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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (34285)	4/10/1999 8:38:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 108807

Thanks for an excellent post, and all the links.

To: jbe who wrote (34285)	4/10/1999 9:49:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Joan, the first two links say "Not Found." ( My husband asked me to bookmark them all for him to read later....)

To: jbe who wrote (34285)	4/11/1999 9:37:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I didn't really share that article from the Irish newspaper because I thought it was the most scholarly article ever written about Jesus (although I think the two theologians the author quoted said very interesting things). Rather, I thought it was provocative first simply because in Ireland--a country almost suffocated by Catholicism, which is now coming out of that bondage and having a general pagan Celtic revival--this exploration of all sorts of topics about Jesus, including whether his first followers were even Christian, and whether he actually existed, would be a suitable four-color, front page article during the Easter season. (Did I just win the daily prize for long, convoluted sentences here? It seems to me that I most definitely deserve it.) The PBS Frontline series on Jesus, which was excellent, suggests that Mark was written 40 years after Jesus' death, or about 70, that Matthew was written about 15 years later, Luke in 15 years after that, and John in about 90 or 100: pbs.org One of my favorite general discussions of the Gospels, incidentally, suitable for reading by the less intellectual readers of this thread like myself who are not writing books about theology and have normal IQ's, but are struggling to follow along here, is this one: pbs.org I think it is a very easy intellectual exercise to seize on one seemingly erroneous or sloppy sentence in an article, and condemn the entire piece. However, life is messy, really, and I am more fixated on provocative discussion than narrowing exactly when each Gospel was written. In the preface to "The Lost Gospel Q", Marcus Borg states that Mark was written in around 70, Matthew and Mark followed a decade or two later, and John probably in the last decade of the first century. Q is definitely a hypothetical document; Borg states that 90% of current Gospel scholars believe in its existence. Logically, to me at least, it makes sense. As Borg explains "The basis for the "Q hypothesis" as it is commonly called, is a large amount of material (over 200 verses) found in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. Most scholars do not think that either the author of Matthew or the author of Luke knew the other's Gospel. Therefore the material they share in common cannot be the result of one borrowing from the other, but must come from an earlier written source to which they both had access. That common source was the Lost Gospel Q." My own opinion is that Jesus was a magician, a prophet, a rebel, a peaceful and good and decent and very sensitive man, probably very well experienced with hallucinogens, a man on the edge of reality who was an apocalyptic Jew, very possibly a member of the Essene cult. I definitely believe that all the stories of the resurrection, the virgin birth, and the others that make him seem more than human were created much after the fact, and I think they are unnecessary and cheapen his legacy. I think many Christians have used him in very evil ways, and I think they have a lot to answer for. I think that more interesting than who Jesus was, however, is what we made of him, our hunger for mythology and the patterns of belief most of us seem to crave as human beings.