yeah, i know what you mean. only thing is, the bible was never written in its entirety all at once. it is, for lack of better ways to explain, a compilation. the gospels and the letters that follow them in the bible are all written w/in a specific time frame. there have been many other texts, and this recent one proves that there are still more to be found, but theyve been dated outside of what the OG scholars determined to be a reliable time frame.

 

I think the consistent accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are far more credible than this document. Many people in that time despised Jesus for his teaching and tried to spread false rumors about him. Interesting topic though.

 

well the article said that
so Jess was is right it might(and probably isint) not come from oral traditon
how do you know that matthew, mark, luke and John werent brain washed, or spread rumors about how "good" he was...

 

stories change with each tale told. dunno if thats a proven fact, but it has been an observation of mine * and i dont think im the only one*
its like the kids game telephone, our cadre in ROTC use to make use play it to develope communication and listening skills and techniques. need less to say, with a battalion of over 500 highschool kids.

"joey wore red on sunday, pink on friday, and purple on monday. on thursday he went to go eat at the diner with his friend tory."

lets say thats the message started

at the end it would have been something like

"joey wore pink on friday, and on monday red. Thursday he went took tory to a pink restaurant."

point being, word of mouth is hearsay and it never truly is exact and 100% accurate

now imagine if that tale was told from person to person over a course of 100 yrs. how much would that story change?

 

if we look at the overall lives of who these people were before and after they had met jesus, i think it speaks for themselves. plus if you take into account 10 of the 12 (i think) disciples died under execution (i.e. crucifixtion, beheadings, etc.), then that says a lot too. i dont think theyd be willing to unanimously die for the same "lame" or "weak" cause.

 

They aren't reliable at all. They differ on several very important accounts. Whoever wrote this book didn't despise Jesus anyway, obviously. And I really don't think anyone hated him enough at that time to write anything about him, forget a text to throw people off.

The question is whether this comes from the same time as the gospels. Incredibly hard to prove, since we don't even have original copies of those. So I'm sure we'll never know.

One more clarification- this is not the first time books not included, but are from the same time and genre, have been found. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran are the same thing. Gospels of other disciples, along with various other Gnostic texts, were found there side by side with books included in the Bible (which was great, because we could see how the books have changed throughout time- ended out not being that much).

 

it wasnt weak for them... they beleived itbut doesnt mean they were necessarily right...not like it would be the first time stuff like this would've happened and not the last.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/2540209.stm

dude the fact is that we (christians like non christians) are thaught that jesus was good, that he was the son of god. well it could be false.

 

Its like that now but not then. Alot of people couldn't read or write and they were trained to memorize and repeat back word for word. They used actions and different ways of saying it to remember. Thats how some of the Bible was written.

 

hope u know im just arguing for the sake of arguing but anyways..

there is no proven fact that the stories werent twisted and molded differently. atlantis started out as word of mouth. i have yet to see the great city and all its glory.

 

Atlantis is only mentioned once, ever. By Plato. He says he heard his grandfather talking about it when he was like five.