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111-512: Gospel ( Ancient Greek : εὐαγγέλιον ; Latin : evangelium ) originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel "), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus , culminating in his trial and death and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances . The gospels are

222-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

333-497: A fabrication since different eyewitnesses would have perceived and remembered differently. According to Chris Keith, a historical Jesus is "ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations of the early Christians , and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." According to Keith, "these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible," calling into question

444-550: A first-born and that "until" did not have the meaning Helvidius construed for it, painted a repulsive word-portrait of Joseph having intercourse with a blood-stained and exhausted Mary immediately after she has given birth—the implication, in his view, of Helvidius's arguments. Opinions on the quality of Jerome's rebuttal range from the view that it was masterful and well-argued to thin, rhetorical and sometimes tasteless. Two other 4th century Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa , following "a certain apocryphal account", and Augustine , advanced

555-646: A further argument by reading Luke 1:34 as a vow of perpetual virginity on Mary's part; this idea, first introduced in the Protoevangelium of James, has little scholarly support today, but it and the arguments advanced by Jerome and Ambrose were put forward by Pope John Paul II in his catechesis of August 28, 1996, as the four facts supporting the Catholic Church's ongoing faith in Mary's perpetual virginity. It has been argued from John 19 , where Jesus entrusts Mary to

666-528: A guarantee of his reliability, and the Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources for Christ's ministry. Assessments of the reliability of the Gospels involve not just the texts but studying the long oral and written transmission behind them using methods like memory studies and form criticism , with different scholars coming to different conclusions. James D.G. Dunn believed that the earliest tradents within

777-506: A kind of bios , or ancient biography , meant to convince people that Jesus was a charismatic miracle-working holy man, providing examples for readers to emulate. As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD, and modern biblical scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically as historical documents, though they provide a good idea of Jesus's public career; according to Graham Stanton , with

888-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

999-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

1110-540: A life-long virgin, argued that these adelphoi were the sons of "Mary, the mother of James and Joses" ( Mark 15:40 ), who he identified with the wife of Clopas and sister of the virgin Mary (John 19:25), which remains popular in the Western church. A modern proposal considers these adelphoi sons of "Mary, the mother of James and Joses" (not here identified with the Virgin Mary's sister), and Clopas, who according to Hegesippus

1221-527: A normal human birth, then his body was something other than a truly human one. As reported by Augustine , Jovinian "denied that the virginity of Mary, which existed when she conceived, remained while she gave birth." Augustine goes on to say that the reason for Jovinian's denial of Mary's virginity in partu was that the doctrine was too close to the Manichean view that Christ was simply a phantom. According to Ambrose, Jovinian maintained that Mary had conceived as

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1332-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

1443-450: A previous marriage". According to Richard Bauckham , Ignatius of Antioch also believed in the doctrine of Mary's virginity in partu . The Gospel of James states that Mary remained a life-long virgin, because Joseph was an old man who married her without physical desire, and the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the canonical gospels are explained as Joseph's sons by an earlier marriage. The Protoevangelium seems to have been used to create

1554-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

1665-490: A stable tradition resulting in little invention in the Gospels. Le Donne expressed himself thusly vis-a-vis more skeptical scholars, "He (Dale Allison) does not read the gospels as fiction, but even if these early stories derive from memory, memory can be frail and often misleading. While I do not share Allison's point of departure (i.e. I am more optimistic), I am compelled by the method that came from it." Dale Allison emphasizes

1776-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

1887-549: A variety of reasons, the majority of scholars have abandoned this view or hold it only tenuously. Most scholars believe that the Historical Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who predicted the imminent end or transformation of the world, though others, notably the Jesus Seminar , disagree. As eyewitnesses began to die, and as the missionary needs of the church grew, there was an increasing demand and need for written versions of

1998-402: A variety of sources, followed by Matthew and Luke , which both independently used Mark for their narrative of Jesus's career, supplementing it with a collection of sayings called "the Q source ", and additional material unique to each. Alan Kirk praises Matthew in particular for his "scribal memory competence" and "his high esteem for and careful handling of both Mark and Q", which makes claims

2109-473: A virgin, but she had not given birth as a virgin. Jerome wrote against Jovinian but failed to mention this aspect of his teaching, and most commentators believe that he did not find it offensive. Jovinian also found two monks in Milan, Sarmatio and Barbatian , who held similar views as Jovinian. The only important Christian intellectual to defend Mary's virginity in partu was Ambrose , Archbishop of Milan, who

