The Writings?

[enlightenment]

According to what we know, whatever else Jesus was or was not, he apparently wasn't illiterate.

He read the Old Testament, at least in part.

If he could read, then the chances are that could also write.

If he could write, then why wouldn't he contribute to the New Testament directly, leaving it to mere man to record stories and pass them down?

I appreciate that he would have been engaged in other activities also, however, I still feel that some time could have been found to perform what I think would have been a fundamental task, especially as he had the capacity to do so, unlike Mohammed, who was said to be illiterate.

There have been many great men in our time who, despite being in demand, have felt it appropriate to record their remarkable life, in their own words, by their own hand.

I am not so sure about Mohammed, I believe he was illiterate, then perhaps 'made' literate? By 'god'? Would that be about right?

No idea if his words in the Koran are his own in any part at all, or if it is much like the bible, in format, with the key figure not contributing to their own book, as it were.

Less familiar with Islam, but think I got one or two of those things about right...

 

[wil]

Couldn't the same be asked of shakespear? I understand we only have a few signatures and they don't all spell the name the same...

But beyond that....lets go back 2,000 years rather than a few hundred. No indication in the gospels of him writing anything... other than doodling in the sand... it was a time of the spoken word and passing on the stories, he may have memorized what he knew, or needed to know.

Of course we don't have originals of anything....not even Paul's writings, and he did write just a few decades after Jesus....and quite prolifically but none remain. I think our earliest biblical fragment is from around 300....and it is small, not even a whole line, I saw it, I think it was Matthew, part of one line and a little of the one below it...

the Quran was dictated by Mohamed....and its extensive discussion on the old and new testament is a testament to his knowledge and memory even if he couldn't write.

Plato, socrates...

 

[iBrian]

It's a very good question, enlightenment, and one I've asked before as well.

We know from the Gospels that the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels was a literary one, who could read aloud from the temple scrolls.

So if Jesus existed, he could write, so why not write something?

The immediate critical question is whether Jesus existed. If not, problem, solved.

But even if Jesus existed, the next question would be whether it was as the Gospels described, or whether this is a legendary amalgamation of a few real but not well-remembered people historically (as is argued as behind King Arthur).

If Jesus was as the Gospels describe, there is a problem in his not writing anything because we should expect something. But all we have is the apocryphal "letter to Abgarus":
http://www.interfaith.org/christianity/apocrypha-abgarus/

However, someone might counter that creating an abstract library would have been less effective and too fragile a method, and that direct crowd delivery would have been most effective at keeping the message alive.

And I have to concede, there is a good point in that. After all, when I think of Martin Luther King, I can't think of anything specific he's written (though I've read his biography, which included a lot of his own notes). Instead I always think of that well televised speech "I have a dream..."

A message is usually more effective when delivered in person.

 

[wil]

I'm still confused why we are suprised.

We don't have any of the original writings of the bible, not one.

We don't have any originals of shakespear....and he was prolific and only 400 years ago...

 

[Thomas]

If he could write, then why wouldn't he contribute to the New Testament directly, leaving it to mere man to record stories and pass them down?

So that the perennial question remains to be asked: "who do men say that I am?"

I think you're looking at Scripture as history, and the process of writing from a post-modern perspective?

God bless,

Thomas

 

[iBrian]

I'm still confused why we are suprised.

Well, because over a billion people on earth say - in one way or another - say that God took on the forum of man for a lifetime to do some important stuff down here, that we were supposed to learn from, and grow from.

Except aside from speaking to a few incidental crowds near Jordan, He didn't really tell anyone else anything else about it.

So naturally, it may be a bit surprising.

I mean, why couldn't God just create CNN there and then, broadcast it around the world to every living person, and be done with? Instead of relying on bit translations of what other people said he said from a few centuries later as defining the message?

 

[Saltmeister]

If he could write, then why wouldn't he contribute to the New Testament directly, leaving it to mere man to record stories and pass them down?

I think it has to do with the way Second Temple Judaism worked. In Second Temple Judaism you had the written Torah and Oral Torah. The Pharisees weren't in the business of writing down their debates, arguments and speeches, so nor was Jesus.

Several decades later someone said, "hey we've gotta write this stuff down before we forget!!!!"

That's how the Jews got their Talmud and how Christians got their Gospels.

The Temple was the centre of the Jewish world and when that was destroyed, the Jews were picking up the fragments of their tradition. The written Torah was essential, but the Oral Torah was in your head. The guys in Jerusalem would have been the experts on the Oral Torah.

It affected the new Christian faith too because Jesus grew up and taught in that region. Again, the experts on Jesus would have been in the Jerusalem church and that was wiped out too.

Neither the Jews or the followers of Jesus were thinking ahead. Who would have thought of writing it down? Perhaps people thought the holy warriors of Jerusalem would prevail. The Romans would be defeated because God was on their side. But alas, the Romans won and the experts on Judaism and Jesus were killed.

So Jews and Christians spent the next few decades reconstructing, consolidating and preserving whatever knowledge they had left.

