| PAGE Book | LOC Kindle | CHAPTER 19 |
| 114 | 3032 | Tonight was all about Jesus: Dominic’s second talk is based on Gumbel, Nicky: Questions of Life: A Practical Introduction to the Christian Faith, Cook Ministry Resources, Colorado 1996, pp. 23-41. |
| 114 | 3036 | the Gospels were written within a generation of Jesus’ life: This claim by conservative Christians (e.g. Craig, William Lane, The Son also Rises, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2001, pp. 102-106) is rejected my mainstream scholars, where Mark is usually dated 65-73 CE, Matthew and Luke 80-90 CE and John 90-110 CE. |
| 116 | 3091 | Page 87 – Matthew, Mark and Luke are quite similar, but John’s very different: Lane Fox, Robin: The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, Viking, London 1991, pp. 202-5; Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988, p. 28, 112-3; Romer, John: Testament, pp. 190-1, Rowland, Christopher: Christian Origins, SPCK, London 1985, pp. 126-8, 324-7; Sanders, EP: The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin Books, London 1995, pp. 66-73; Vermes, Geza: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, Penguin, London 2004, pp. xii-xiii. |
| 117 | 3096 | the authorship of the Gospels: Outside the ranks of fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, scholars are united in the view that we do not know who wrote any of the gospels. Barton: A History of the Bible, pp 505-4 note 22; Martin, Dale B: New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press, 2012, Loc 584; Ehrman, Bart D: How Jesus became God: the exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee (Kindle Edition), HarperOne 2014, Loc 1348; Ehrman, Bart: Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (Kindle Edition), Loc 663 |
| 117 | 3106 | You can make a decent case for the primacy of John: Lane Fox, The Unauthorised Version, pp. 202-9. The Historical Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: A Paradigm Shift? by James H Charlesworth in Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 8 (2010) 3–46. |
| 117 | 3113 | The oldest Gospel is Mark, probably written thirty-five to forty years after the crucifixion. Matthew and Luke come next: Sheehan, Thomas: The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity, Crucible, Wellingborough 1988, pp. 14-16. |
| 117 | 3114 | Matthew and Luke tell the same story as Mark, with some differences: Lane Fox, The Unauthorised Version, p. 204; Neill & Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, pp. 116-136. |
| 118 | 3125 | They also both had another source, and they were combining the two: Neill & Wright op cit pp. 118-120, 131-6; Sheehan, The First Coming, pp. 14-16. |
| 118 | 3132 | They were like pearls, and Matthew, Mark and Luke provided the narrative thread to string these pearls together in a way that we can relate to: Neill & Wright op cit p. 254, Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 58-63. |
| 118 | 3136 | Not if you’re using the Gospels as religious texts: Armstrong, A History of God, p. 444 quotes Martin Buber: ‘The Bible must be read metaphorically like poetry if it is to yield that sense of the sacred.’ |
Click here for the next chapter.
Paul Clark 