2220-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

2331-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

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2442-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

2553-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

2664-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

2775-620: Is found in the Gospel of Matthew and possibly in Luke , but it seems to have little theological importance before the middle of the 2nd century. The 2nd century Church fathers Irenaeus and Justin Martyr , though mentioning the virgin birth, nowhere affirmed explicitly the view that Mary was a perpetual virgin. This idea, however, appears in at least three second-century works: the Protoevangelium of James ,

2886-627: Is not entirely clear on the issue of Mary's virginity post partum , with some scholars denying his traditional association with the Helvidian position. Helvidius also argued that Victorinus believed that Mary had other children; Jerome later claimed that Helvidius was misinterpreting Victorinus. Epiphanius invented a name " Antidicomarians " for a group of people who denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, which Epiphanius attacked. Their same views were also mentioned earlier by Origen , although he too rejected them as heretical. They were active from

2997-546: Is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

3108-687: Is that the Pauline epistles , the four gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles , all mention the brothers ( adelphoi ) of Jesus, with Mark and Matthew recording their names and Mark adding unnamed sisters. The Gospel of James , followed a century later by Epiphanius , explained the adelphoi as Joseph's children by an earlier marriage, which is still the view of the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. Jerome, believing that Joseph, like Mary, must be

3219-405: Is that the authors of Matthew and Luke based their narratives on Mark's gospel, editing him to suit their own ends, and the contradictions and discrepancies among these three versions and John make it impossible to accept both traditions as equally reliable with regard to the historical Jesus. In addition, the gospels read today have been edited and corrupted over time, leading Origen to complain in

3330-478: Is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life. He presents a significantly different picture of Jesus's career, omitting any mention of his ancestry, birth and childhood, his baptism , temptation and transfiguration ; his chronology and arrangement of incidents is also distinctly different, clearly describing the passage of three years in Jesus's ministry in contrast to

3441-668: Is too one-sided, noting that memory "is nevertheless sufficiently stable to authentically bring the past to bear on the present" and that people are beholden to memory's successes in everyday life. Craig Keener , drawing on the works of previous studies by Dunn, Alan Kirk, Kenneth Bailey , and Robert McIver, among many others, utilizes memory theory and oral tradition to argue that the Gospels are in many ways historically accurate. His work has been endorsed by Markus Bockmuehl , James Charlesworth , and David Aune , among others. According to Bruce Chilton and Craig Evans , "...the Judaism of

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3552-576: The Gospel of Peter and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas . All of these early sources independently assert that the so-called "brothers of the Lord" were children of Joseph's first marriage. According to Protestant scholar Richard Bauckham , these works "show no signs of literary relationship" and probably "evidence of a well-established tradition in (probably early) second-century Syrian Christianity that Jesus' brothers and sisters were children of Joseph by

3663-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

3774-596: The Incarnation of Christ despite the challenges to its scriptural foundations. Modern Protestants have largely rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary on the basis of sola scriptura, and it has rarely appeared explicitly in confessions or doctrinal statements, though the perpetual virginity of Mary is still a common belief in Anglicanism and Lutheranism . Among the Anabaptists , Hubmaier never abandoned his belief in

3885-534: The Protoevangelium of James . The Second Council of Constantinople in 553 gave her the title "Aeiparthenos", meaning Perpetual Virgin, and at the Lateran Synod of 649 Pope Martin I emphasized the threefold character of the perpetual virginity, before, during, and after the birth of Christ. The Lutheran Smalcald Articles (1537) and the Reformed Second Helvetic Confession (1562) codified

3996-542: The Second Helvetic Confession —stating that Mary was the "ever virgin Mary"—and in the notes of the Geneva Bible . Theodore Beza , a prominent early Calvinist, included the perpetual virginity of Mary in a list of agreements between Calvinism and the Catholic Church. Some reformers upheld the doctrine to counter more radical reformers who questioned the divinity of Christ; Mary's perpetual virginity guaranteed

4107-481: The gospel of Peter affirmed the perpetual virginity of Mary, saying that the "brothers" of Jesus were from a previous marriage of Joseph. Tertullian , who came between Clement and Origen, denied Mary's virginity in partu to refute the docetist idea that the Son of God could not have assumed a human body ("although she was a virgin when she conceived, she was a wife when she brought forth her son"). Tertullian, however,

