, yet the earliest surviving documents on which the gospels were based were in other languages and originated in distant lands.
- Fluorescence 2y ago
  I'm not bringing any sources but you may be underestimating some of this: > very few people spoke more than one language I have heard that ancient peoples might have been quite multi-lingual because there was less homogeneity and more linguistic diversity so that e.g. the villages in the next valley over would be speaking something quite different so you couldn't avoid be quite adept. > never traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born Along similar lines, I have heard that with smaller communities, there is more natural drive/incentive to move around to find unreleated partners. I am entertained by the idea that familial conflict is an evolved mechanism to promote the... uh... spread of seed. People in antiquity really motored around way beyond our expectations. These folk would travel for years for education, trade, war, curiosity and pilgrimage. > yet the earliest surviving documents on which the gospels were based were in other languages and originated in distant lands And thus, this becomes more of an example case of historical humanity's multi-lingual peripatetic nature rather than an exception. Sure, there will have been plenty of homebodies but be wary of underestimation. They currently think stone-age folk transported the Stonehenge altar 434 miles from Scotland and hell, I still find it mind-boggling that all sorts of animals from tiny birds to eels travel 1000s of miles each year just for the weather yet I barely leave the house :)
krapp 2y ago
Jesus definitely got the Confucius treatment. There were numerous "Gospels" in the (mostly oral) Christian tradition prior to the canonization of the Bible we now know. Some, like the Gnostic Gospels, Have Jesus teaching things that stray far afield of what would become traditional Christian ideology.
- zifpanachr23 2y ago
  They also stray far afield of what would have been typical of Judaism at the time and in the place where Jesus was practicing (Jesus also was a bit far afield but was more or less reasonably within the tradition of messianism at the time, especially since the Roman conquest. Within Judaism of that time the whole Jesus story or similar isn't all that crazy). Now clearly Jesus was controversial in many ways and maybe not super Orthodox, maybe it has some more Gnostic explanation...but I just find that highly implausible compared to the much more historically plausible story told in the non Gnostic gospels. It's fair to question whether the Gnostic gospels are being faithful to a historical movement or whether they are a form of hellenistic fanfiction for lack of a better way to describe a lot of that content. I think they are interesting...but looking at Judaism of the time and the religion in that area and then landing on "Gnostic Jesus" really seems like a stretch. If anything, I would suspect that somebody like Paul probably played up Jesus' acceptance of some Greco-Roman cultural stuff during his ministry to try and lessen the culture shock. If gnosticism was accepted and taken seriously I really doubt Paul's writing would be what they are. Strategically, putting myself in the shoes of somebody trying to spread the religion of some Jewish guy who maybe got a little liberal with things but was definitely an actual practicing Jew from the Middle East and living in a Jewish culture, the writings we've actually got that are attributed to Paul (as well as the regular gospels) make a lot of sense in the context of the ordinary gospels and new testament canon, and the Gnostic stuff doesn't really make all that much sense. Sure, much could have been suppressed or destroyed. But it would have had to have been a pretty thorough destruction for a hypothetical Gnostic canon to have been coherent enough to be remotely competitive with what wound up winning out. In other words, while the Gnostic texts are indeed very interesting and can be fun reads, and there is some debate to be had over canon (but I think a more productive debate would probably be over something like Enoch), the early church and councils and whatnot probably made the right final decision w.r.t most of the Gnostic texts. That's just my opinion of course. It's always more fun to believe there is a big conspiracy out there trying to supress the true story. But I think a simpler and more realistic explanation is just that the Gnostic texts kinda suck, read a bit like fan fiction by somebody that is culturally disconnected with what they are commenting on, and don't really fit together very coherently and introduce a lot of unnecessary or irrelevant questions. I don't think it's a big mystery why the early church wound up dumping them.

graemep 2y ago

The gospels were written not all that long after Jesus died -within the lifetimes of people who could remember him. > in particular "He who is without sin cast the first stone" seems to have been a later addition.) That is the consensus, but there are people who think otherwise - the alternative theory, which is at least plausible, is that it was offensive at the time to suggest a woman could get away with adultery. > We have recent, extremely well documented historical figures like MLK, Einstein, and Gandhi, who have quotes commonly misattributed to them all the time, that are easily disproven with a a few minutes of searching. One advantage they had over us is that writing and circulating information was an effort - they did not have social media! I would imagine believers would be motivated to be accurate.

