Originally posted by FabianFnas
Still, it was hearsay, nothing more. And written down 50 years after. Memory has its flaws. Noone can remember word for word what anyone said 50 years earlier. No, it's not the words from Jesus mouth.
Are you sure that the prophecies was correct? Are you sure that Muhammed wasn't the new Jesus? Or is your opinion just the belief of your religion? Note ...[text shortened]...
My question is "Can we really recognize Jesus if he comes? Perhaps he is really here?"
Still, it was hearsay, nothing more. And written down 50 years after. Memory has its flaws. Noone can remember word for word what anyone said 50 years earlier. No, it's not the words from Jesus mouth.
In the time of Jesus, what was of tantamount importance to preserve for posterity's sake were those events and interactions from which lessons could be drawn, and accuracy was highly valued. If you've ever read the Bible you will have noticed that it is written in a sober and responsible fashion, with accurate incidental details, with obvious care and exactitude. Note, the beginning of Luke's gospel reads, "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write in orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."
In the culture of that time, where scrolls of papyrus were rare - education, learning, worship, etc. in religious communities were all conducted by word of mouth. Rabbis became famous for having the entire Old Testament committed to memory. Since Hebrew culture placed such a great emphasis on memorization, it is not unthinkable that the disciples had the capability to commit much more to memory than we find in the entire synoptic account.
Studies have been done of cultures with oral traditions showing that roughly 10-40% of any given retelling of events could vary from one occasion to the next (i.e., what was included, what was left out, what was paraphrased, what was explained, etc.). However, there were always fixed points that were unalterable, and the community had the right to intervene and correct the storyteller if he erred. Christ's ministry ended at roughly 33 A.D. which meant the telling and retelling of the events of his life by eyewitnesses would still have been verifiable by those eyewitnesses by the time the synoptics were actually written. As we'd expect, there are variations between Matthew, Mark and Luke, yet there remains a core of remarkably similar accounts between the three. On most accounts the entries are so similar, in fact, that it has been surmised that the synoptics had been fact-checked against an earlier master copy. At the very least, though, the dissimilarity between the three gospels can be readily attributable to the peculiarities of the oral tradition with its average 10-40% storytelling leeway.
The synoptics were written roughly thirty to fourty years after Jesus' death and resurrection, not fifty years. Indeed, memory is not perfect, but the events in question were related and taught by the disciples themselves, who were the immediate eyewitnesses, learned verbatim during Christ's lifetime, affirmed between the disciples throughout their ministries, and upheld to the accuracy standards of oral tradition until they were ultimately recorded for posterity, after which the synoptic writings were circulated among and continually affirmed by those early Christians who were also eyewitness to the events in question. Again, no record exists of any hostile eyewitnesses taking issue with any of the synoptics, as we might expect were the events mythologized or embellished beyond recognition.
By contrast, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written more than
four hundred years after Alexander's death in 323 B.C., yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy. Legendary material about Alexander did develop over time, but it was only in the centuries after the two earliest biographies were written. Meaning, the first five hundred years of oral tradition kept Alexander's story pretty much intact. Compare this to the gospels which were written a mere thirty years after Jesus Christ walked the earth and the question of whether or not the synoptics are an accurate record of events becomes a non-issue.
A long story short, the events we read about in the synoptics can indeed be trusted as accurate, and the words attributed to Jesus can be accepted as His own, to an unparalleled degree, historically speaking.
Are you sure that the prophecies was correct? Are you sure that Muhammed wasn't the new Jesus?
Let me ask you. Was this particular prophecy fulfilled by Muhammad?
"When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them from one another as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats; and He will cause the sheep to stand at His right hand, but the goats at His left. Then the King will say to those at His right hand, Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world... Then He will say to those at His left hand, Begone from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!... Then they will go away into eternal punishment, but those who are in right standing with God into eternal life."
~ Matthew 25:31-34, 41, 46
__________
I daresay not, considering Muhammad, first of all, did not arrive on the clouds of heaven for the whole world to witness, and secondly, Muhammad came and went from the world scene without judging the living and the dead (i.e., no one was sent to eternal punishment or eternal life during his short stint on planet earth). Case closed, IMO.
When will Jesus come back ?
03 Mar '09 20:36
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