apostle peter

Mark’s Gospel: The Case for a Peter-Driven Memoir

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The Gospels’ authors are a topic of debate for those questioning the New Testament. Mark’s Gospel, early and rich in Jesus’ life story, lacks an eyewitness tag. How did Mark learn about Jesus? The church fathers largely agree that Mark served as a scribe or interpreter for Peter while he preached in Rome. In this post I’ll explore this evidence and see if it matches up with some internal clues. A couple of weak arguments against Petrine influence Before we move forward, let’s address a couple of common objections. Some people say that because Mark never explicitly says he got his information from Peter, it means he probably didn’t. After all, that’s a pretty big … Read more

The Gospels Are Embarrassing for the Apostles

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If you want people to trust their leaders, you usually would try to paint them in the best light possible. You don’t go out of your way to undermine their authority. But that isn’t what we see at all in the Gospels. Those who would eventually lead the church often look impulsive, incompetent, boastful, and stupid. If the Gospels are supposed to be PR for the apostles, their propaganda team was a dismal failure.  This kind of information is what NT scholars call the criteria of embarrassment. In his book, Marginal Jew, Meier writes: The point of the criterion is that the early church would hardly have gone out of its way to create material … Read more

Is Jesus Alive?