<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">And the Presbyter [Papias (120–130)] used to say this, “Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said or done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had he followed him, but later on, as I said, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.”</em></p>
Ecclesiastical History (3:39:14-16) and similarly quoted in Papias 70-163, The Apostolic Fathers (volume 2), p. 103 – the earliest mention of what may be a named biblical gospel
– similarly quoted in Papias 70-163, The Apostolic Fathers (volume 2), p. 103, the earliest mention of what may be a named biblical gospel
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Now Matthew published among the Hebrews a written gospel also in their own tongue, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and founding the church. But after their death Mark also, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the things which were preached by Peter, and Luke also, who was a follower of Paul, put down in a book the gospel which was preached by him. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who had even rested on his breast, himself also gave forth the gospel, while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.</em></p>
Against the Heresies (3:1:1) quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (5:8:2-4), first clear mention of the four biblical gospels in the year of 180
quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (5:8:2-4), first clear mention of the four biblical gospels in the year of 180
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">But it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For since there are four zones in the world in which we live, and four principal winds … it is fitting that the Church have four pillars, breathing incorporation on every side … [God] gave us the gospel under four different forms but bound together by one spirit. </em></p>
Against the Heresies (3:11:8)
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">When these different Passion narratives are read side by side, one should not be upset by the contrasts or ask which view of Jesus is more correct: the Marcan Jesus, who plumbs the depths of abandonment only to be vindicated; the Lucan Jesus, who worries about others and gently dispenses forgiveness; or the Johannine Jesus, who reigns victoriously from the cross in control of all that happens. All three are given to us by the inspiring Spirit, and no one of them exhausts the meaning of Jesus. It’s as if one walks around a large diamond to look at it from different angles. </em></p>
A Crucified Christ in Holy Week (Liturgical Press 1986), pp. 70-71 – Quoted in Wills, What the Gospels Meant (p. 208)
– Quoted in Wills, What the Gospels Meant (p. 208)
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church.</em></p>
(1:1:105-107) – Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith (2:7), 1870, as well as similar statements in the current 1997 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1:1:105-107) making clear that “these books” include the Old Testament as well as the New (1:1:121-123)
– Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith (2:7), 1870, as well as similar statements in the current 1997 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1:1:105-107) making clear that “these books” include the Old Testament as well as the New (1:1:121-123)
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">By extracting Q from the pages of the traditional Gospels, historians have uncovered the missing link between Judaism and Christianity. In a sense, the Lost Gospel Q is pre-Christian. It was later writers who added the details about Jesus’ life and death that became the bedrock of Christian belief. Jesus in the Lost Gospel Q is neither Christ nor the Messiah but rather the last in a long line of Jewish prophets. He is a charismatic teacher, a healer, a simple man filled with the spirit of God. Jesus is also a sage, the personification of Wisdom, cast in the tradition of King Solomon.</em></p>
The Lost Gospel Q, pp. 27-28
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Him [Jesus] by His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same Being. </em></p>
letter to William Short, April 13, 1820
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book [the Gospels], and by arranging the matter which is evidently his [Jesus’], and which is as distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. </em></p>
letter to John Adams, October 13, 1813, as quoted in Jefferson Bible, p. 17
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">When, at the age of fifty, I first began to study the Gospels seriously, I found in them the spirit that animates all who are truly alive. But along with the flow of that pure, life-giving water, I perceived much mire and slime mingled with it; and this had prevented me from seeing the true, pure water.</em></p>
as quoted by Stephen Mitchell in The Gospel According to Jesus, appendix (1), p. 289
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">When I was young it was impossible to read them [the Gospels] without fantastic confusion of thought. The confusion was so utterly confounded that it was called the proper spirit to read the Bible in. Jesus was a baby; and he was older than creation. He was a man who could be persecuted, stoned, scourged, and killed; and he was a god, immortal and all-powerful, able to raise the dead and call millions of angels to his aid. It was a sin to doubt either view of him; and the end was that you did not reason about him, and read about him only when you were compelled. </em></p>
Preface [to Androcles and the Lion] on the Prospects of Christianity (1915), in Complete Plays and Prefaces (volume 5), p. 328
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It is no exaggeration to say that they [the Disciples] are among the most unpromising assortment of blunderers it was ever a sage’s misfortune to endure. They are always saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, asking obtuse questions, jumping to absurd conclusions, missing the point, or otherwise putting their foot in their mouth. </em></p>
CS Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, p. 120
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">When we examine the Gospels as a whole, what we see is a chronology of exaggeration: from nothing more than “revelatory” experiences in Paul [which could well be an interpolation], to a vanished body in Mark, to a vaguely physical encounter with Jesus in Matthew, to a very physical encounter in Luke, all the way to an incredible physical encounter in John (and if we go beyond the canon, the next stage is reflected in the Gospel of Peter: actually witnessing Jesus rise from the grave). </em></p>
“The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb,” in The Empty Tomb, p. 194
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Let me illustrate [how Christianity spread] with a hypothetical example. I’m a coppersmith who lives in Ephesus, in Asia Minor. A stranger comes to town and begins to preach about the miraculous life and death of Jesus. I hear all the stories he has to tell, and decide to give up my devotion to the local pagan deity, Athena, and become a follower of the Jewish God and Jesus his son. I then convert my wife, based on the stories that I repeat. She tells the next-door-neighbor, and she converts. The neighbor tells the stories to her husband, a merchant, and he converts. He goes on a business trip to Smyrna and tells his business associate the stories. He converts, and then tells his wife, who also converts.</em></p>
Jesus Interrupted (5), p. 146
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">By ingeniously creating a prophetic synonymity between circa 30 and events circa 70, between the fate of the Son of Man and the fate of the Temple, Mark preserved the authority of the threatened tradition [the imminent apocalypse] by deploying it … His gospel closes … with the empty tomb. Here Mark’s twin perspectives merge completely: the resurrection becomes the Parousia </em></p>
From Jesus to Christ, pp. 184-185
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">What overcame the world, because it was what the world desired, was not a moral reform — for that was preached by every sect; not an ascetic regime — for that was practiced … by pagan philosophers; not brotherly love within the Church — for Jews had and have that at least in equal measure; but what overcame the world was what Saint Paul said he would always preach: Christ and him crucified. Therein was a new poetry, a new ideal, a new God.</em></p>
Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (3), pp. 85-86
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Because [the Gospels portray] something which neither the poets nor the historians of antiquity ever set out to portray: the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within everyday occurrences of contemporary life … What we witness is the awakening of ‘a new heart and a new spirit.’</em></p>
Mimesis, pp. 42-43
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If one comes to the New Testament, with what solid props its truth is supported! Three Evangelists [apart from John] recount their history in a humble and lowly style; for many a proud folk, this simplicity arouses contempt … Yet the truth cries out openly that these men who … suddenly began to discourse so gloriously of the heavenly mysteries must have been instructed by the Spirit. </em></p>
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1:8:11), pp. 90-91 – proof by language
– proof by language
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">... we would have to imagine that the most sublime moral sentiments ever expressed [mainly in the Gospels] had somehow been drafted in the service of a cheap fraud. </em></p>
Desire of the Everlasting Hills, p. 220 – proof by language
– proof by language
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I am a Materialist; he [Jesus] takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require the counterpoise of good works … It is the innocence of His character, the purity and sublimity of His moral precepts, the eloquence of His inculcations, the beauty of his apologues in which He conveys them, that I so much admire.</em></p>
“Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, Compared with Those of Others,” in a letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803 – proof by language
– proof by language
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