| > In various texts, including Apocryphal works that date to around the same time as the Gospels proper, Joseph appears to suspect Mary of infidelity. This struck me as a strange statement to not explain further. Plenty of Christians interpret Matthew 1:19 to mean Joseph was going to divorce Mary because he believed she was unfaithful. > The consoling notion of divine impregnation was commonplace in the Hellenistic world, with countless tales of gods foisting demigods on virgins. Plutarch, for instance, described Rome’s founder Romulus as born to a divinely impregnated vestal virgin. The later is true but it's strange to use Plutarch as an example considering that at best he would have been writing Parallel Lives at the same time the Gospels were being written. > Those attributed to Jesus—described in language nearly identical to accounts of the Greek mystic and holy man Apollonius of Tyana, say—are neither more nor less convincing than others. Well "Life of Apollonius of Tyana" was written in the early 200ADs, approximately 100 years after the last Gospel was written. Once again, the point may be correct but the example given is confusing cause and effect. > A scholarly paradigm that has shone in recent years shifts the focus: the Gospels are now seen as literary constructions from the start. There were no rips in the fabric of memory, in this view, because there were no memories to mend—no foundational oral tradition beneath the narratives, only a lattice of tropes. The Gospel authors, far from being community leaders preserving oral sayings for largely illiterate followers, were highly literate members of a small, erudite upper crust, distant in experience, attitude, and geography from any Galilean peasant preachers. That seems like an extraordinary claim to make. The Gospels were drawn from no oral tradition, really? So there was a complete disconnect between the practitioners of early Christianity, who obviously would have their own oral tradition, and the Gospels writers. And the early Christians then accepted the Gospels even though they had no relationship to their existing traditions? Or is the claim the Christianity didn't exist until the Gospels were created, in which case you have to contest with the Apocrypha and historical accounts of Jesus. The simplest explanation seems to be that the Gospels drew from early Christian oral tradition and now lost writings. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels# for an explanation "now lost writings". |