empath75 2y ago
Not everyone involved in a religion is a believer. A lot of people get involved for their own purposes. But yes, the desire of believers to be accurate is why I'd expect something like Q to be written down eventually. Also, people misattributing quotes to people is not a recent phenomenon. Many commonly misattributed quotes have a long history going back 100s of years or more. It's only the massive amount of information we have about recent historical figures that allows us to definitively say that the misattributed quotes are wrong. If you go back more than a few hundred years, it gets very difficult.
berkeleynerd 2y ago
This is not at all the consensus of scholars working at public secular institutions not affiliated with religious institutions of higher learning. A late dating of the formation of the canon is just as viable if not more so among this academic community.
- hyfbjtdeh 2y ago
  Cui bono? -- in both directions
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ahazred8ta 2y ago
"cast the first stone" -- This was actually a criticism that the law required the accusers to bring the woman AND the man and the eyewitnesses, and the eyewitnesses must cast the first stone. Their absence invalidated the trial.
- graemep 2y ago
  The full phrase is "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". I do not know how that fits with eyewitnesses. How often would there be eyewitnesses to adultery anyway?
  - ahazred8ta 2y ago
    Deuteronomy: Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness. The hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people.
panick21_ 2y ago
> The gospels were written not all that long after Jesus died That highly questionable. Even the very conservative secular scholars don't believe Mark was written before 70 and John before 90. And many secular scholars believe considerably later dates. > One advantage they had over us is that writing and circulating information was an effort - they did not have social media! I would imagine believers would be motivated to be accurate. I'm sorry but that is completely at odds with everything we know from that time. There is rampant falsification, editing and addition in ancient writings. That's why we have lots of letter from Paul, some talking about things that literally didn't even exist when Paul wrote. Thus even conservative scholars don't believe all the letters are written by Paul. We have tons of faked content from back then. The bible (both old and new) is full of it. People back then even the very best ancient historians simply admitted that they made up the speeches of great generals. And there is zero evidence that the gospel were written by series historians or anybody that even attempted that. The idea that we can trust the gospel because writing was effort and nobody would ever put effort into lying is just naive.
- prewett 2y ago
  Since Mark 13 talks predicts the destruction of the Temple yet has no record of the fulfillment of that prophecy when the Temple was burned and destroyed and Jerusalem razed in 70, which would have been a cataclysmic event for the church, which would have had it's center in Jerusalem. Eusebius notes in his church history that no Christian died, because they left Jerusalem when the Roman army withdrew briefly because of the prophecy. So it's hard to date Mark to after 70, even if you don't believe that Mark was the written account Peter promised in one of his epistles (and presumed to be written by the Mark that acts talks of); Peter's death is usually dated to 64. > [lots of letters from Paul] talk about things that literally didn't even exist when Paul wrote Seems unlikely to me, and I've never heard any reference to them. But do you have any examples? Regarding faked content, making up the speeches of generals, etc: for one thing the Christians viewed these sayings as coming from God, so they had a definite interest in getting them right. One need not quote someone exactly to write something that is accurately reflects what he said. My dad talks about secretaries who CEOs, etc. would just say "answer this letter for me", and they knew exactly how he would respond and could write the letter for him. The apostles were alive for several decades and could correct things. Eusebius cites someone who had learned the faith from someone who was one or two people removed from the apostles, and he went and found the apostle John, and was overjoyed to find that what he had been taught was the same as what John said.
timeon 2y ago
> within the lifetimes of people who could remember him. We do not know. We have no records that are contemporary to him (if it was one person or it it was someone at all).
zifpanachr23 2y ago
And MLK, Einstein, Gandhi has the enormous advantage of the printing press and widespread access to the tools for writing as well as being in a substantially more literate time. I think it's remarkable how well something from 2000 years ago has held up despite the obvious deficiencies according to modern documentation and preservation standards. You can find far worse examples of ancient texts, they just usually don't generate as much research interest so people mostly don't argue about them publicly.
amanaplanacanal 2y ago
If by "not long after" you mean 40 to 80 years.
- graemep 2y ago
  I specified within lifetimes of people who know him, so 40 would fit that, 80 would be pushing it.
goatlover 2y ago
> One advantage they had over us is that writing and circulating information was an effort - they did not have social media! I would imagine believers would be motivated to be accurate. Or they were motivated to present their view of things as seen by the various pseudepigrapha, large number of Gospels by the late 2nd century, disagreements in the community evident in Paul's genuine letters, and theological differences between canonical Gospels, such as what Matthew and Luke left out or changed from Mark. In the 2nd Century, we have Church fathers railing against other Christian communities for heretical writings and teachings. There were Jewish Christians (Ebioinites) who likely saw Paul as a false prophet, There were the various so-called Gnostic communities who thought the were legitimate Christians, and the proto-orthodox. There was also Marcion with his Gospel and followers. Half the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are similar to sayings in the Synoptics, but with a twist. Five of the 12 letters attributed to Paul were likely written later by other authors claiming to be Paul with their own theological views. Luke says things about Paul in Acts that contradict what Paul himself says in his genuine letters.

