Resumo de The Truth About The Gospels

There is not the smallest fragment of trustworthy evidenceto show that any of the Gospels were in existence, in their present form,earlier than a hundred years after the time at which Christ is supposed to havedied. Christian scholars, having no reliable means by which to fix the date oftheir composition, assign them to as early an age as their calculations andtheir guesses will allow; but the dates thus arrived at are far removed fromthe age of Christ or his apostles. We are told that Mark was written some timeafter the year 70, Luke about 110, Matthew about 130 and John not earlier than140 A.D. Let me impress upon you that these dates are conjectural, and thatthey are made as early as possible. The first historical mention of the Gospelsof Matthew, Mark and Luke, was made by the Christian Father, St. Irenaeus,about the year 190 A.D. The only earlier mention of any of the Gospels was madeby Theopholis of Antioch, who mentioned the Gospel of John in 180 A.D. There is absolutely nothing to show that these Gospels --the only sources of authority as to the existence of Christ -- were writtenuntil a hundred and fifty years after the events they pretend to describe.Walter R. Cassels, the learned author of "Supernatural Religion," oneof the greatest works ever written on the origins of Christianity, says:"After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on thepoint, we have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels duringthe first century and a half after the death of Christ." How can Gospelswhich were not written until a hundred and fifty years after Christ is supposedto have died, and which do not rest on any trustworthy testimony, have theslightest value as evidence that he really lived? History must be founded upongenuine documents or on living proof. Were a man of to-day to attempt to writethe life of a supposed character of a hundred and fifty years ago, without anyhistorical documents upon which to base his narrative, his work would not be ahistory, it would be a romance. Not a single statement in it could be reliedupon. Christ is supposed to have been a Jew, and his disciples aresaid to have been Jewish fishermen. His language and the language of hisfollowers must, therefore, have been Aramaic -- the popular language of Palestine in that age. Butthe Gospels are written in Greek -- every one of them. Nor were they translatedfrom some other language. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, fourhundred years ago, has maintained that they were originally written in Greek.This proves that they were not written by Christ's disciples, or by any of theearly Christians. Foreign Gospels, written by unknown men, in a foreign tongue,several generations after the death of those who are supposed to have known thefacts -- such is the evidence relied upon to prove that Jesus lived. But while the Gospels were written several generations toolate to be of authority, the original documents, such as they were, were notpreserved. The Gospels that were written in the second century no longer exist.They have been lost or destroyed. The oldest Gospels that we have are supposedto be copies of copies of copies that were made from those Gospels. We do notknow who made these copies; we do not know when they were made; nor do we knowwhether they were honestly made. Between the earliest Gospels and the oldestexisting manuscripts of the New Testament, there is a blank gulf of threehundred years. It is, therefore, impossible to say what the original Gospelscontained.

Resumos Relacionados