How could the authors of Luke, Matthew & Mark so accurately have quoted Jesus?

[Cieza]

How could the authors of Luke, Matthew & Mark so accurately have quoted Jesus? Did Jesus have a transcriber who followed him around every he went with the intent that everything he said would be later written into a book? Or did the authors of Luke, Matthew & Mark make up everything Jesus said merely to suit their personal agendas?

 

[2thePoint]

False dilemma always makes good flame bait: "Unless Jesus had transcribers following him around, the gospel writers must have made everything up to suit personal agendas"--- which ran totally against the grain of their lives. Right.

 

[Annoula]

if you were a follower of a great teacher that you respected so much, you could even give your life for him/her, wouldn't you give attention to his/her words and be able to let others know what this teacher was teaching?

Jesus had a great impact in the lives of his apostles. some died in His name.

 

[salida]

Also, biblical history is the most accurate-

Historical Accuracy
The bible is loaded with historical statements concerning events hundreds of years ago and has not
been proven incorrect in any.
(Bible compared to other ancient documents):
New Testament starts - at 25 years between original and first surviving copies
Homer - starts at 500 years
Demosthenes - at 1400 years
Plato - at 1200 years
Caesar - at 1000 years
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Manuscript Copies-New Testament - 5,686/Homer - 643/Demosthenes - 200/
Plato - 7/Caesar -10

 

[Cieza]

Also, biblical history is the most accurate-

Historical Accuracy
The bible is loaded with historical statements concerning events hundreds of years ago and has not
been proven incorrect in any.
(Bible compared to other ancient documents):
New Testament starts - at 25 years between original and first surviving copies
Homer - starts at 500 years
Demosthenes - at 1400 years
Plato - at 1200 years
Caesar - at 1000 years
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Manuscript Copies-New Testament - 5,686/Homer - 643/Demosthenes - 200/
Plato - 7/Caesar -10

If biblical history is so accurate, then why aren't we taught about it in public schools?

 

[MetanoiaHeart]

What personal agenda do you think they were promoting by making up the gospels?

 

[ExOrienteLux]

What personal agenda do you think they were promoting by making up the gospels?

The one that led them all to die horrible deaths at the hands of the secular authorities.

The reason they were able to accurately quote Christ is because the Evangelists were either members of the Twelve (Ss. Matthew and John) or members of the Seventy (Ss. Luke and Mark).

 

[InSpiritInTruth]

They were able to remember all his words because of the Holy Spirit, just like Jesus said, when He comes, He shall bring all things to rememberance.

 

[AlexBP]

The story of the life of Jesus was transmitted into the gospels by a combination of written and oral sourcing. Exactly what the sources were, we do not know. The probable timeline agreed on by most scholars looks something like this:

30-33 AD: The ministry of Jesus in Galilee and Palestine.

33-40 AD: Formation of the Church, creation of the earliest creeds.

40-60 AD: Paul and James write their epistles.

60-70 AD: Mark's Gospel written.

70-80 AD: Matthew's and Luke's Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles written.

After 80 AD: John's Gospel and latter epistles written.

While we don't know exactly how the information was transmitted, scholars have made informed speculation. There was probably a document called 'Q' bearing the information shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark. In addition, there were probably separate early sources for material included only in Matthew or only in Mark, commonly called 'M' and 'L'. Luke, at the start of his gospel, refers to "many" previous writings about the life of Jesus. While we can't pin exact dates on these, dates of 50-60 AD seem likely.

As for oral transmission, some people used to assume that it was necessarily unreliable. However, anthropologists have studied oral transmission in primitive cultures and they've found that while works don't stay exactly the same word-for-word, the fundamentals of the work don't change in oral transmission. There can be oral transmission of works as long as 100,000 words and they can be transmitted reliably for centuries. Compared to this, the transmission of the gospel material for 20, 30, or even 40 years would not be remarkable at all.

(It is worth nothing that it's utterly remarkable that anyone would write a biography of Jesus a mere 30 or 40 years after his life. In the ancient world, people rarely wrote biographies of a figures until several centuries after the figure's life. Yet obviously historians trust such biographies all the time.)

To read more about what scholars know about the gospels and their creation. I'd suggest the book Lord or Legend: Wrestling with the Jesus Dilemma, by Gregory A. Boyd and Paul Rhodes Eddy.

