What is Reddit's opinion of Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior?

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> I often get asked why, in my opinion, Jesus never wrote anything. According to some stories, he did indeed write. There is the famous account of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery found in later manuscripts of the Gospel of John, chapter 8, and familiar to Bible readers today both because it can still be found in most English translations (even if it is normally bracketed as not being original) and because it is the darling of every Hollywood director who has ever made a movie about Jesus. In that story, both before and after Jesus tells the Jewish leaders who want to execute judgment on the woman, “Let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her,” he stoops down and begins to write on the ground. Unfortunately, we don’t know what it was he wrote, even though later interpreters, down till today, have made numerous suggestions: Possibly he wrote a scripture verse about false judgments? Possibly a list of the sins of the woman’s accusers? Possibly divine threats against those who oppose him? There are lots of options.

• Jesus Before The Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior

There was no oral tradition in the sense they want you to think about it. People weren't sitting around trying to recite what they were told word-for-word. That did not happen. The oral tradition that Christianity followed is like what follows today. A guy tells, his neighbor who then tells his cousin and sister who the go off and chat with the person next to them at the community outhouse and bath and so on. IOW: gossip. that's how we got the stories about Jesus and we know that such a method is terrible at reflecting what actually happened.

Take the Jan 6th insurrection attempt. We have those mother-fuckers on FILM!!! We watched it LIVE!!! We can go back and rewatch that any time we want. And despite that, we already have people proclaiming that it was nothing like what we witnessed. That it was a group of tourists or protesters who "peacefully wanted to express their concern about the election results with Nancy." That was literally what a defended said at his trial.

And it doesn't even have to be a real event. Right now, there are people absolutely convinced that public schools installed kitty liter boxes so kids "who identify as a cat" has a place to take a shit. I have literally seen people who live in my county in the state of West "You got a purdy mouth" Virginia swear that they seen these boxes themselves and even have seen students using them. Oh course they somehow always "forget" to take a pic.

There's been studies of groups who use oral tradition to pass on thier people's traditions and ways and it's always been considered a bad way to do that. Bart Ehrman wrote a book discussing this issue. You might want to pic up a copy or listen on Audible. You can find youtube vids of him discussing this as well.

>...the New Testament has not been distorted since the time it was put to paper...

But we also have strong evidence that stories about Jesus were distorted as they were retold over the decades, BEFORE they were eventually written down (by people who heard the stories from people who heard from people who heard the stories from people who heard the stories).

Here’s a great book about it.

I wondered about such things that you have been talking about. I found that bracketing my own beliefs, which is difficult at first, in order to use historical-critical methods of scientific research would be the most useful method.

With the help of the scholars and laypersons of this sub, just over one year, I've been able to begin this type of research and I am thankful for their help.

The particular subject, that you are curious about (as am I), could start from a book that I just finished reading. For me, it was an introduction to oral traditions found within ancient traditions such as Judaism and early Christianity.

Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior