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> Curious too when the various disciples lived, wrote. First, you can't just assume that 'the disciples' wrote those text. There is no evidence for that and lo

> Curious too when the various disciples lived, wrote. First, you can't just assume that 'the disciples' wrote those text. There is no evidence for that and lots of evidence against that. Basically no series scholars believe this anymore. These text came into being later without titles. They circulated without titles. Its later church fathers who just assigned names to them based on tradition. John is just to different. Especially in terms of 'Christology', meaning Jesus and his relationship to god. In Mark for example, Jesus basically doesn't say that he is the son of god. Mark Jesus is basically just a middle eastern wizard. In John Jesus is basically fully god doing some performance art in a human body. But many people still believe that John had access to some of the likely earlier gospels (and not necessary just those in the bible). While they are quite different, there is no way they can be fully different. Some apologist want you to believe that John is an independent oral tradition but that is not accepted by most secular scholars.

mrandish 2y ago
> These text came into being later without titles. They circulated without titles. Its later church fathers who just assigned names to them based on tradition. As someone who was raised in the christian faith, learned the sunday school version of the bible and only later seriously studied the texts (first in theological seminary and later from a purely historical perspective after becoming an atheist) - it's remarkable how different the consensus of serious historians is from what most people learned in sunday school. As you've said, we don't even know who wrote the synoptic gospels, where or when (closer than estimated decades). Due to the lack of original documents, reliable contemporaneous accounts and other supporting evidence, we know shockingly little with any certainty. It's extremely unlikely the authors of the gospels were eyewitnesses to any of the events they describe. I was most surprised when I learned from later study just how much the canonical bible I'd learned as a child was retconned hundreds of years later through an opaque process of curation and editing by fractious groups of church leaders at events like the Council of Nicea. > In Mark for example, Jesus basically doesn't say that he is the son of god. Which is why the many inconsistencies in today's canonical new testament are even more remarkable. This is the most consistent version they could assemble from a far larger group of even more divergent, inconsistent texts. Ultimately, the bible we know today is descended from a pastiche of copies of copies, written over decades by unknown authors in different places and languages and then survived several 'negotiated settlements' between opposing factions arguing over arcane theological points under an overarching power dynamic trying to unite some semblance of a unified "church" (and even what we know of these councils is only the sanitized version written by the 'winners'). Applying an adult's experience of how large groups work and how ad hoc organizations adapt orthodoxies over time and distance (ie 'telephone game'), the only way to not see the synoptic gospels as randomized fan fiction largely unrelated to any actual historical events is to believe that god miraculously intervened dozens of times over hundreds of years to force an historically "correct" bible to be the surviving version we know today.
- drekipus 2y ago
  > it's remarkable how different the consensus of serious historians is from what most people learned in sunday school. Well one side is "children, once a week" and the other is "full time commitment in history career". Sunday school is just day care with stories. I once believed that "wet wood burns better than dry wood" because that's what a Sunday school teacher opened with for the story of the altar burning comparison (OT). I'm still "a Christian" in some sense of the word, in that I think humans operate wholly on stories, and that there needs to be a unifying power structure that is ruthless yet humane, and I think some form of Christianity fits the bill. but I believe no one (in most churches) actually knows what they're talking about. "Useful ignorance" useful for the power structure. They don't want historians at Sunday school they want recital.
- zifpanachr23 2y ago
  You may have experienced this due to it being Sunday school designed for children...kinda like Pop sci but pop religion. It's day care mostly and not taught generally be the more knowledgeable people at the church. That's probably not a good thing but it is what it is. Even fairly conservative evangelical churches like the one I grew up in were pretty much totally in alignment with modern scholarship when it comes to topics like the authorship of various New Testament books. If you are into debating the "Q source" or other fun stuff then there is no better place cause most elders would know what you are talking about, whereas this is all a niche topic at best outside of that environment (but thankfully not on HackerNews). Study of ancient languages and strict study of the base texts is kind of a foundational aspect of most serious Protestantism. Basically what I'm getting at is that everything you've written is reasonable, and I don't think it would be remotely out of the ordinary to hear in an adult Sunday school or other sort of adults oriented class (for adults interested in these sorts of things...we usually don't do classes on Sunday lol, that's too long at church for one day). I'm as irritated as you are by the way a lot of the childrens content comes off.

mrandish 2y ago

> These text came into being later without titles. They circulated without titles. Its later church fathers who just assigned names to them based on tradition. As someone who was raised in the christian faith, learned the sunday school version of the bible and only later seriously studied the texts (first in theological seminary and later from a purely historical perspective after becoming an atheist) - it's remarkable how different the consensus of serious historians is from what most people learned in sunday school. As you've said, we don't even know who wrote the synoptic gospels, where or when (closer than estimated decades). Due to the lack of original documents, reliable contemporaneous accounts and other supporting evidence, we know shockingly little with any certainty. It's extremely unlikely the authors of the gospels were eyewitnesses to any of the events they describe. I was most surprised when I learned from later study just how much the canonical bible I'd learned as a child was retconned hundreds of years later through an opaque process of curation and editing by fractious groups of church leaders at events like the Council of Nicea. > In Mark for example, Jesus basically doesn't say that he is the son of god. Which is why the many inconsistencies in today's canonical new testament are even more remarkable. This is the most consistent version they could assemble from a far larger group of even more divergent, inconsistent texts. Ultimately, the bible we know today is descended from a pastiche of copies of copies, written over decades by unknown authors in different places and languages and then survived several 'negotiated settlements' between opposing factions arguing over arcane theological points under an overarching power dynamic trying to unite some semblance of a unified "church" (and even what we know of these councils is only the sanitized version written by the 'winners'). Applying an adult's experience of how large groups work and how ad hoc organizations adapt orthodoxies over time and distance (ie 'telephone game'), the only way to not see the synoptic gospels as randomized fan fiction largely unrelated to any actual historical events is to believe that god miraculously intervened dozens of times over hundreds of years to force an historically "correct" bible to be the surviving version we know today.

drekipus 2y ago
> it's remarkable how different the consensus of serious historians is from what most people learned in sunday school. Well one side is "children, once a week" and the other is "full time commitment in history career". Sunday school is just day care with stories. I once believed that "wet wood burns better than dry wood" because that's what a Sunday school teacher opened with for the story of the altar burning comparison (OT). I'm still "a Christian" in some sense of the word, in that I think humans operate wholly on stories, and that there needs to be a unifying power structure that is ruthless yet humane, and I think some form of Christianity fits the bill. but I believe no one (in most churches) actually knows what they're talking about. "Useful ignorance" useful for the power structure. They don't want historians at Sunday school they want recital.
zifpanachr23 2y ago
You may have experienced this due to it being Sunday school designed for children...kinda like Pop sci but pop religion. It's day care mostly and not taught generally be the more knowledgeable people at the church. That's probably not a good thing but it is what it is. Even fairly conservative evangelical churches like the one I grew up in were pretty much totally in alignment with modern scholarship when it comes to topics like the authorship of various New Testament books. If you are into debating the "Q source" or other fun stuff then there is no better place cause most elders would know what you are talking about, whereas this is all a niche topic at best outside of that environment (but thankfully not on HackerNews). Study of ancient languages and strict study of the base texts is kind of a foundational aspect of most serious Protestantism. Basically what I'm getting at is that everything you've written is reasonable, and I don't think it would be remotely out of the ordinary to hear in an adult Sunday school or other sort of adults oriented class (for adults interested in these sorts of things...we usually don't do classes on Sunday lol, that's too long at church for one day). I'm as irritated as you are by the way a lot of the childrens content comes off.