4218-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

4329-458: The synoptic gospels because they present very similar accounts of the life of Jesus. Mark begins with the baptism of the adult Jesus and the heavenly declaration that he is the son of God; he gathers followers and begins his ministry, and tells his disciples that he must die in Jerusalem but that he will rise; in Jerusalem, he is at first acclaimed but then rejected, betrayed, and crucified, and when

4440-434: The "fourfold gospel" ( euangelion tetramorphon ). The many apocryphal gospels arose from the 1st century onward, frequently under assumed names to enhance their credibility and authority, and often from within branches of Christianity that were eventually branded heretical. They can be broadly organised into the following categories: The apocryphal gospels can also be seen in terms of the communities which produced them: It

4551-434: The 3rd century that "the differences among manuscripts have become great [...] [because copyists] either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please." Most of these are insignificant, but some are significant, an example being Matthew 1:18, altered to imply the pre-existence of Jesus. For these reasons, modern scholars are cautious of relying on

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4662-463: The 3rd to the 5th century. According to Epiphanius the Antidicomarians claimed that Apollinaris of Laodicea or his disciples denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, though Epiphanius doubted the claim. Early Christian theologians such as Hippolytus (170–235), Eusebius (260/265–339/340) and Epiphanius (c. 310/320–403) defended the perpetual virginity of Mary. By the early 4th century

4773-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

4884-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

4995-516: The Baptist , calls disciples, teaches and heals and confronts the Pharisees , dies on the cross and is raised from the dead. Each has its own distinctive understanding of him and his divine role and scholars recognize that the differences of detail among the gospels are irreconcilable, and any attempt to harmonize them would only disrupt their distinct theological messages. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are termed

5106-705: The Bible alone as the fundamental source of authority regarding God's word ( sola scriptura ). The reformers noted that while scripture records the virgin birth , it makes no mention of Mary's perpetual virginity following the birth of Christ . Mary's perpetual virginity was upheld by Martin Luther (who names her ever-virgin in the Smalcald Articles , a Lutheran confession of faith written in 1537), Huldrych Zwingli , Thomas Cranmer , Wollebius , Bullinger , John Wycliffe and later Protestant leaders including John Wesley ,

5217-485: The Christian churches [were] preservers more than innovators [...] seeking to transmit, retell, explain, interpret, elaborate, but not create de novo [...] Through the main body of the Synoptic tradition [...] we have in most cases direct access to the teaching and ministry of Jesus as it was remembered from the beginning of the transmission process [...] and so fairly direct access to the ministry and teaching of Jesus through

5328-552: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Perpetual virginity of Mary The extant written tradition of the perpetual virginity of Mary first appears in a late 2nd-century text called

5439-556: The Gospel of Luke. The Muratorian canon , the earliest surviving list of books considered (by its own author at least) to form Christian scripture, included Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Irenaeus of Lyons went further, stating that there must be four gospels and only four because there were four corners of the Earth and thus the Church should have four pillars. He referred to the four collectively as

5550-506: The Gospel-texts. According to Dunn, "What we actually have in the earliest retellings of what is now the Synoptic tradition...are the memories of the first disciples-not Jesus himself, but the remembered Jesus. The idea that we can get back to an objective historical reality, which we can wholly separate and disentangle from the disciples' memories...is simply unrealistic." These memories can contradict and are not always historically correct, as

5661-480: The Gospels display. Chris Keith argues that the Historical Jesus was the one who could create these memories, both true or not. For instance, Mark and Luke disagree on how Jesus came back to the synagogue, with the likely more accurate Mark arguing he was rejected for being an artisan, while Luke portrays Jesus as literate and his refusal to heal in Nazareth as cause of his dismissal. Keith does not view Luke's account as

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5772-672: The Gospels should be trusted, though he is more skeptical on the details; if they are broadly unreliable, then our sources almost certainly cannot have preserved any of the particulars. Opposing preceding approaches where the Gospels are historically questionable and must be rigorously sifted through by competent scholars for nuggets of information, Allison argues that the Gospels are generally accurate and often 'got Jesus right'. Dale Allison finds apocalypticism to be recurrently attested, among various other themes. Reviewing his work, Rafael Rodriguez largely agrees with Allison's methodology and conclusions while arguing that Allison's discussion on memory

