Longfellow
Well-Known Member
What people call “contradictions” between the gospels in sayings and events are only contradictions if you imagine that each saying was said only once and each event happened only once, which seems very unlikely to me.
Contradictions between gospels in sayings and events?
- Thread starter Longfellow
- Start date
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
Even if the mission of Jesus only lasted one year, it seems absurd to me to imagine that he never said the same things twice in different ways, or that he only spoke outside to a large audience once, in all that time.
I don't see 'contradictions' in the Gospels because I regard them not as forensic biography.
I quite agree that Jesus surely repeated Himself. The message, after all, is quite simple.
But the 'contradiction' questions are more involved than that.
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
What else is there in "the Synoptic problem" besides some sayings and some descriptions of happenings partly matching word for word and/or in the same order, and partly not?
What is there in the "The Synoptic Problem"? It's a question in two parts.
The first is what the best resolution to the question of why the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke share so much, and yet differ on so many points.
The second is how to understand the Gospel of John: is it an independent work, reflecting an independent stream of traditions, or is it in conversation with the Synoptics?
D'you know what? I don't think a 'written notes' thesis addresses or even answers the questions. Whether there were written notes taken at the time, accounts written later, written accounts collected from oral traditions, or just oral traditions and no notes at all ... neither of these four routes of material to the Gospels actually sheds any light on the Problem.
What's more, I think the Notes Hypothesis just kicks the can back down the road deeper into unknown history ...
The first is what the best resolution to the question of why the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke share so much, and yet differ on so many points.
The second is how to understand the Gospel of John: is it an independent work, reflecting an independent stream of traditions, or is it in conversation with the Synoptics?
D'you know what? I don't think a 'written notes' thesis addresses or even answers the questions. Whether there were written notes taken at the time, accounts written later, written accounts collected from oral traditions, or just oral traditions and no notes at all ... neither of these four routes of material to the Gospels actually sheds any light on the Problem.
What's more, I think the Notes Hypothesis just kicks the can back down the road deeper into unknown history ...