In Reply to: Re: you made my point posted by Bible student on April 28, 2004 at 10:38:02:
No intentions to use loaded language or convey meanings which are beyond my intended scope.
Where I'm coming from is that I've become very aware of the different perceptions we all get as human beings. Anything that happens to us is filtered through our own minds, processed and then expressed. Even if we know from the onset something is very big and beyond our natural comprehension, we can still only relay the information to others within the scope of our understanding or communication skills. When we try to express anything, we still have to work with the limits of our own language and culture. And then, we still have to make room for the fact people could still perceive things their own way.
That is why I mentioned my own interpretation of the Golden Rule vs. the traditional accepted one. Maybe that is pretty pfensive to many Christians, but that is just one passage I am convinced there was a higher meaning that got lost. (I find it very limiting to assume everyone wants to be treated just like me, and I can't possibly accept that that is what the idea was originally supposed to be.)
What I meant about the transciptions decades after the fact was, it is also human nature to revise facts after what we are able to accept. So after a given time, a few decades after Jesus had come and gone, it is very likely that some facts that realized much later were made to sound as though they were already accepted knowlege at the time it was all happening. There is a lot of evidence of this in the writing style of the gospels.
Human nature being what it is, with several accounts of the gospels, you have discrepancies and personal flavours mixed in.
For me, the fact that there are discrepancies does not convince me that the gospels are a fraud. They prove to me that they are believable accounts of what happened, albeit relayed to us with provision for human limitations and perceptions. My disposition is, human nature being as I understand it, had they been completely identical, I would more likely have suspected conspiracy.
But anyway, who knows if every single book that was considered for inclusion in the bible was duly recorded and noted? We only know of a few popular titles of gnostic gospels. It's not like the people appointed for the task of compiling the books of the bible were into being transparent and accountable to the public. My understanding is they were very secretive about it all.