[UA] KJV Gospels (was Minor cards)

[wild at park.net]

On Wed, 19 Feb 2003 05:07:56 -0800 (PST), "Matthew SPEIGHT"
wrote:
> > Well, I checked my various copies of the Bible, and what
> strikes me is
> the bit 
> > that preceeds it.  While all four gospels occasionally
> differ here
> and there, it's 
> > weird when they align absolutely.
> 
> I think I heard somewhere that there is a fair bit of
> plagiarism
> between the various Gospels.

Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels (from
the greek, meaning Same View) because it is largely believed
by biblical scholars that they were all drawing on the same
source when they were writing.  This source is usually
referred to as Quelle (German for 'source' IIRC).

However, each Gospel writer then pushes their own message. 
Mark is taken to be the earliest gospel written because it
is mostly taken from Quelle. Matthew adds the most (IIRC)
but most of what he adds tends to be material that shows
that Jesus was the Son of God as foretold in the Old
Testament (all the verses where it says "As it said in
Isiah" etc.)

John is largely independant of Quelle, though of course,
because he and Quelle are reporting on the same events,
there is some overlap.

I don't have the figures to hand (am replying from work,
where they don't pay me to do biblical research) but there
are web pages that assess how much overlap there is between
the gospels in terms of their textual content.

This is one of the reasons that the Bible really shouldn't
be read as a fundamentalist document.

John (who gives up - no longer will he try to single
handedly maintain the UA purity of this list.)

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