NEW TESTAMENT ANALYSIS

Published Commentary on the Previous Article

Home | Intro to the Jesus legend articles | In the Gospels Jesus Was a Mortal--jk | Mark Describes Jesus' Gay Affair | SOURCE FOR JESUS LEGEND | SKEPTICISM ON HISTORICAL CHRIST by Catholic theologian | Published Commentary on the Previous Article | Fictional Christ--McKinsey | New Testament Studies, Professor Wells | EARLIEST CHRISTIANITY--Prof. Wells | Who Was Jesus--Prof. G. A. Wells | NO HISTORICAL JESUS, response to critic by Prof. Wells | Old Testament Messiah Prophecies and the Gospels | Balanced New Testament Analysis | THE HISTORICAL REFERENCES TO JESUS; A Scholarly Analysis | Jesus Legend Sources--Wikipedia | TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF THE NEW TESTAMENT | TEXTUAL PROBLEMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT | THE HISTORICAL REFERENCES TO JESUS | Did Jesus Exist?--Walker | The Jesus Puzzle--Doherty | The Jesus Puzzle--Doherty, continued | NASTY JESUS & STUPID ADVISE | New Testament, Sources, Transmission, Variations, & Modifications | CONTRADICTIONS: New & Old Testaments | BIBLE CANON: History & Analysis Thereof | End of the World is soon, Bible Tells US--quotes

“Who Do Men Say That I. Am?”

An Appraisal

 

 

 

Roman Catholic biblical scholarship finally catches up with the times:

 

Gerald A  Laure

 

The Humanist, 5-6, May/June 1991.

Roman Catholic biblical scholarship has come a long way in the past 47 years. Prior to    the 1943 encyclical Divino Aff.ante Spiritu,, by which Pope Pius XII fixed scholar­ship the restrictive bonds imposed by fear of modernism~ I would merely scan articles by Catholic writers pertaining appeared in such journals as the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. The writings.   tended to be bland and not in touch With critical schol­arship. Immediately following the     encyclical, dramatic changes ensued.

 

Roman Catholic scholars may have been silenced, but their investigations of biblical literature had been going on in private and were as up-to-date as those of their Protestant and Jewish colleagues. At first, the articles by Catholic scholars were heavily footnoted to non-Catholic writers, but that was soon to change. As publication after publication appeared, more and more references were made to critical investigations by Roman Catholics The article “Who Do Men Say That I Am?” by Kerry Temple,  which first appeared in Notre Dame Magazine (and follows this appraisal), reflects that change in direction. Almost all of his references are to Catholic scholars, and what he presents is where critical Roman Catholic scholarship is today.

 

For over 100 rears, biblical scholars have been ap­plying the best tools of historical and literary analysis to the Bible As they examined the stories about Jesus in the context of the first century CE (common era), they demonstrated that the bulk of the New Testament

material is fiction.  Birth stories, miracle stories, resur­rection stories abounded in that time period. The early Christian writers simply adapted current hero stories to Jesus, producing a legendary figure, a faith symbol, around whom an entire belief system was to emerge.

 

The stories multiplied in the post -New testament period, and writings now included in the Apocryphal New Testament augmented the wonder tales associated with Jesus and Mary. The teachings in some of these fictions—such as Mary’s continuing virginity (her hy­men was intact despite giving birth), her ascension to heaven, and her role as Theotolos  (God bearer)—were all later affirmed in one church council or another (see my book, The Supernatural, the Occult, and the Bible, Prometheus Books, 1990). Consequently, these notions became dogma, not to be questioned by the faithful.

 

It is to the credit of Pope Pius XII and those Roman Catholic scholars who engaged in critical research that they have reached the conclusions illustrated by Kerry Temple. As well, it is to the credit of Kerry Temple that he went beyond the religious instruction he received as a child and, much like an investigative reporter, pur­sued an independent search for the historical Jesus.

   

    His quest demonstrates the folly of unquestioning acceptance of authority—whether demanded by church, synagogue, mosque, government, or classroom teacher. One must consult the best evidence to con­firm or disprove teachings.  Analyzing the New Testament Jesus story is like peeling an onion. As one nonhistorical, fictional layer after another is removed one ends up with the tiny core. Is this the true onion; is this the true Jesus.  There is not enough left to grasp a per­sonality.  As Father Kannengiesser told Temple, “The fact is, Jesus existed,” yet even this assumption has been chal­lenged (see G. A. Wells, Did Jesus’ Exist?  (Prometheus Books, 1976).

 

What do we really know about Jesus? We have no birthdate and the estimates range from somewhere between 2 and 7 BCE (see Larue, Astronomy and the Star of Bethlehem Free Inquiry 3:l:2528).  Scholars believe he was born and grew up in Nazareth, and we know very little about life in that small town during Jesus’ lifetime. We know nothing of his childhood or home life.  [The remainder is inconsistent with the above.]

 

For the next 5 paragraphs Gerald A. Laure, the author, summarizing  the historical passages of the Gospels as though they were historical.  Thus he ignores the German School of scholars who showed the Gospels to be merely unreliable, but rather to be works of fiction.  To do so in inconsistent, for he just affirmed the German School of Biblical scholarship and cited G.A. Wells, their best.  This inconsistency is renewed in the last 2 paragraphs of his article by:  “What I cannot accept is the unwillingness of those informed leaders in the faith system to share this information [the German biblical scholarship] with their congregations and their students.  Perhaps persons like Kerry Temple will have to become carriers of the best research to Roman Catholics—and indeed, to others.”  This wish of Laure’s is myopic, for the Church permits its scholars to carry on such studies as long as they don’t bring it to the masses—this policy as existed for over a thousand years.  

 

 

GOSPEL FICTIONS--jk

 

 

The Epistles give us only (a) advices to the Christian communities, (b) that Christ was crucified, and (c) that salvation comes through faith in the revealed mysteries (such as the Eucharist).  The Christians lived on communes so to assure that they would be worthy of salvation when their God destroyed the world again, which was to occur before the last of the disciples had died.  The Epistles lacked the words of Christ, teachings, and description of his life.  This was filled about 40 years after the Epistles of Paul by the Gospels and Acts.  A number of Biblical scholars starting in the middle of the 18th century have come to that the entire work is fiction which fills in those gaps.  However, other scholars critical of portions, which they consider as fiction, fail to realize that the entire work is fiction.  Kerry is one of those scholars.

 

A theologian is a person of faith, and thus is given to the violations of logic including when applied in historical analysis.  Kerry’s work is an example of how considerations of faith supersede logic.—jk.   

 

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