No, they seem to be second- or third-hand accounts.
My understanding was that most of the gospels of Jesus's life were written hundreds of years afterwards.
Does anyone ever get tired of having to refute the same tired arguments for theism over and over again? Sometimes I just feel like rationally explaining myself is a waste of time and I should stick to blasphemy because it's quick, easy, and probably the highest level of treatment that religion actually deserves.
Where did you get that impression?
I think that this is probably the best modern analogy to the gospel writers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Mack
I actually worship Satan. In the war between Good and Evil, we must make the greatest of sacrifices to stand up against pure evil, no matter what the consequences. The fact that I will be sent for eternal torture in Hell is a small price to pay for standing up against a genocidal mass-murdering tyrant such as God.
But you know... if I start spouting this off, people will think I'm crazy.
Posts here and there in the "Ask a Theologian" thread. But it is slowly dawning on me that I might be somewhat mistaken.
Plotinus said:No-one knows who wrote the Gospels. I don't know why you say that some were written over a century after Jesus' death - that is very unlikely. Here is what is generally agreed about them:
Mark - probably the earliest Gospel to be written, perhaps in the late 60s. Apparently written on the basis of oral traditions, although some parts, such as the "controversy" section of 2:1-3:8 and the Passion narrative, may well be based on earlier written collections. Traditionally attributed to John Mark, a follower of Peter, who supposedly based it on Peter's reminiscences in Rome; no reason at all to suppose that this is true. Like all the attributions, it was made only a century later.
Matthew - probably written in the mid-80s or thereabouts. Clearly based to a large extent on Mark, with extra material as well - much of it apparently from a now-lost source that Luke also knew, known as Q. Traditionally attributed to Matthew, one of Jesus' disciples. Very unlikely to be by him, if only because someone who was actually present at the events described would hardly base his account on that of another writer who wasn't even there. The Gospel was apparently written at roughly the time when Christian congregations were being thrown out of synagogues and cursed, as the Pharisaic tradition came to dominate post-Temple Judaism; this is why Matthew's Gospel is exceptionally anti-Pharisee. All references to friendly Pharisees and scribes in Mark have been removed in Matthew, and it contains the notorious chapter 23 in which Jesus harangues the Pharisees at some length.
Luke - also probably written in the mid-80s or thereabouts. Also based to a large extent on Mark, with extra material, including that taken from Q, but apparently written quite independently of Matthew. Traditionally ascribed to Luke, a companion of Paul. This is because Acts, which is by the same author, sometimes lapses into the first person when describing Paul's journeys, suggesting that it's written by someone who was with him. However, this was a common literary technique at the time. The author shows little understanding of Paul's theology as expressed in his genuine letters.
John - perhaps written in the mid-90s or thereabouts. Dates from after the split with Judaism: the passionate hatred of Matthew has gone, and the author apparently knows little of the various groups within Judaism since Jesus' opponents are now just "the Jews" as if they were a monolithic group. Apparently written completely independently of the other Gospels from quite different sources and traditions - although it is possible that the author had read Mark but deliberately chose not to base his account on Mark's. The Gospel is extremely complex and has apparently gone through several editions, perhaps all by the same author, who may have revised his work frequently. For example, much of the first half may be based on an earlier "Signs Gospel". The famous prologue is apparently a hymn which has other material worked into it to turn it into an introduction. The book originally ended with chapter 20; chapter 21 is a later addition, though again, perhaps by the same author. Traditionally attributed to John, the brother of James and disciple of Jesus. Again, unlikely to be by him. The reason for the attribution is the presence of an unnamed "beloved disciple" at key points of the story. Since John (prominent in the other Gospels) doesn't appear, it was supposed that the beloved disciple is actually John, and he isn't named because he is the author and he wished to remain anonymous. Very unlikely, though, partly because in the other Gospels John invariably appears with James, but the beloved disciple does not. The beloved disciple is probably simply a literary device.
All the Gospels are based, to a large extent, on oral tradition. "Form criticism", which developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is the art of examining the material in the Gospels and working out how it was changed in the oral tradition and what use it was put to. Form critics can sometimes aim to reconstruct what the original material might have been, thereby (perhaps) getting closer to the real Jesus. Clearly, though, there was written material too, which has been lost - presumably because once the Gospels were available people didn't bother preserving the older and less complete texts. All four Gospels seem to have been popular quite quickly. The popularity of Mark, for example, is attested by the fact that both Matthew and Luke decided to use it as the basis for their own books. Matthew was extremely popular, and once his Gospel came out Mark was hardly ever used; it survived into the canon mainly because of the belief that the authority of Peter lay behind it.
The degree to which the Gospel authors altered the material themselves is also unclear. In the case of Matthew and Luke, we can examine how they have changed the material they take from Mark, and then guess about what they might have done to the other material they have taken from different sources. Matthew changes his material much more than Luke does, so Luke is probably a better source for Q, the now lost text that he and Matthew both seem to have used together with Mark. Q seems to have consisted almost entirely of Jesus' teaching rather than what he did. Matthew scatters Q material throughout his Gospel: his Jesus delivers five fairly long speeches at various points (a subtle reminder of Moses, who supposedly wrote five books of the Old Testament) with action in between. Luke, by contrast, lumps all the teaching in a huge long section in the middle of the Gospel, with all the action before and after. Mark is harder to evaluate since we don't have his sources. And John is the trickiest of all, because his Jesus speaks in a completely different way from in the other Gospels, and does quite different things. It seems that John was much freer with his sources and basically wrote it all himself, while the others seem to have been more conservative and limited themselves to small alterations rather than wholesale original composition. This is one reason why scholars whose aim is to reconstruct the historical Jesus generally ignore John and focus on the Synoptics instead.
I see this sort of stuff all the time on reddit, but I think it feeds most people's stereotypes of atheists as a) actual devil-worshipers or b) sarcastic a-holes. Not that there's anything wrong with being a sarcastic a-hole when it comes to religion, as long as the punchline has a point with a small chance of making people think. Lately, I've been favoring the sort of blasphemy that directly uses Bible verses to highlight choice absurdities in the text.
That's very interesting - I hadn't heard of him or his research before.
So you would say that the gospel writers had a similar experience to those who report alien experiences in terms of the increased spiritual aspect that Mack reports?
Plotinus posted this nice summary in his Ask a Theologian Thread:
3. Does being an Atheist make you sad that you will cease to exist after you die, or happy because you can do things strict religious people couldn't do, and not have to worry about punishment after you die?
thus there is nothing to control fate.
About this question. Do you guys belive in some karma law in this lifetime? or some kind of reward for good actions, and a punishment for bad actions?.
EDIT@El Mac: That' what you get for invading Aman!
I'm surprised that so many didn't know what Plotinus wrote. The indirect nature of the gospels and their origin decades after Jesus' death are common knowledge to me. Good that we have actual religious education is school, I suppose.