 

[Cieza]

What personal agenda do you think they were promoting by making up the gospels?

They wanted to see that Christianity succeeded.

 

[Matariki]

They ate a lot of omega three.

 

[2thePoint]

I'm out of town and don't have the ref. material at hand, but from what I've seen the Q hypothesis has been abandoned. The alleged indicators of multiple authors etc. are so sketchy and poorly supported that it is no longer taken seriously.

 

[MetanoiaHeart]

They wanted to see that Christianity succeeded.

You're saying this as if it is a selfish desire, though. They wanted to see that Christianity succeeded as a "personal agenda" which implies for selfish reasons. So what selfish reasons were they motivated by? I ask because many, many of the Apostles were martyred in unimaginably horrible ways. It wasn't like they thought they'd become rich and powerful through spreading the gospel.

 

[Harry3142]

Cieza-

Your OP assumes, as do some christians, that the gospels were written after the lifetime of the witnesses to the actual events. But the evidence tells us that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as Acts, were all completed by 62 A.D.

Here are 2 websites, one which has a translation of The Muratorian Fragment, dated at circa 170 A.D. (this document tells us when the gospels were written). The other gives the arguments from christian scholars for an early dating of the gospels.

www.bible-researcher.com/muratorian.html

www.christiancadre.org/topics/dating_nt.html

 

[CryptoLutheran]

How could the authors of Luke, Matthew & Mark so accurately have quoted Jesus? Did Jesus have a transcriber who followed him around every he went with the intent that everything he said would be later written into a book? Or did the authors of Luke, Matthew & Mark make up everything Jesus said merely to suit their personal agendas?

According to tradition, Matthew originally composed a list of logion (sayings) based on what he had heard Jesus said. It's similar to the modern Q hypothesis that posits a "sayings gospel" that provided a common source of sayings between Matthew and Luke that aren't found in Mark (based on the Markan Priority hypothesis). Which may or may not be accurate, but it does come from some of the earliest tradition of the Church (recorded in the fragments of Papias).

In any event, it's hardly difficult to imagine that plenty of what Jesus said and did was preserved in the minds and words of those who followed Him, and that these were written down or communicated orally in the earliest communities until being written down.

One needn't assume that the Evangelists just made everything up, as it's perfectly legitimate to say that the Evangelists recorded the material they were familiar with based on earlier oral and written sources that reflect the memories (living memories even) of those who experienced Jesus and/or who knew those who knew Jesus.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[AlexBP]

I'm out of town and don't have the ref. material at hand, but from what I've seen the Q hypothesis has been abandoned. The alleged indicators of multiple authors etc. are so sketchy and poorly supported that it is no longer taken seriously.

Everything I've read says that the Q hypothesis is still the majority position among scholars. There are some who reject it, but even among conservatives there are not very many.

 

[LostMarbels]

How could the authors of Luke, Matthew & Mark so accurately have quoted Jesus? Did Jesus have a transcriber who followed him around every he went with the intent that everything he said would be later written into a book? Or did the authors of Luke, Matthew & Mark make up everything Jesus said merely to suit their personal agendas?

Simply putt, you cant answer a person who only asks a question to make a point. Your not looking for an answer. Your looking to discredit. Happy hunting.
.

 

[2thePoint]

Everything I've read says that the Q hypothesis is still the majority position among scholars. There are some who reject it, but even among conservatives there are not very many.

Citation needed, or it's "appeal to popularity". And I don't mean Wiki, infidels dot org, evilbible dot com, etc.

And a "conservative" article for your reading.

 

[Mr Dave]

To add, they came from a culture in which information was often passed orally, due to the rate of illiteracy and cost of writing tools. Don't underestimate the ability of the people at the time to recall and hold vast amounts of information in their heads and to then be able to accurately quote someone without having written it all down first.

 

[golgotha61]

In the case of Luke, the first four verses of his gospel give the general sources of his writings (eyewitnesses and ministers of the word) and the fact that he investigated the accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. He was an author who sought the truth of these accounts by seeking out the sources to verify the accuracy and then write the events down in an orderly fashion for Theophilus.

As for the remaining gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, and John, I believe John 14:26 and 16:14 give testimony to the fact that the Holy Spirit brought to remembrance the words of Jesus and also the Holy Spirit made sure the gospels were without error.