Re: The Gospels

Jim writes to Tina:
<< What I emphasize in my thinking is that the actual physical evidence
tends to lean toward traditional interpretations of the events and
authorship, while rejections of these usually require, at best, good reading
between the lines and at worst fundamentally dishonest intellectual sleight
of hand. >>

I think it must be emphasized throughout that the "actual physical
evidence," which is very scant, is not especially compelling, however it
"tends to lean." Traditional interpretations of events and authorship
remain traditional interpretations, not conclusions based upon "actual
physical evidence."

And rejections of the traditional interpretations are rather rare, unless
the above is a rejection (I don't think it is). The "good reading between
the lines" and "fundamentally dishonest intellectual sleight of hand" you
refer to (and I presume you're referring to much of the same stuff that Tina
was) are abundant in mass-market paperbacks but constitute a small minority
of available scholarship.

The common scholarly position, I think, is that there is not sufficiently
compelling evidence that (for instance) any of the gospels were written by
apostles, but that there's no conclusive answer.

-robbie
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Received on Sun Aug 3 21:32:36 2003