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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe
From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Bill Jefferys on the writing of the gospels
Message-ID: <867@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Nov-84 21:08:49 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.867
Posted: Thu Nov  8 21:08:49 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Nov-84 05:37:15 EST
References: <716@osu-dbs.UUCP> <516@umcp-cs.UUCP> <714@utastro.UUCP> <243@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: mangoe@maryland.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 23

In article <243@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:

>I just thought that this piece merited reiteration.  It was my understanding
>that many Christian scholars do believe that if Jesus existed he may not have
>made his own claims to divinity, that those claims were made by those who
>followed in an effort to promote the religion that had formulated.  With this
>in mind, is it reasonable to consider any of these accounts as infallible
>evidence?  (I know:  it's not, but you do anyway... )

There is no infallible evidence. [There, got that out of my system.]

As to the speculation that Jesus did not ever make any claims to
divinity; this is an old and hotly disputed question.  On the one hand, in
much of the Gospels he appears to back away from such a claim.  On the
other, there are too many places where the claim is quite obvious and
explicit.  The evidence ends there; speculations such as "as a first
century jew, he would never have thought of such a thing" are just that.
The gospels are all that we have, and taken on face value, they do contain
claims to divinity.

Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe
 
Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est.