kindle-sync: bookId: '18795' title: >- Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture author: J. Ed Komoszewski asin: B001QOGJXQ lastAnnotatedDate: '2017-01-29' bookImageUrl: 'https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51wWCS0dHbL._SY160.jpg' highlightsCount: 18

Reinventing Jesus

Metadata

• Author: J. Ed Komoszewski
• ASIN: B001QOGJXQ
• ISBN: 082542982X
• Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001QOGJXQ
• Kindle link

Highlights

If true, the transformation was carried out in a coherent fashion and caught on throughout the Greco-Roman world with breathtaking speed. — location: 175 ^ref-5170

It might be better to ask, Why were the Gospels written at all? If we think in categories of delay, then this presupposes that the writing of the Gospels was in the minds of these authors from the beginning. However, that is almost certainly not the case. What was paramount in the apostles' earliest motives was oral proclamation of the gospel. They wanted to disseminate the word as quickly as possible. — location: 188 ^ref-64489

Scholars often point to two catalysts that prompted the writing of the Gospels. First, the apostles started to die off. And second, the Lord's return was evidently not going to happen within the first few decades of the church's existence. These two factors are often suggested as the main reasons why the Gospels began to be written. — location: 198 ^ref-23057

Even if Mark were written this late, there would have been plentyof eyewitnesses still living to confirm the truth of what he wrote. But there is significant evidence to suggest that he wrote earlier than this. — location: 208 ^ref-15107

Robinson concludes, "I fail to see any motive for preserving, let alone inventing, prophecies long after the dust had settled in Judaea, unless it be to present Jesus as prognosticator of uncanny accuracy (in which case the evangelists have defeated the exercise by including palpably unfulfilled predictions). — location: 220 ^ref-17656

What all this means for Matthew and Luke is simply that they too were most likely written before 70. Again, the two basic reasons to argue this are that (1) Luke is the first volume of Luke-Acts and Acts was most likely written in the early 60s; and (2) the argument that the Gospels must be written after 70 because predictive prophecy is impossible backfires in the Olivet discourse (recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels) since the prophecy was not completely fulfilled at that time." — location: 223 ^ref-14852

Memory in community is a deathblow to the view that the disciples simply forgot the real Jesus. — location: 260 ^ref-33644

But in the Gospels, Jesus used "amen" at the beginning of his own statements-as if to say that what he is about to declare is the will and word of God. And in the twenty-five times that such an "amen" occurs in John, it is always doubled — location: 336 ^ref-11562

The reason why the title `Son of Man' is excluded is the fact that it expresses such a high Christological view of Jesus."9 — location: 356 ^ref-13435

Not only is the Jesus Seminar inconsistent in applying its own principles due to a strong bias against seeing Jesus as more than a man, but such bias also leaves them with a Jesus whose death as a criminal is a huge mystery. — location: 361 ^ref-9210

That he would speak of his mission (which "I have come" implies) obviously shows that he is more than a sage, a poet, or a peasant philosopher. — location: 384 ^ref-50665

The only certainty of postmodernism is uncertainty itself. Concomitant with this is an intellectual pride-pride that one "knows" enough to be skeptical about all positions. — location: 579 ^ref-28834

To be sure, it may not be exactly like the original, but the increase in early, diverse manuscripts from all over the Mediterranean world ensures that scholars have the tools to reconstruct substantially what the original text said. — location: 614 ^ref-16497

The New Testament manuscripts stand closer to the original and are more plentiful than virtually anyother ancient literature. The New Testament is far and away the best-attested work of Greek or Latin literature in the ancient world. — location: 622 ^ref-50258

Besides the Greek manuscripts, there are Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Gothic, Georgian, Arabic, and many other versions of the New Testament. The Latin manuscriptsnumber over ten thousand. — location: 629 ^ref-25297

When it comesto manuscript production and preservation from the first three centuries, the Christian documents were at a decided disadvantage because the political cards were stacked against them.16 Yet, remarkably, the New Testament manuscripts are more plentiful during this era than are copies of any other ancient literature. — location: 640 ^ref-36644

It is naive to think that the KJV represents the original text better than do most modern translations. However, it is an overstatement to say that because we can't be sure about everything we can't be sure about anything. — location: 647 ^ref-43204

The reality is that these very families help determine the original wording. If the manuscripts were unrelated to each other, we would have few clues about which manuscripts faithfully reproduce the original. But with families of manuscripts, a genealogical tree can be constructed to show which groups of manuscripts are derived from which. — location: 660 ^ref-21086