5883-454: The Holy Spirit, and without loss of integrity brought him forth, and after his birth preserved her virginity inviolate. Thomas Aquinas admitted that reason could not prove this, but argued that it must be accepted because it was "fitting", for as Jesus was the only-begotten son of God, so he should also be the only-begotten son of Mary, as a second and purely human conception would disrespect

5994-515: The Jewish scriptures, by quoting or referencing passages, interpreting texts, or alluding to or echoing biblical themes. Such use can be extensive: Mark's description of the Parousia (second coming) is made up almost entirely of quotations from scripture. Matthew is full of quotations and allusions , and although John uses scripture in a far less explicit manner, its influence is still pervasive. Their source

6105-544: The Mary named in Mark 15:40 as "mother of James and Joses", who has been identified as either the wife of Clopas and sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, or a sister-in-law to Joseph. The Odes of Solomon have been interpreted as implying that Mary was a virgin even during childbirth as well as stating that Mary did not have pain during childbirth. Similar statements exist in the Ascension of Isaiah . The virgin birth of Jesus

6216-511: The Middle Ages the perpetual virginity of Mary was commonly accepted, however the Paulicians denied her perpetual virginity, even saying that Christ denied her to be blessed. The Protestant Reformation saw a rejection of the special moral status of lifelong celibacy. As a result, marriage and parenthood were extolled, and Mary and Joseph were seen as a normal married couple. It also affirmed

6327-526: The New Testament references to the brothers and sisters of Jesus as signifying his kin, but not the biological children of his mother. The Latin Church, known more commonly today as the Catholic Church, shared the Council of Constantinople with the theologians of the Greek or Orthodox communion, and therefore shares with them the title Aeiparthenos as accorded to Mary. The Catholic Church has gone further than

6438-578: The Orthodox in making the Perpetual Virginity one of the four Marian dogmas, meaning that it is held to be a truth divinely revealed , the denial of which is heresy . It declares her virginity before, during and after the birth of Jesus , or in the definition formulated by Pope Martin I at the Lateran Council of 649 : The blessed ever-virginal and immaculate Mary conceived, without seed, by

6549-467: The Roman Empire (some 2,500 miles across), with thousands of participants—from different backgrounds, with different concerns, and in different contexts—some of whom have to translate the stories into different languages. While multiple quests have been undertaken to reconstruct the historical Jesus, since the late 1990s concerns have been growing about the possibility to reconstruct a historical Jesus from

6660-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

6771-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

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6882-451: The birth of Christ. Athanasius of Alexandria (d.393) declared Mary Aeiparthenos , "ever-virgin", and the liturgy of James the brother of Jesus likewise required a declaration of Mary as ever-virgin. This view was defended by Augustine , Hilary of Poitiers , Didymus the Blind , Cyril of Alexandria among others. The Apostles' Creed taught the doctrine of virginitas in partu . In

6993-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

7104-480: The co-founder of Methodism . Osiander denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, for which Melanchthon was scornful. John Calvin 's view was more ambiguous, believing that knowing what happened to Mary after the birth of Jesus is impossible. However John Calvin argued that Matthew 1:25 , used by Helvidius to attack the perpetual virginity of Mary does not teach that Mary had other children. Other Calvinists affirmed Mary's perpetual virginity, including within

7215-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

7326-452: The disciple John instead of his brothers, to support the view that Jesus had no brothers, however Protestants have generally argued in two ways against this passage, one by claiming that the brothers of Jesus were unbelievers or that they were not present during the crucifixion. Some have argued that Mary and Joseph could not have had a normal marriage if Mary remained a perpetual virgin; however, it has been argued by some Catholics that there

7437-402: The doctrine of perpetual virginity of Mary as well. The doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity has been challenged on the basis that the New Testament explicitly affirms her virginity only until the birth of Jesus and mentions the brothers ( adelphoi ) of Jesus , who may have been: (1) sons of Mary, the mother of Jesus , and Joseph ; (2) sons of Joseph by a former marriage; or (3) sons of

7548-430: The doctrine, while others arguing that he disputed the perpetual virginity of Mary. The Ebionites denied the virgin birth and Mary's perpetual virginity. In the 3rd century, Hippolytus of Rome held that Mary was "ever-virgin", while Clement of Alexandria , writing soon after the Protoevangelium appeared, appealed to its incident of a midwife who examined Mary immediately after the birth ("after giving birth, she

