Download What are the Gospels

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Read-- Donald Senior, Jesus: A Gospel Potrait
(Makati: St. Pauls, 1992) pp. 1-45
The Lectures are in my website but they are
not arranged according to number.
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We have come to believe in God's love:
in these words the Christian can
express the fundamental decision of
his life. Being Christian is not the
result of an ethical choice or a lofty
idea, but the encounter with an event,
a person (Jesus Christ), which gives
life a new horizon and a decisive
direction. DEUS CARITAS EST 1
Benedict XVI
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We have come to believe in God's love:
in these words the Christian can
express the fundamental decision of
his life. Being Christian is not the
result of an ethical choice or a lofty
idea, but the encounter with an event,
a person (Jesus Christ), which gives
life a new horizon and a decisive
direction. DEUS CARITAS EST 1
Benedict XVI
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We have come to believe in God's love:
in these words the Christian can
express the fundamental decision of
his life. Being Christian is not the
result of an ethical choice or a lofty
idea, but the encounter with an event,
a person (Jesus Christ), which gives
life a new horizon and a decisive
direction. DEUS CARITAS EST 1
Benedict XVI
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Passing on the Faith: Scripture and Tradition
◦ Knowing Jesus Christ
◦ The Main Message: His life, death and resurrection
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The main message in Scriptures
The Centrality of the Resurrection
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Jesus and his Disciples
Disciples and their Community
Evangelist (Gospel Writers) and their Community
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Not Biographies—Faith Testimonies
From Faith To Faith
A Privileged Source
◦ The Extraordinary Success of Christianity
◦ The Source of Our Stories: The Gospels
◦ Three Stages of Gospel Development
◦ What are the Gospels?
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First Source
Normative—Standard
◦ Why do we trust these four Gospels and not the other gospels?:
◦ Are the Gospels reliable even if they have internal inconsistencies?
◦ Are the Gospels reliable even if they were written two thousand years ago?
..Sometimes it's hard to believe in it
because there's no concrete proof..
How do we verify that religion and all
this about Christianity isn't a fictional
work made by some random person in
the past?
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Mr. Roncal (together with some kind
students) vs the whole class
The life , death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ
is a historical fact!
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What are the three stages of Gospel
development?
Why do we trust these four Gospels and not
the other gospels?:
Are the Gospels reliable even if they have
internal inconsistencies?
Are the Gospels reliable even if they were
written two thousand years ago?
 They
are not Biographies. The
Gospels are faith testimonies.
◦ They are not just a result of divine
dictation.
When modern Christians pick up a gospel and read
it with a searching faith, they are duplicating the
very process by which it came to be written. “From
faith” in the sense that it was the faith of the
church that maintained the genuine portrait of who
Jesus was and what he was about. “To faith” in the
sense that the gospels were written so that the
belief of Christians might intensify as they came
face to face with the words and actions of the risen
Lord. Donald Senior, p.24
From Faith
To Faith
Gospels:
Privileged Source
First Source
Normative—
Standard
To Faith
“To faith” in the sense that the
gospels were written so that the belief
of Christians might intensify as they
came face to face with the words and
actions of the risen Lord. Donald
Senior, p.24
Writings of Paul
AD 30
48 -85
The Gospels
65-95
Apocryphal Gospels
100++
2000++
90 AD
70 AD
65 AD
33AD
30 AD
0 AD
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Mar 1:14-15
(14) Now after John
was arrested, Jesus
came into Galilee,
preaching the gospel
of God,
(15) and saying, "The
time is fulfilled, and
the kingdom of God is
at hand; repent, and
believe in the gospel."
The Gospel of Mark
Edsa Revolution
Written
Oral
Written
Oral
Copies
Oral
Greek
Original
Latin
English
130 AD
65 AD
200 AD
325AD
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What to look for?
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Signs of reliability
◦ How many handwritten copies
(manuscripts) of the source there are,
◦ How close these are in time to the original
work.
◦ The more copies there are with little
disagreement among them
◦ The closer the manuscripts are in time to
the original work
Work
When
written
Earliest copy
Time span
No. of copies
New
Testament
40-100 A.D.
130 A.D.
30, 50,
100yrs*
over 24,000
Homer (Iliad)
900 B.C.
400 B.C.
500 yrs
643
Demosthenes
383-322 B.C.
1100 A.D.
1,300 yrs
200
Plato
(Tetralogies)
427-347 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,200 yrs
7
Caesar
100-44 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,000 yrs
10
Thucydides
(History)
460-400 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,300 yrs
8
Herodotus
(History)
480-425 B.C.
900 A.D.
1,300 yrs
8
Aristotle
384-322 B.C.
1100 A.D.
1,400 yrs
49
Euripides
480-406 B.C.
1100 A.D.
1,500 yrs
9
(Josh McDowell, Evidence
That Demands a Verdict:
Historical Evidences for the
Christian Faith, 39-64)
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The manuscript evidence for the "New Testament"
is also dramatic, with nearly 25,000 ancient
manuscripts discovered and archived so far, at
least 5,600 of which are copies and fragments in
the original Greek. 4 Some manuscript texts date
to the early second and third centuries, with the
time between the original autographs and our
earliest existing fragment being a remarkably
short 40-60 years. ( John Ryland's Gospel of John
fragment, John Ryland's Library of Manchester,
England. )
http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/biblemanuscripts.htm
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Canon – the closed collection or list of sacred
books acknowledged by the Church as the
rule of faith and life
1970 The New American Bible was written
1539-1610 The Bible was translated into English, 1546Council of Trent, list of the Canon
382-418 AD Latin version of the Bible was written (by St. Jerome)
393-405 Council of Hippo, Carthage, Toulouse came out with a list of the NT
books
100 AD All the New Testament books have been written
60 AD St. Paul writes his first letter and the Gospel of Mark was
written, Note: 22-24 books of the Hebrew canon were in use
33 AD Death of Jesus Christ
0-4BC Jesus is Born
450 BC: The Five Books (Pentateuch) was written
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Apostolic origin-meaning no more than
that an apostle had a traditional
connection with a given work. –
Conformity to the Rule of Faith—meaning
the writings expressed what the early
Christians believed in
Constant Use among the Communities—
meaning the writings that were commonly
used by all the Churches were eventually
accepted as part of the canon
 Is
it possible to/Can you know
(define first what you mean by
“know”) Jesus today?
◦ Two Groups: Yes and No
◦ End Product:
 Resolved Issues (Things everyone agreed
with)
 Unresolved Issues (Things not agreed on)