Jesus could well have written his stuff down, but it was more important to be out preaching and to reach as many people as possible.

 

[Saltmeister]

I mean, why couldn't God just create CNN there and then, broadcast it around the world to every living person, and be done with? Instead of relying on bit translations of what other people said he said from a few centuries later as defining the message?

That would be cheating. The less God needs to do, the more credit He can claim. God is trying to maximise the ratio between the scale of the impact and the size of the message. It's for the sake of efficiency. Two cents can go a long way.

 

[wil]

God took on the forum of man for a lifetime to do some important stuff down here, that we were supposed to learn from, and grow from.

Interesting typo.

Especially in this thread.

Is G!d involved in the discussion?

Who says G!d hasn't written or inspired many of the words here?

 

[iBrian]

Arf, gfft, hmm...busted!

 

[enlightenment]

I mean, why couldn't God just create CNN there and then, broadcast it around the world to every living person, and be done with? Instead of relying on bit translations of what other people said he said from a few centuries later as defining the message?

In jest you make my point.

People are speaking about Shakespeare, but it is not the same - there was other evidence of his existance, besides, he never made claims to performing miracles or coming to life again, and nor did anyone on his behalf. Amazing claims require amazing evidence, imo, and a rational god would understand that in 2011, his 'creation' would incline toward the scientific, the logical, and the evidence based. He would know that in our life, 2000 years is a long time, and that things would become fuzzy and confused (hence all the confusion in religions).

It was unreasonable for him to expect future man to rely entirely on faith then - maybe an arguement for saying those that witnessed the alleged Jesus miracles could lay claim to having faith in that, but we are 2000 on, and not privy to witnessing the man in person, do those things in person.

It would be entirely fair for anyone on here to ask be for evidence were I to claim that I could heal the sick, or become invisible. If I offered ever lasting life to those that simply had 'faith', would that start to sound cult like, to you..? Does to me.

 

[Thomas]

Arf, gfft, hmm...busted!

You could have PM'd me or something ... sheesh!

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

Of course, if there was 'proof', which is what the question is asking for, then 'faith' is void, and so is 'freedom'.

If there was empirical proof of God, then to dispute it would be madness, and man's relationship to God would not be based on love, as love is the free gift of self ... one cannot relate 'freely', in this context, to what is indisputable.

And the world would be a lesser place.

God bless,

Thomas

 

[iBrian]

It would be entirely fair for anyone on here to ask be for evidence were I to claim that I could heal the sick, or become invisible. If I offered ever lasting life to those that simply had 'faith', would that start to sound cult like, to you..? Does to me.

Something worth remembering is that in the Ancient World, anyone who was regarded as significantly great *had* to have stories of miracles and wonder following them.

Partly because of what we might call endemic superstition (everything remained unknown, other than the fact that if you lived, you would surely die - the reason and mechanics of the universe, our earth, our biology, an utter mystery).

And partly because no doubt people wanted to associate great things with great people. And if there were not any stories down the pub you could use, you invented them, because in the ancient world the idea of "objective truth" was laughable.

In the Ancient World, you didn't write things down because you wanted to inspire other people to think for themselves - you wrote things down because you wanted to convince people why your opinions were so important, and justify why.

That's exemplified in the four Gospels - each one is written to try and convince one particular audience why they should believe in Jesus as Christ. And why when you put them together, you get commonalities and discrepancies.

 

[taijasi]

I believe the answer is already here, as we've seen to a certain degree.

One, Humanity wasn't ready 2100 years ago. The media of the day *was* used, inasmuch as it existed. But the church powers feared this man greatly. And they eventually paid to have him removed, exactly as would occur today.

Two, God doesn't do for us what we will not do for ourselves. This is because we can do the things we are being asked to do, both individually and as the Human collective. Trouble is, we're often stubborn ... and we gladly tempt God to see just what will happen. There's a problem with this last bit though.

Three, what this leads to is a gradual Revelation of God's Plan for us ... and the typo `forum' which you made, Brian, has everything to do with that. This is the kind of subconscious slip which speaks volumes, as does the kind of experiment going on, on planet Earth today ~ especially at such online forums as IO, but also in Libya, in Egypt, in America and elsewhere. It is going on everywhere.

But Jesus tells us, in Visions of the Nazarene, that there is a good reason why HE didn't write about what was happening, and He comments on the material that WAS written down during the time He was here. He predicted that the material would be found, and it was. He predicted that so-called `experts' would simply wrangle over that material and meet with further confusion, and they did ... they do. He knew exactly what would happen.

Yet for those with eyes to see and ears to hear ...

[... the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us much about The Teacher of RIGHTEOUSNESS. But hey, if you want to insist that Jesus was not Righteous, perhaps the ONE truly Righteous man that some of us are apparently capable of even IMAGINing ... then you go with that. All I got to say is, these horses keep wandering away, and they don't do so well as camels, out here in the desert.]

 

[wil]

his 'creation' would incline toward the scientific, the logical, and the evidence based.

