Quote:
Originally posted by tecoyah
I think you should take the "quotations" of the christ with a grain of salt, as no one could possibly know what he said, if anything. The bible and the story of Christ are (in my opinion) meant to create a picture of human possibility. If someone tells you they remember what you said, verbatim, 60 years ago.....would you take it as fact?
The story of Jesus was thought to be written down over fifty years after the fact, something to chew on.
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This is true, but the fact that it was written down fifty years after the fact does not mean that we should discount all of the sayings in it. For one thing, many scholars belive there were earlier written records of the life of Jesus that the gospels we know used as sources for their accounts.
However, even if there were no earlier written records, it's perfectly possible that the saying of Jesus were preserved as an oral tradition for fifty years before they were written down. In modern times we expect everything of importance to be written, but back then most knowledge was passed on in oral form because it was a lot more expensive to write things down and most people were illiterate anyways. As a result, people were much better at remembering the exact wording of things. Think of all of the great arabic poetry (1001 nights etc.) that was transmitted oraly for decades or centuries before ever being written down.
Another strong argument for the fact that some sayings are quthentic is the fact that several sources that originated in different areas have Jesus saying the say thing with almost hte same wording. Think Mark (c. 70 CE, John, Luke and Matthew (c. 100 CE) (the parts that did not use Mark as a source), the Gospel of Thomas (either around 60 or 70 or much later, depending which scholar you belive) and the letter of Paul (c. 50s CE).
Sorry that was a bit off-topic