From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Jesus is a Prophet, not Son of God
Date: 11 Nov 92 06:03:20 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) writes:

>>        Your statements concerning Jesus's claim of Godhood, etc. are based on
>>        the New Testament books - all of which are PSEUDOPIGRAPHIC (I have
>>        provided, in a separate reply, the references to this proven theory).

>>        As such, the statements which are attributed to Jesus simply
>>        may not be true. Biblical scholars all agree that none of the gospels
>>        were written by actual disciples (not even Matthew's and John's),

>This is simply not true.

There are disagreements in this area.  It certainly is not true that
all Biblical scholars agree that none of the gospels were written by
actual disciples.  At least not unless you use a carefully crafted
definition of scholar.  It is true that only fairly conservative
scholars would say that any of the disciples wrote any of the Gospels
as we have them now.  But that statement isn't as significant as it
sounds.  A number of conservative and moderate scholars believe that
Matthew, Mark, and John were based on information from the apostles
Matthew, Peter, and John respectively, and were considered by the
church to have the authority of those apostles, although the actual
writing was done by one of their followers, probably near the time of
their death.  That's my own conclusion.

As for all the NT being pseudepigraphic, that depends upon what you
mean by the term.  The Concise Oxford defines it as "spurious".  I
could well believe that a Moslem may regard the entire NT as spurious.
That's a matter of judgement.  If you mean that the books were not
written by who they claim to be, there is overwhelming scholarly
concensus that Paul wrote the major Pauline letters.  (Doubts exist
about the Pastorals and maybe Ephesians and Colossians.  I've heard
doubts about II Thes, but I don't think that's common.)  Also that
Luke wrote Luke and Acts.  While there is certainly not a concensus,
there seems to be a reasonable body of non-fundamentalist scholars who
accept the traditional attributions for Rev. (though there's some
question whether it's John the disciple or John the Elder), 1 Peter,
James, and Jude (who would invent Jude as an author???).  I mention
James and Jude in this list rather than the overwhelming concensus
list simply because I'm not that familiar with scholarship on them.

As for the date, there is no concensus as to how many of the NT books
were written before 70.  That some of them were is obvious: Paul's
letters are certainly from before 70.  Most (almost all?) scholars
believe that Mark was as well.  John A. T. Robinson -- hardly a
fundamentalist -- argued that the entire NT was written before 70.  I
was unable to assess his argument.  I cite it simply to make it clear
that some moderate critics do accept early dates.  However I don't
claim that there is a concensus on this.

On the other side, I would say that the claimed copy of Mark from 50
AD (not cited in this article, but in another reply) is not yet
generally accepted.  This doesn't mean it's wrong.  (I'm not in a
position to say that, and I think the assessment isn't yet finished.)
But it certainly shouldn't be cited as fact.