Now, I don't pretend to know anything about theology or religion. I didn't go to Hebrew School or a Bible college or some kind of seminary. I didn't even go to Sunday School. In religion, there is too much fuzziness, too much debate, too much that is unknown. That is why, when I wrote The Heretic's Gospel, I concentrated on the known: archaeology, history, politics, mythology and human nature. Things you can point to and look at and hold in your hand and quantify.
Besides, if you look at the word "Gospel," you would see that one of its meanings is "God's Word." And I know that's how, for most of my life, I viewed the New Testament. To me, it was the Truth, a factual record of the actual events that occurred some, now, two thousand years ago. Like most people, I took the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John at face value, as gospel, as it were, as though it were dictated by God.
And then I began to think about it.
The oldest narrative, according to Wikipedia, is the Gospel According to Mark. Mark was a "companion" of Simon Peter, so he didn't know Jesus, but only knew what Simon Peter (Shlomo) had told him. The Gospel According to Mark was written, according to scholars, between 66 AD and 70 AD. Even if Mark had written it in his middle-age, and even if Jesus had died on a cross some thirty-three years before Mark wrote his book, we are talking about a thirty-three to thirty-seven year gap between Jesus' ministry and the telling of his story. This is the year 2014. Thirty-seven years ago, it was 1977. My son David was two years old in 1977. I was there, and I don't remember much. And if I had a friend who had a friend whom he had told all about me, I seriously doubt that my friend's friend would remember all of the niggling details of my life some thirty-seven years ago.
After that, we have the Gospel According to Matthew, written between 80 AD and 90 AD. I read somewhere that Matthew had written his gospel for money, and based his book on what he had read in The Gospel According to Mark. Matthew, if he did write that book, at least knew Jesus, whom Mark had never met. Still, he also would have been in his early old-age by the time he wrote it. I'm sixty, and I have trouble remembering stuff. Unless Matthew had a fantastic memory, he probably got stuff wrong, too, which is why there are such differences between the two gospels.
Directly after Matthew's book on Jesus was published, Luke published his own book, The Gospel According to Luke. Luke was a Gentile physician, according to the stories told of him, and a friend of Paul of Tarsus, who, like Mark, had never met Jesus. So we are talking at least three degrees of separation. And Luke was an educated man, well-versed in Greek mythology, and he put many mythic flourishes in his book, probably in order to enhance sales, to tell a better story, and to appeal to the Greek Gentiles. His book was written between 80 and 100 AD.
The last canonical gospel, The Gospel According to John, was written, according to Wikipedia, in 200 AD. Obviously, if Wikipedia is correct, John didn't write it, because he would have had to have been around 183 years old when he did. So it was written by somebody else and ascribed to him. And possibly, that person knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew John who knew Jesus. Six degrees of separation. On the other hand, some experts say that the book was written in 90 AD. However, considering that John was a half-mad recluse, and was probably thirteen years old when he hung around Jesus in the early thirties, he would have been in his early seventies when he wrote his book, if indeed he did, which would be a good reason why it reads as crazy as it does.
After that, we have The Gospel According to Mary (written between 120 and 180 AD), The Gospel According to James (written in 145 AD), The Gospel According to Philip (written no earlier than 150 AD), The Gospel According to Judah (circa 180 AD), The Gospel According to Thomas (circa 340 AD) and The Gospel According to Nicodemus (written in around 350 AD.) Many of these books were found with the Gnostics, a sect that competed with Roman Catholic Christianity, and since Roman Catholicism won, the influence and theology of the Gnostics all but vanished.
So, what happens when a bunch of people who view the same event are asked to write about said event? They tend to have different viewpoints that have been influenced by where they were standing at the time, what they heard, what they smelled, how they felt, and their previous experiences. For example, let's say that six people, a nurse, a lawyer, a mechanic, a barista, a homeless person and a politician, see a car accident between a Mercedes and a Ford on the corner of Sixth and Main. The nurse, who was outside of a medical clinic on the northwest corner, would have a different view of the accident, than the lawyer standing outside his office on the southeast corner. The mechanic on the northeast corner would see, smell, hear and perceive a different reality than the barista serving her customers on the southeast corner. The homeless person may have been sitting on the curb and he would see a different accident than the politician whose limo was next to the Mercedes in question. And of course, the Mercedes driver and the Ford driver would have two entirely different and conflicting stories to tell.
Furthermore, it is likely that blame would be assigned according to the witnesses' biases. The nurse, the lawyer and the politician may see the Mercedes driver as completely innocent, just because they all tend to be well-off. The mechanic, the barista and the homeless person may see the Ford driver as completely innocent, because they all tend to have limited means. And biases affect viewpoint and memory. Which is why the evidence is so important. Evidence is like Science, and Science (theoretically) doesn't care. And that is what the cops are for, to take witness statements, but also to gather evidence by measuring the tire-marks, gathering evidence of paint and then leaving it to the experts to know what happens when a Ford hits a Mercedes and when a Mercedes hits a Ford.
So what's the point? The point is that people wrote the Gospels, and people have flawed memories and biases and agendas. So really, there are no Gospels, since the Gospels, as well as the entire Bible, were written by people and not dictated word-for-word by God.
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