gospel

Something else to consider when speaking of changed accounts is the motive. To elaborate, what could have possibly motivated the disciples and followers of Jesus to amplify and embellish these accounts? These are, after all, the same people who were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of the Gospel message they had been given, so that it might be preserved. Many died during periods of intense persecution. Would anyone die a martyr's death for an account known to be a fraud? They had nothing to gain, materially, but everything to lose. Indeed various sources record that all the original disciples, besides John, were killed in separate parts of the world. Therefore if their accounts were untrue it is extremely unlikely that they all would have allowed themselves to be killed for these accounts while not knowing if the others were doing the same.

On another note, there are countless example throughout the Gospel of details recorded that are embarrassing, outrageous and make both the disciples and Jesus look bad, but yet these are still recorded. To demonstrate: Jesus’ inglorious reception in his hometown, Peter's denial of Christ, the flight of the Apostles after the arrest of Jesus, a woman being the first to see the risen Christ, and the first to spread the news (a women’s account meant nothing back then), their leader being executed as a common Jewish criminal, Jesus telling all his followers that unless they ate his flesh and drank his blood they could not enter into heaven and losing most of his followers because of this. How would such ridicule claims and disturbing facts have made the cut? And not only did some of these accounts make their leader look like a crazy man it made them look crazy too for following and b...

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...middle of this decade and wrote his first letter dated 49 CE (did jesus exist-117-132). This is extremely relevant as historians and critics alike accept that Paul's epistles were written from A.D. 50-61. In Paul's epistles his outline of Jesus’ life and ministry matches that of the Gospels accounts. Since Paul was not an eyewitness himself he would have relied on other accounts for these details. Indeed some of his passages closely parallel those of Luke’s. (117-127 did jesus exist) This would drastically move up the timeline for the completion of at least two of the Gospels, Luke and Mark. In an article for Christianity Today, Jan. 18, 1963, W.F. Albright critical bible scholar wrote: 'In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D.” (a popular suvary of the New testmant p 28)