Continue with THE GOSPELS/History or Myth-QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Were the Gospels later edited to fit the needs of the early Christian community?

Some critics argue that the politics of the early Christian community caused the Gospel writers  to edit the story of Jesus or add to it.  However, a close study of the Gospels shows that no such doctoring took place.  If Gospels accounts concerning Jesus were altered as a result of their first-century Christian intrigue, why do negative remarks about both Jews and Gentiles still appear in the text?

(Note: These critics not only seem to be non-believers, but also they are ignorant to boot. I do not believe in critics. They only go on their own opinion; And I can't for the life of me, understand why people listen to them and not use their own brains to think with instead of depending on others to think for them.  This is why God put brains in our heads-to use them.  That is called independent thinking.   That is one of the things that is wrong with this world; depending on critics, society, the government or whoever else thinks they know anything, to tell them what to do, how to dress, what to think, how to feel etc.) 

A case in  point is found at Matthew 6:5-7 where Jesus is quoted as saying:  "When you pray, you must not be as the hypocrites; because they like to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the broad ways to be visible to men. Truly, I say to you, They are having their reward in full."    Clearly, this was a condemnation of Jewish religious leaders, Jesus further said:  "When praying, do not say the same things over and over again, just as the people of the nations [the Gentiles] do, for they imagine they will get a hearing for their use of many words."  By quoting Jesus in this way, the Gospel writers were not trying to win converts.  They were simply recording statements actually made by Jesus Christ. 

Consider also the Gospel accounts regarding the women who visited Jesus' tomb and saw that it was empty.  (Mark 16:1-8) According to Gregg Easterbrook, "in the sociology of the ancient Middle East, testimony by women was considered inherently unreliable: for instance, two male witnesses were sufficient to convict a woman of adultery, while no woman's testimony could convict a man." Indeed, Jesus' own disciples did not believe the women! (Luke 24:11)  It is thus most unlikely that such a story would have been deliberately invented.

The absence of parables in the epistles and in the book of Acts is strong argument that those in the Gospels were not inserted  by early Christians but were spoken by Jesus himself. Additionally, a careful comparison of the Gospels with the epistles reveals that neither Paul's words nor those of other writers of the Greek Scriptures were artfully reworded and ascribed to Jesus. If the early Christians community had done such a thing, we should expect to find at least some of the material from the epistles in the Gospel accounts. Since we do not, we can surely conclude that the Gospel material is original and authentic.  

Next time: Continue with: THE GOSPELS/History or Myth-QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

From the Watchtower magazine, 2000