The gospels were, while written decades after the fact, written by people who were alive at the time. It’s not really a game of telephone.
It turns out that when a guy dies in his early 30s, most of his buddies are still alive 30-50yrs later.
What’s also wild to me is if these were buddies of Jesus, they had this story of his birth, then nothing for thirty years, then a couple things, then death.
Where are all the stories about teenage Jesus doing sick jumps off a camel or whatever? We are missing a few decades of knowledge about this supposed most important person ever.
There’s a fantastic book called “Lamb” that is all about this from the perspective of Christ’s bestie Biff. It’s hilarious.
There are about 30 gospels that didn’t make it into the final version of the Bible, some talk about a little about it.
Most were ordered destroyed and not rediscovered until pretty recently in Egypt.
I’m not a Christian, just someone with an interest in it. There’s pretty much no doubt Jesus was someone who actually was alive, but what we have concerning his “story” could possibly be an algamation of different people who led both a religious and social revolution at the time
One theory suggests that Jesus actually has a brother who looked strikingly similar (James) enough to actually pull off pretending to be him.
Which would explain after his death why people purported to have seen him. Possibly a tactic to keep the revolution alive
I think the majority consensus is that none of the Gospels were written by contemporaries of Jesus, and they were edited and changed up to 200 years after his death.
They were changed much, much longer than 200 years.
Hell, the book of Mark, the oldest version we have (that both Mathew and Luke are copied from) has a completey different ending and vibe than what he have now
A grumpy, almost cynical Jesus who gets annoyed pretty often that people don’t listen to him or his instructions. It’s hilarious.
DadVolante@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
None of the Gospels were written by the apostles. They didn’t even have names until much, much later. I’m talking centuries.
Life expectancy was also much shorter
Mathew and Luke are both just re-writes of Mark. Mark is the oldest out of them all, and the oldest surviving versions we have are not designated a name.
It was a marketing ploy much later to give each gospel a name of one of his apostles to give them more credibility.
Some parts of Mathew and Luke are even word for word copies from Mark, which suggests that they are revisions from a different party who decided to edit in their own ideas.
Hell, the original version of Mark actually has a different ending than the one we got in the modern Bible.
John comes much, much later which is why it’s so different than the other three. It’s Spaceballs.
None of the Gospels were written by anyone who personally knew him.
MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Source for life expectancy being much shorter?
dontbelasagne@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The life expectancy being shorter before modern medicine is missing context. People were more likely to die as infants, but if you made it to age 5, you would most likely live a modern life span of about 80 years, so infant mortality was greater, but if you were to survive past infancy, life expectancy is about the same as it is now.
MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s my understanding for mostcultures outside of cultures like the Inuit who died younger due to the lack of plants in the extremes they lived in.