7659-460: The early traditions were fluid and subject to alteration, sometimes transmitted by those who had known Jesus personally, but more often by wandering prophets and teachers like the Apostle Paul , who did not know him personally. Ehrman explains how the tradition developed as it was transmitted: You are probably familiar with the old birthday party game " telephone ." A group of kids sits in a circle,

7770-453: The eyes and ears of those who went about with him. Anthony Le Donne, a leading memory researcher in Jesus studies, elaborated on Dunn's thesis, basing "his historiography squarely on Dunn’s thesis that the historical Jesus is the memory of Jesus recalled by the earliest disciples." According to Le Donne as explained by his reviewer, Benjamin Simpson, memories are fractured, and not exact recalls of

7881-404: The first tells a brief story to the one sitting next to her, who tells it to the next, and to the next, and so on, until it comes back full circle to the one who started it. Invariably, the story has changed so much in the process of retelling that everyone gets a good laugh. Imagine this same activity taking place, not in a solitary living room with ten kids on one afternoon, but over the expanse of

7992-526: The focus of research has shifted to Jesus as remembered by his followers, and understanding the Gospels themselves. The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible . They were probably written between AD 66 and 110, which puts their composition likely within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus's own family. Most scholars hold that all four were anonymous (with

8103-542: The founder's life and teachings. The stages of this process can be summarized as follows: Mark is generally agreed to be the first gospel; it uses a variety of sources, including conflict stories (Mark 2:1–3:6), apocalyptic discourse (4:1–35), and collections of sayings, although not the sayings gospel known as the Gospel of Thomas , and probably not the hypothesized Q source used by Matthew and Luke. The authors of Matthew and Luke, acting independently, used Mark for their narrative of Jesus' career, supplementing it with

8214-756: The four canonical gospels, and like them advocating the particular theological views of their various authors. Important examples include the gospels of Thomas , Peter , Judas , and Mary ; infancy gospels such as that of James (the first to introduce the perpetual virginity of Mary ); and gospel harmonies such as the Diatessaron . Gospel is the Old English translation of the Hellenistic Greek term εὐαγγέλιον , meaning "good news"; this may be seen from analysis of ευαγγέλιον ( εὖ "good" + ἄγγελος "messenger" + -ιον diminutive suffix). The Greek term

8325-404: The gospels uncritically, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of later authors. Scholars usually agree that John is not without historical value: certain of its sayings are as old or older than their synoptic counterparts, and its representation of the topography around Jerusalem is often superior to that of the synoptics. Its testimony that Jesus

8436-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

8547-432: The historical Jesus continues apace, so much so that no one can any longer keep up; we are all overwhelmed." The oldest gospel text known is 𝔓 , a fragment of John dating from the first half of the 2nd century. The creation of a Christian canon was probably a response to the career of the heretic Marcion ( c.  85 –160), who established a canon of his own with just one gospel, the Gospel of Marcion , similar to

8658-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

8769-596: The hypothesized collection of sayings called the Q ;source and additional material unique to each called the M ;source (Matthew) and the L ;source (Luke). Mark, Matthew, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels because of their close similarities of content, arrangement, and language. The authors and editors of John may have known the synoptics, but did not use them in the way that Matthew and Luke used Mark. All four also use

8880-462: The latter two works are significantly theologically or historically different dubious. There have been different views on the transmission of material that led to the Synoptic Gospels , with various scholars arguing memory or orality reliably preserved traditions that ultimately go back to the Historical Jesus . Other scholars have been more skeptical and see more changes in the traditions prior to

8991-457: The methods and aim of the first model. Keith argues that criticism of the criteria of authenticity does not mean scholars cannot research the Historical Jesus , but rather that scholarship should seek to understand the Gospels rather than trying to sift through them for nuggets of history. Regardless of the methodological challenges historical Jesus studies have flowered in recent years; Dale Allison laments, "The publication of academic books about

9102-406: The modern names of the " Four Evangelists " added in the 2nd century), almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses to the Historical Jesus , though most scholars view the author of Luke-Acts as an eyewitness to Paul , and all are the end-products of long oral and written transmission (which did involve eyewitnesses). According to the majority of scholars, Mark was the first to be written, using