mrandish 2y ago

> So, you've got an early church with a poor textual record and lots of people either making up quotes or misattributing them to Jesus, and probably kept making up new ones for decades after he died, and probably toward contradictory ends... Indeed, and I'd add the fact that the vast majority of people could neither read nor write so most information was subject to memory creep within each person and telephone game each time it was passed on. Also, very few people spoke more than one language and most people of that time never traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born, yet the earliest surviving documents on which the gospels were based were in other languages and originated in distant lands.

Fluorescence 2y ago
I'm not bringing any sources but you may be underestimating some of this: > very few people spoke more than one language I have heard that ancient peoples might have been quite multi-lingual because there was less homogeneity and more linguistic diversity so that e.g. the villages in the next valley over would be speaking something quite different so you couldn't avoid be quite adept. > never traveled more than 20 miles from where they were born Along similar lines, I have heard that with smaller communities, there is more natural drive/incentive to move around to find unreleated partners. I am entertained by the idea that familial conflict is an evolved mechanism to promote the... uh... spread of seed. People in antiquity really motored around way beyond our expectations. These folk would travel for years for education, trade, war, curiosity and pilgrimage. > yet the earliest surviving documents on which the gospels were based were in other languages and originated in distant lands And thus, this becomes more of an example case of historical humanity's multi-lingual peripatetic nature rather than an exception. Sure, there will have been plenty of homebodies but be wary of underestimation. They currently think stone-age folk transported the Stonehenge altar 434 miles from Scotland and hell, I still find it mind-boggling that all sorts of animals from tiny birds to eels travel 1000s of miles each year just for the weather yet I barely leave the house :)

krapp 2y ago

Jesus definitely got the Confucius treatment. There were numerous "Gospels" in the (mostly oral) Christian tradition prior to the canonization of the Bible we now know. Some, like the Gnostic Gospels, Have Jesus teaching things that stray far afield of what would become traditional Christian ideology.

zifpanachr23 2y ago
They also stray far afield of what would have been typical of Judaism at the time and in the place where Jesus was practicing (Jesus also was a bit far afield but was more or less reasonably within the tradition of messianism at the time, especially since the Roman conquest. Within Judaism of that time the whole Jesus story or similar isn't all that crazy). Now clearly Jesus was controversial in many ways and maybe not super Orthodox, maybe it has some more Gnostic explanation...but I just find that highly implausible compared to the much more historically plausible story told in the non Gnostic gospels. It's fair to question whether the Gnostic gospels are being faithful to a historical movement or whether they are a form of hellenistic fanfiction for lack of a better way to describe a lot of that content. I think they are interesting...but looking at Judaism of the time and the religion in that area and then landing on "Gnostic Jesus" really seems like a stretch. If anything, I would suspect that somebody like Paul probably played up Jesus' acceptance of some Greco-Roman cultural stuff during his ministry to try and lessen the culture shock. If gnosticism was accepted and taken seriously I really doubt Paul's writing would be what they are. Strategically, putting myself in the shoes of somebody trying to spread the religion of some Jewish guy who maybe got a little liberal with things but was definitely an actual practicing Jew from the Middle East and living in a Jewish culture, the writings we've actually got that are attributed to Paul (as well as the regular gospels) make a lot of sense in the context of the ordinary gospels and new testament canon, and the Gnostic stuff doesn't really make all that much sense. Sure, much could have been suppressed or destroyed. But it would have had to have been a pretty thorough destruction for a hypothetical Gnostic canon to have been coherent enough to be remotely competitive with what wound up winning out. In other words, while the Gnostic texts are indeed very interesting and can be fun reads, and there is some debate to be had over canon (but I think a more productive debate would probably be over something like Enoch), the early church and councils and whatnot probably made the right final decision w.r.t most of the Gnostic texts. That's just my opinion of course. It's always more fun to believe there is a big conspiracy out there trying to supress the true story. But I think a simpler and more realistic explanation is just that the Gnostic texts kinda suck, read a bit like fan fiction by somebody that is culturally disconnected with what they are commenting on, and don't really fit together very coherently and introduce a lot of unnecessary or irrelevant questions. I don't think it's a big mystery why the early church wound up dumping them.