Did the gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John meet Jesus?

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Permalink Reply by Tezzie on February 26, 2010 at 3:38am

I know, and I personally agree that he never existed or was just a simple preacher for christianity. The problem is if we are arguing with christians and we state that Jesus didn't exist they won't listen, if we can say that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had never actually met him they may stop and ask if it is true and look it up for themselves. I'm purely asking for an argumentative purpose.

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Permalink Reply by Tezzie on February 26, 2010 at 5:08am

I did a quick google and there are a lot of different opinions on the matter, some say only 2 of the 4 met him, some say all 4 were close to him, I'm just looking to see if anyone who has already researched the matter may be able to clarify it for me.

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Permalink Reply by Tezzie on February 26, 2010 at 2:58pm

Thanks, I just didn't really have time to do much research, and basically just googled it for interests sake. I was just curious if anyone else had done a lot of research on it and knew the facts from the fiction.

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Permalink Reply by Eric VanDeGenachte on February 26, 2010 at 5:32am

The short answer is 'no' they were almost 100 years too late. In his video, "The God Who Wasn't There," Brian Flemming ($20 at Amazon) outlines this question very well. He identifies that it was several decades AFTER Jesus' death that Paul wrote the first gospel and then close to 100 years before the first of the gospels were written. Combine that with the fact that Paul fails to mention some thirty critical elements that the other gospel DO talk about, the fact that they are consistently contradictory, and you've got some trouble on your hands. For more fun, visit a user on YouTube called, "ProfMTH" and search for his Bible Blunders series - its a scream. Peace!

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Permalink Reply by ryan cameron on February 26, 2010 at 10:46am

have you read this?
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseidon/God_Who_Wasnt_There_analy...

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Permalink Reply by Eric VanDeGenachte on February 26, 2010 at 10:56am

Ryan ! Thank you! This is awesome! I did do some follow-up research after watching Flemming video (particularly the part addressing parallel histories of other deities) and found several discrepancies myself. I guess I was somewhat more trusting of his account of the order of the gospels. That doesn't seem like something a Fundy would have gotten wrong. I'll check this out further. Thank you for sharing! :-)

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Permalink Reply by Tom Thompson on February 26, 2010 at 9:55am

I have yet to read Bart Ehrman but other scholars give similar figures.

Lee Strobel covers interviews with apologist scholars in his book The Case for Christ and reports much different figures. He reports that Paul's writings and the oral tradition which became the gospels occurred as early as 2 years after Jesus' death.

I suspect that the accurate history is somewhere in between. I need to read Ehrman and others.

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Permalink Reply by Tezzie on February 26, 2010 at 3:02pm

Thank you, I have heard of them but I think they may be difficult to get here in SA, I will probably have to order them.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Thompson on February 26, 2010 at 9:57am

The short answer is no. None of the gospel writers ever met Christ. All scholars seem to agree on that. Where they disagree is who wrote them and when.

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Permalink Reply by Arnold on March 19, 2010 at 1:42am

The 40 - 80 year time frame is most likely correct. Reputable New Testament scholars generally agree that Mark was written around 70 CE, Mathew & Luke in the 80's, and John in the 90's. They all underwent revision and may not have reached their present form until about 150 CE. None of the original authors had ever met Jesus (if he existed, which most scholars believe he did) since he died ca. 30 CE. A good book about the methods and conclusions of scholars searching for the historical Jesus is The Acts of Jesus edited by by Robert W. Funk and other members of the Jesus Seminar, published by Harper, San Francisco. If only Muslims were as critical of their own scriptures.

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on April 10, 2010 at 10:47am

Congrats to Arnold for one of the first factually accurate posts in this thread.
First of all, Paul never wrote a single gospel (he did write several lettres though, many of which have been included in the New Testament).
Second of all, considering the Gospel of Mark was written around 72 AD, that puts the gospels only about 40 years after the death of Jesus, which is actually fairly good.

And as for the OP, I can see what you're trying to do but your point is moot: while it is certainly true that none of the gospel authors met Jesus (they were about 40-60 years too late) but like many ancient literature it is based on oral tradition. That doesn't necessarily make for a good argument against Christianity, because they will simply (on faith) maintain that the authors got hold of the correct oral tradition and wrote that version down. You're better off staying within the Gospels themselves and detailing, for example, how the teachings of a devout Jew like Jesus got distorted when his sect caught on among non-Jewish converts.

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