9213-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

9324-477: The past. Le Donne further argues that the remembrance of events is facilitated by relating it to a common story, or "type." This means the Jesus-tradition is not a theological invention of the early Church, but rather a tradition shaped and refracted through such memory "type." Le Donne too supports a conservative view on typology compared to some other scholars, transmissions involving eyewitnesses, and ultimately

9435-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

9546-436: The period treated such traditions very carefully, and the New Testament writers in numerous passages applied to apostolic traditions the same technical terminology found elsewhere in Judaism [...] In this way they both identified their traditions as 'holy word' and showed their concern for a careful and ordered transmission of it." Other scholars are less sanguine about oral tradition, and Valantasis, Bleyle, and Hough argue that

9657-588: The perpetual virginity of Mary and continued to esteem Mary as theotokos ("mother of God"). These two doctrinal stances are addressed individually in Articles Nine and Ten, respectively, of Hubmaier's work, Apologia . The Second Council of Constantinople recognized Mary as Aeiparthenos , meaning "ever-virgin". It remains axiomatic for the Eastern Orthodox Church that she remained virginal throughout her Earthly life, and Orthodoxy therefore understands

9768-463: The physical sign. It was due to Ambrose that virginitas in partu came to be included consistently in the thinking of subsequent theologians. Bonosus of Sardica also denied the perpetual virginity of Mary, for which he was declared a heretic. His followers would survive for many centuries, especially among the Goths . Additionally, the perpetual virginity of Mary was denied by some Arians . Jovinian

9879-417: The potential exception of the Apostle Paul , we "know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher". EP Sanders claimed that the sources for Jesus are superior to the ones for Alexander the Great . Critical study on the Historical Jesus has largely failed to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of the later Christian authors , and

9990-413: The rest of the New Testament , the four gospels were written in Greek. The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c.  AD 66 –70, Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90, and John AD 90–110. Despite the traditional ascriptions, most scholars hold that all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses. A few scholars defend the traditional ascriptions or attributions, but for

10101-631: The sacred state of her holy womb. Symbolically, the perpetual virginity of Mary signifies a new creation and a fresh start in salvation history . It has been stated and argued repeatedly, most recently by the Second Vatican Council : This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ's virginal conception   [...] then also at the birth of Our Lord, who did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it... A problem facing theologians wishing to maintain Mary's life-long virginity

10212-705: The single year of the synoptics, placing the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning rather than at the end, and the Last Supper on the day before Passover instead of being a Passover meal. According to Delbert Burkett, the Gospel of John is the only gospel to call Jesus God, though other scholars like Larry Hurtado and Michael Barber view a possible divine Christology in the Synoptics. In contrast to Mark, where Jesus hides his identity as messiah, in John he openly proclaims it. Like

10323-410: The spread of monasticism had promoted celibacy as the ideal state, and a moral hierarchy was established with marriage occupying the third rank below life-long virginity and widowhood. Eastern theologians generally accepted Mary as Aeiparthenos , but many in the Western church were less convinced. The theologian Helvidius objected to the devaluation of marriage inherent in this view and argued that

10434-667: The stories of Mary which are found in the Quran , but while Muslims agree with Christians that Mary was a virgin at the moment of the conception of Jesus, the idea of her perpetual virginity thereafter is contrary to the Islamic ideal of women as wives and mothers. The Second Apocalypse of James portrays James, the Brother of the Lord , not as a child of Joseph but of a certain "Theudas", a relative of Jesus. Hegesippus 's writings are not clear on this subject, with some authors arguing that he defended

10545-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

10656-486: The two states, of virginity and marriage, were equal. His contemporary Jerome , realising that this would lead to the Mother of God occupying a lower place in heaven than virgins and widows, defended her perpetual virginity in his immensely influential Against Helvidius , issued c.383. In the 380s and 390s the monk Jovinian denied Mary's virginity in partu (virgin during childbirth), writing that if Jesus did not undergo

10767-424: The weakness of human memory, referring to its 'many sins' and how it frequently misguides people. He expresses skepticism at other scholars' endeavors to identify authentic sayings of Jesus. Instead of isolating and authenticating individual pericopae, Allison advocates for a methodology focused on identifying patterns and finding what he calls 'recurrent attestation'. Allison argues that the general impressions left by

