Another Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

I think you are still misunderstanding at the very least the point I was making.

My most recent post was directed at Gorefiend and thus wasn't responding to a single point you made.
But now I'll respond to a few of your points.

In that while some basic things did survive, like the resurrection, its highly improbably that his actual teachings in an non fundamentally way made it. Like I remember hearing something awhile back about a gospel that mentioned Jesus taught that one did not need a temple/church or a spiritual leader to find god and have faith. Which actually makes sense in regards as to his relationship with the Rabbis. The modern Church however is bigger and even more bloated than the Rabbis of Jesus' time.

As a protestant evangelical without any particular affiliation to any particular church, I'd actually entirely agree with your sentiment. (I'm not personally terribly fond of the Catholic Church's machinations, though I do believe that Catholics and Protestants will both be redeemed through faith in Christ and we'll thus all go to heaven.)

Further, we don't even have a name for the 12th apostle.

Hmm? The 12 original apostles were the 11 surviving disciples (not including Judas) and Matthias, who is chosen to replace Judas in Acts 1:12-26. "Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles." The disciples are called apostles immediately following the resurrection of Christ and his Great Commission.

We also have:

Simon Peter (son of John), a Fisherman (Matthew 4:18-20, Mark 8:29-33, Luke 22:31-34, John 21:15-19, Acts 2:14-41)

James (son of Zebedee), a Fisherman (Mark 3:17, Mark 10:35-40, Luke 9:52-56, Acts 12:1-2)

John (son of Zebedee, brother of James), a Fisherman (the presumed author of the Gospel of John, the "One Who Jesus Loved") (Mark 1:19, Mark 10:35-40, Luke 9:52-56, "the one who Jesus loved" in all of John, Acts 12:1-2)

Andrew (Simon Peter's brother), a Fisherman (Matthew 4:18-20, John 1:35-42, John 6:8-9, John 12:20-22.)

Philip, a Fisherman (Matthew 10:3, John 1:43-46, John 6:2-7, John 12:20-22, John 14:8-11)

Bartholomew, position unknown (often assumed by Biblical scholars to have been an impoverished older man) (Mark 3:18, John 1:45-51, John 21:1-13.)

Matthew (called Levi,) a Tax Collector (Matthew 9:9-13, Mark 2:15-17, Luke 5:27-32.)

Thomas (called the twin, though his twin is never apparently present.) (Matthew 10:3, John 14:5, John 20:24-29, John 21:1-13)

James (son of Alphaeus), position unknown. He's the one who's least showcased in the Bible, but he's still mentioned by name in Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, and Luke 6:15. Strangely, he's not featured in any prominent moment in the Bible and his story's never quite told like the others, so he's your best bet for a "made up" apostle, I suppose, if you wanted to believe one was falsely manufactured.

Thaddaeus (Judas son of James,) who is not Judas Iscariot, mentioned in Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, and given a line of speech in John 14:22.

Simon the Zealot, originally a follower of John the Baptist, mentioned in Matthew 10:4 and Mark 3:18 and Luke 6:15. (He's the second weakest in terms of what we know about him.)

Judas Iscariot, who is replaced by Matthias after he betrays Christ and commits suicide.

That's eleven disciples who become the first 11 apostles, and Matthias, who joins in the party as a first-order-of-business in Acts 1. Of course later on we see a number of Christian missionaries referred to as apostles who weren't among the initial 12.

Additionally, why don't we have any writings from the apostles.

Huh? First Peter begins with the line "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ." It's clearly promoted as a writing from the apostle Peter and it rather rigorously outlines his faith. second Peter starts off "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ." The Christian scholarly community promotes the view of the first letter being written in AD 64 and the second being written in AD 67 by the same Peter who stands on water.

We also have 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John by the apostle John (that one who Jesus loved who also supposedly authors the Gospel of John.)

That's two apostles right there who wrote down their stuff. (Including the gospels themselves there's also Mark/Levi who's suggested to have written the Gospel of Mark.) As for the others, well some may have simply been unable to write (Bartholomew in particular strikes me as a likely candidate for being illiterate.) And if you want to get into the gnostics, Thomas (of the doubting variety) supposedly wrote his own gospel that the Christian church rejected (claiming it was not in fact authentically the work of Thomas himself.)

At the very least they should have recognized how important what they were teaching really was and the importance of recording it as many times as possible and from as many viewpoints as possible.

That's precisely why there are far more surviving manuscripts and papyrus tablets of the New Testament gospels then...well...anything else! Throw the gnostics and other unaccepted variations of the theme into the mix and you have tens of thousands of surviving documents pre-printing press compared to only several hundred or even several dozen of such classic and revolutionary texts as the Iliad and the Odyssey and the works of Plato and Aristotle. And frankly, a vast majority of the documents that must have originally existed were likely destroyed in one of a variety of ways, which is a rather universal phenomena that's also drastically reduced our viable copies of every other piece of ancient literature out there.

So I'm pretty darned certain that a great many efforts were made by many people involved to document Christ. Not all of it survived. As the Gospel of Judas would seem to indicate we're still in the process of recovering some ancient texts regarding the life of Christ to this day. It's somewhat of an ongoing process.

Which brings me to the next point. Why don't we have a gospel of Jesus?

Now that's a good question. We do know Christ was literate, so he didn't have illiteracy as an excuse not to write his stuff down. Then again, anything Christ himself would have written during his lifetime could have been easily used by the Pharisees to imprison or kill the guy. Jesus' relatively non-aggressive approach to spreading the gospel in that respect likely kept him alive that much longer. It's one thing if some guy is claiming to be God but you can't prove that he's done so because only the villagers are clamoring about it, it's another thing entirely if Jesus writes down his divine message -- the Pharisees would have certainly had legal justification to pounce on him far earlier.

There's also the additional problem that Jesus was trying to preach to a crowd that was mostly illiterate, and a majority of the people who were literate at that time wanted him dead. Beyond all that, I really can't say why he wouldn't still write a few details down for posterity's sake.