The conference brings together experts to:
Provide Christians with world-class scholarly evidence in support of the historical basis of the faith.
Equip them to share that faith with confidence.
Whose testimony can we trust? A widely held idea is that Christian beliefs arose over a long period of time through a mixture of gullibility and conspiracy. Early Christian records are held to be legend, myth or fabrication.
Who has the true message of Jesus? Probably the most popular idea in relation to the Bible is that books have been missed out or put in due to political pressure and various media have been full of talk about ‘other gospels’.
The four gospels and the other gospels compared. Another popular idea is that the Bible has been corrupted, either by deliberate falsification or simply lost through passage of time. Such ideas are promoted in the British media.
We are being bombarded with false information about the Bible. It’s alleged that it has been corrupted by power-hungry Christians. They are charged with having omitted books they did not like, and changing the original message of Jesus
Details asap
EDINBURGH
Charlotte Chapel
Sat. 29 January 2011
Booking not yet open
Dr Simon Gathercole is Editor of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Having studied Classics and Theology at Cambridge University.
| Evidence of History. Dr Simon J. Gathercole |
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Probably the most popular idea in relation to the Bible is that books have been missed out or put in due to political pressure and various media have been full of talk about ‘other gospels’. Here some of the most famous ‘other gospels’ are considered: the gospels of Thomas, Judas and Mary. But first it is important to establish two facts about the very earliest Christians and their beliefs:
They are less reliable than the canonical gospels both in their picture of history and in their picture of Jesus’ message. For real pictures of Jesus, based on eyewitness testimony, you need to read the New Testament. |
Who has the true message of Jesus?
It is found that while Matthew, Mark, Luke and John agree with these two Christian beliefs, the apocryphal gospels generally do not. They do not fit the pattern of earliest Christian belief precisely because they were written later.