Can We Trust the New Testament?
Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION
To be continued...
Continuation of Chapter 3: THE TOOLS OF DISCRIMINATION
SOURCE CRITICISM
But we must move on from textual to literary or source criticism. As its name implies, this is concerned with questions of authorship, date, literary sources and documentary relationships. In the Gospels in particular it seeks to study and explain the close similarity at many points between the first three―so-called the Synoptic Gospels because they 'look together' at the life of Christ with a sort of stereoscopic vision. There is too much verbal agreement between them for this to be coincidental or due merely to common oral tradition. Either they are using each other or they have written sources in common―or both.
To be continued...
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