10878-400: The women who have followed him come to his tomb, they find it empty. Mark never calls Jesus "God" or claims that he existed prior to his earthly life, apparently believes that he had a normal human parentage and birth, and makes no attempt to trace his ancestry back to King David or Adam ; it originally ended at Mark 16:8 and had no post-resurrection appearances , although Mark 16:7, in which

10989-472: The written Gospels. In modern scholarship, the Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources for reconstructing Christ's ministry while John is used less since it differs from the synoptics. However, according to the manuscript evidence and citation frequency by the early Church Fathers, Matthew and John were the most popular Gospels while Luke and Mark were less popular in the early centuries of the church. Many non-canonical gospels were also written, all later than

11100-564: The young man discovered in the tomb instructs the women to tell "the disciples and Peter" that Jesus will see them again in Galilee, hints that the author knew of the tradition. The authors of Matthew and Luke added infancy and resurrection narratives to the story they found in Mark, although the two differ markedly. Each also makes subtle theological changes to Mark: the Markan miracle stories, for example, confirm Jesus' status as an emissary of God (which

11211-647: Was Latinized as evangelium in the Vulgate , and translated into Latin as bona annuntiatio . In Old English, it was translated as gōdspel ( gōd "good" + spel "news"). The Old English term was retained as gospel in Middle English Bible translations and hence remains in use also in Modern English . The four canonical gospels share the same basic outline of the life of Jesus: he begins his public ministry in conjunction with that of John

11322-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

11433-427: Was Joseph's brother. Further scriptural difficulties were added by Luke 2:7 , which calls Jesus the "first-born" son of Mary, and Matthew 1:25 , which adds that Joseph "did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn son." Helvidius argued that first-born implies later births, and that the word "until" left open the way to sexual relations after the birth; Jerome, replying that even an only son will be

11544-518: Was Mark's understanding of the Messiah), but in Matthew they demonstrate his divinity, and the "young man" who appears at Jesus' tomb in Mark becomes a radiant angel in Matthew. Luke, while following Mark's plot more faithfully than Matthew, has expanded on the source, corrected Mark's grammar and syntax, and eliminated some passages entirely, notably most of chapters 6 and 7. John, the most overtly theological,

11655-569: Was a charismatic miracle-working holy man. As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD, and modern biblical scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically as historical documents, though according to Sanders they provide a good idea of the public career of Jesus. According to Graham Stanton , with the potential exception of the Apostle Paul , we "know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher". The majority view among critical scholars

11766-478: Was condemned as a heretic at a Synod of Milan under Ambrose's presidency in 390 and Mary's perpetual virginity was established as the only orthodox view. Further developments were to follow when the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 formally gave her the title "Aeiparthenos", and at the Lateran Synod of 649 Pope Martin I emphasised the threefold character of the perpetual virginity, before, during, and after

11877-539: Was examined by a midwife, who found her to be a virgin") and asserted that this was to be found in the Gospels ("These things are attested to by the Scriptures of the Lord"), though he was referring to an apocryphal Gospel as a fact. The 3rd century scholar Origen used the Protoevangelium's explanation of the brothers to uphold the perpetual virginity of Mary ("There is no child of Mary except Jesus, according to those who think correctly about her"). Origen also mentioned that

11988-466: Was executed before, rather than on, Passover, might well be more accurate, and its presentation of Jesus in the garden and the prior meeting held by the Jewish authorities are possibly more historically plausible than their synoptic parallels. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that the author had direct knowledge of events, or that his mentions of the Beloved Disciple as his source should be taken as

12099-409: Was originally written in Greek and is often interpreted as a Gnostic text. It is typically not considered a gospel by scholars since it does not focus on the life of Jesus. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It

12210-578: Was the Greek version of the scriptures, called the Septuagint ; they do not seem familiar with the original Hebrew. The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of the ancient genre of bios , or ancient biography . Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory; the gospels were never simply biographical, they were propaganda and kerygma (preaching), meant to convince people that Jesus

12321-516: Was the chief target of the charge of Manicheism. In 391, he wrote Concerning Virginity whose full title was On the Education of the Virgin and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary . For Ambrose, both the physical birth of Jesus by Mary and the baptismal birthing of Christians by the church had to be totally virginal, even in partu , in order to cancel the stain of original sin, of which the pains of labor are

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