It was unreasonable for him to expect future man to rely entirely on faith then -

Who thinks G!d ain't in the science. I know you like to get on your soapbox but what of all those scientists and engineers around the world who believe in G!d and science? And who relies on faith alone for understanding, faith is but one of the powers provided by G!d, along with understanding, wisdom, zeal, renunciation....

You think the all powerful and all knowing would predict everything....compare that to Him walking through the garden not knowing where Adam and Eve were hiding and not knowing that they would eat the apple.. What do you attribute is temporary lax in all knowing then....that 6 days of creation wore his butt out?

Love you literalist atheists...such fun.

Miracles....hyperbole....to bad you don't read stories or watch movies....or do you think the car launches perfectly off another car 'like' it went off a ramp spirals twice as it falls 40' to the freeway below and continues on its escape??

 

[enlightenment]

Who thinks G!d ain't in the science. I know you like to get on your soapbox but what of all those scientists and engineers around the world who believe in G!d and science? And who relies on faith alone for understanding, faith is but one of the powers provided by G!d, along with understanding, wisdom, zeal, renunciation....

You think the all powerful and all knowing would predict everything....compare that to Him walking through the garden not knowing where Adam and Eve were hiding and not knowing that they would eat the apple.. What do you attribute is temporary lax in all knowing then....that 6 days of creation wore his butt out?

Love you literalist atheists...such fun.

Miracles....hyperbole....to bad you don't read stories or watch movies....or do you think the car launches perfectly off another car 'like' it went off a ramp spirals twice as it falls 40' to the freeway below and continues on its escape??

Not really what to make of your little outburst here - but getting kinda used to them.

You appear to suggest that god wouldn't be able to predict future events, by virtue of the fact that he didn't know where Adam and Eve were hiding? Does this then suggest that he is not all powerful at all, and that there are limitations to his powers - seeing into the future being one of those limitations..?

 

[bob x]

If he could write, then why wouldn't he contribute to the New Testament directly, leaving it to mere man to record stories and pass them down?

An answer that Christians don't much like, but which I think has a good chance of being true: he thought the world was imminently coming to an end, and therefore that there was no need to write things down for future generations.

I am not so sure about Mohammed, I believe he was illiterate, then perhaps 'made' literate? By 'god'? Would that be about right?

No, he never learned to read or write. Others copied down his recitations. Much of the Qur'an was kept in oral memory, but there was also a collection of jottings on palm fronds, shoulder bones, sheepskins, whatever was around; it was actually rather a jumbled mess after the Prophet was dead, which is why the Qur'an is arranged rather randomly.

Couldn't the same be asked of shakespear? I understand we only have a few signatures and they don't all spell the name the same...

We have his will also, which shows him to be a man with really terrible handwriting; not only did he seldom spell things the same way twice, he seldom shaped a letter the same way twice. There are some remnants from his theater groups, scripts that appear to be in the same terrible handwriting (he was one of the scribes who wrote out "Edmund Ironside", a play that is not considered to be his; and "Sir Thomas More", never finished or produced because of political controversy). Some of the bizarre variants in the "Bad Quartos" (pirate versions of his plays: "To be, or not to be: I there's the point, To die, to sleep, is that all? I, to sleep, to dream...") have been interpreted as somebody who can't read the manuscript he's dealing with.

I think our earliest biblical fragment is from around 300....and it is small, not even a whole line, I saw it, I think it was Matthew, part of one line and a little of the one below it...

The postage-stamp-sized fragment is ~125, and is part of the trial before Pilate, as found in "John"; in the 3rd century we start to get full gospels.

 

[enlightenment]

An answer that Christians don't much like, but which I think has a good chance of being true: he thought the world was imminently coming to an end, and therefore that there was no need to write things down for future generations..

Good point.

Jesus actually foretold of the end of the world, during his lifetime.

He is not the first man to have spoken out with an End of World message, there are literally dozens of more obscure one's, and that's just recent one's. Back in the days of Jesus, prophets were actually pretty common, or at least those claiming to be.

Of course, Jesus was crucified, and the world didn't end, not within his lifetime, as predicted. Again, this is common for those doomsday preachers even today - when the day arrives and the world has not ended, what tends to happen is that some of their followers drift, but the others accept whatever lame excuse given, and a new date is often given to them, which they covet like the old date.

I believe that it was a failure in some prophecies that led to the Jews rejecting him as the Saviour and Messiah, I cannot recall word for word, but I think they essentially had this tick list of what the Messiah must do, and in their eyes, Jesus failed some of those.

 

[enlightenment]

No, he never learned to read or write. Others copied down his recitations. Much of the Qur'an was kept in oral memory, but there was also a collection of jottings on palm fronds, shoulder bones, sheepskins, whatever was around; it was actually rather a jumbled mess after the Prophet was dead, which is why the Qur'an is arranged rather randomly..

Hmm.

I was told that Mohammed and his people were illiterate, and that one day 'god' came down, scooped him up, as he is fond of doing, then educated Mohammed, telling him to go forward and educate his people.

Or something like that.


The Koran does appear to pay some sort of homage to Jesus in it's pages though, I know that much.