 Read-- Donald Senior, Jesus: A Gospel Potrait (Makati: St. Pauls, 1992) pp  The Lectures are in my website but they are not arranged according to number.

 We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person (Jesus Christ), which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. DEUS CARITAS EST 1 Benedict XVI

 Passing on the Faith: Scripture and Tradition ◦ Knowing Jesus Christ ◦ The Main Message: His life, death and resurrection  The main message in Scriptures  The Centrality of the Resurrection ◦ The Extraordinary Success of Christianity ◦ The Source of Our Stories: The Gospels ◦ Three Stages of Gospel Development  Jesus and his Disciples  Disciples and their Community  Evangelist (Gospel Writers) and their Community ◦ What are the Gospels?  Not Biographies—Faith Testimonies  From Faith To Faith  A Privileged Source  First Source  Normative—Standard ◦ Why do we trust these four Gospels and not the other gospels?: ◦ Are the Gospels reliable even if they have internal inconsistencies? ◦ Are the Gospels reliable even if they were written two thousand years ago?

..Sometimes it's hard to believe in it because there's no concrete proof.. How do we verify that religion and all this about Christianity isn't a fictional work made by some random person in the past?

 Mr. Roncal (together with some kind students) vs the whole class

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact!

 What are the three stages of Gospel development?  Why do we trust these four Gospels and not the other gospels?:  Are the Gospels reliable even if they have internal inconsistencies?  Are the Gospels reliable even if they were written two thousand years ago?

 They are not Biographies. The Gospels are faith testimonies. ◦ They are not just a result of divine dictation.

When modern Christians pick up a gospel and read it with a searching faith, they are duplicating the very process by which it came to be written. “From faith” in the sense that it was the faith of the church that maintained the genuine portrait of who Jesus was and what he was about. “To faith” in the sense that the gospels were written so that the belief of Christians might intensify as they came face to face with the words and actions of the risen Lord. Donald Senior, p.24

From Faith To Faith

Privileged Source To Faith Gospels: First Source Normative— Standard

“To faith” in the sense that the gospels were written so that the belief of Christians might intensify as they came face to face with the words and actions of the risen Lord. Donald Senior, p.24

AD Writings of PaulThe Gospels Apocryphal Gospels

0 AD 30 AD 33AD 65 AD 70 AD 90 AD

The Gospel of MarkEdsa Revolution  Mar 1:14-15  (14) Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God,  (15) and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel."

Oral Written Oral

Original Copies Greek LatinEnglish

65 AD 130 AD 200 AD325AD

 What to look for? ◦ How many handwritten copies (manuscripts) of the source there are, ◦ How close these are in time to the original work.  Signs of reliability ◦ The more copies there are with little disagreement among them ◦ The closer the manuscripts are in time to the original work

Work When written Earliest copyTime spanNo. of copies New Testament A.D.130 A.D. 30, 50, 100yrs* over 24,000 Homer (Iliad)900 B.C.400 B.C.500 yrs643 Demosthenes B.C.1100 A.D.1,300 yrs200 Plato (Tetralogies) B.C.900 A.D.1,200 yrs7 Caesar B.C.900 A.D.1,000 yrs10 Thucydides (History) B.C.900 A.D.1,300 yrs8 Herodotus (History) B.C.900 A.D.1,300 yrs8 Aristotle B.C.1100 A.D.1,400 yrs49 Euripides B.C.1100 A.D.1,500 yrs9 ( Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith, 39-64)

 The manuscript evidence for the "New Testament" is also dramatic, with nearly 25,000 ancient manuscripts discovered and archived so far, at least 5,600 of which are copies and fragments in the original Greek. 4 Some manuscript texts date to the early second and third centuries, with the time between the original autographs and our earliest existing fragment being a remarkably short years. ( John Ryland's Gospel of John fragment, John Ryland's Library of Manchester, England. ) manuscripts.htmNew Testament manuscripts.htm

 Canon – the closed collection or list of sacred books acknowledged by the Church as the rule of faith and life

450 BC: The Five Books (Pentateuch) was written 33 AD Death of Jesus Christ 60 AD St. Paul writes his first letter and the Gospel of Mark was written, Note: books of the Hebrew canon were in use 100 AD All the New Testament books have been written AD Latin version of the Bible was written (by St. Jerome) The Bible was translated into English, Council of Trent, list of the Canon 0-4BC Jesus is Born 1970 The New American Bible was written Council of Hippo, Carthage, Toulouse came out with a list of the NT books

 Apostolic origin-meaning no more than that an apostle had a traditional connection with a given work. –  Conformity to the Rule of Faith—meaning the writings expressed what the early Christians believed in  Constant Use among the Communities— meaning the writings that were commonly used by all the Churches were eventually accepted as part of the canon

 Is it possible to/Can you know (define first what you mean by “know”) Jesus today? ◦ Two Groups: Yes and No ◦ End Product:  Resolved Issues (Things everyone agreed with)  Unresolved Issues (Things not agreed on)