Seeing Through Christianity: A Critique of Beliefs and Evidence by Bill Zuersher

Author:Bill Zuersher
Format: epub

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GOSPEL COMPOSITION

The word “gospel” comes from the old English “godspell,” which was a translation from the Greek, ευαγγελιον, meaning “good news.” Before it came to refer to the unique literary genre of Jesus biographies, the term meant simply a message of good news.

What kind of writings are the gospels? This question brings us to the heart of the nature of evidence. The gospels do not read like histories, at least not by any modern standard. Real historians do two things the gospel writers uniformly fail to do: they identify their sources and they evaluate conflicting evidence.¹

The gospel writers do not identify any of their sources—not a single one. They don’t even identify themselves. In this regard, what we see in the gospels appears consistent with the capture on paper of oral tradition that circulated widely among people who simply heard it from other people, with none able to verify its origins. Nor do the gospel writers address conflicting evidence. Because data is often limited and sources contradictory, real historians must make critical judgments about which versions of events are more likely true. They do this in plain view of the readers so that we can share in their conclusions or at least understand the reasons if we disagree.

Although the four canonical gospels share the above shortcomings as histories, highlighted for each below is a different difficulty: literary features in Mark, outlandish tales in Matthew, errors in Luke, and unabashed theology in John.

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