Yes, but at the same time no imho.
Authors of later books absolutely had access to the works of earlier authors. It wasn’t “the Bible” as we know it today, but there is a direct lineage where new material has been added and existing material has been edited, to result in the book we have now. That’s why the character of Jesus was able to fulfill prophecies.
So I’d tend to define “the bible” as a collection of literary works and interpretations (I don’t think you can separate the two without losing significant meaning) that evolves over time. Evolutionary pressures can include how well a particular “species” serves the rulers at that time, and how well it fits with the general zeitgeist (eg apocalyptic or euphoric).
So, like Trump, they didn’t have “the bible” but they had “a bible.”
This is sort of true.
Yes, various groups had various texts which the literate rabbis/preisthood kept around. After making them up.
A problem comes in with quoting things not very elegantly (Matthew seems to take the two donkeys thing literally instead of realizing the quoted text was nearly certainly doing parallelism, essentially a form of poetically reinforcing an idea), or citing texts that ... are now considered apocryphal, or non canon.
Then youve got all the different sects that just have different canon (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Bibles have or do not have different books in them) and/or use substantially different translations. Or something like the end of Mark which is slowly beginning to be noted as a forgery in many modern Bibles, though this is still divisive amongst many.
Try to get a Christian to explain why, exactly, something like the Gospel of Thomas or Judas is apocryphal, and they'll basically have to admit that at some point, it just comes down to you or some past person or group's personal interpretation.
But at the same time for many, the Bible is the unerring, non contradicting perfect word of God, written by the inspired.
And thus either an apologist is born, or maybe a proto atheist/agnostic.
I am starting to come along to the viewpoint that Gospel of Thomas predates at least John maybe even Matthew.
Yeah my first reaction to this meme was "well they had the Torah though".
Close. Only Paul has access to the first five books, a bunch of books that went into the Hebrew Bible, and at least one that didn't make the cut (Book of Enoch). The writers after him were using a Greek language subset of the Hebrew Bible (septuagint) and their own Greek/Roman traditions. Which is why for example Jesus never references parts of the Hebrew Bible that weren't in Greek already. Check for yourself, Jesus never says anything from the Book of Esther for example but quotes Micah..
An imperfect analogy: you hire me, a very much not Japanese person, to write a fictional story about someone who lived in Japan a 100 years ago and the only resources I have are a few travel guides written 300 years ago, all of them badly translated.
It's amazing that scholarship is coming along on this.
- They were eyewitnesses!
- Ok they were compliers and historians
- Ok they copied off each other a little but most of it was from eyewitnesses
- Fine the bulk of it is derivative or topical but there was still some oral tradition
- Yes fine they were slaves trying not to get whipped but there is still some tradition of some real facts
I wonder how many decades until the scholarship just admits it was 1st century BuzzFeed/Disney making content for a fandom while using problematic labor practices. Imagine Spiderman comics in a world without copyright law and you know everything you need to know about the biblical authors.
What was their literacy rate? Bible or some precursor therein, wouldn't have done the average person much good I'd think.
Anywho, you go back to the wandering Israelites, and I'd think those priests would've had some book or scroll with instructions for all the rituals they were into.
All this, of course, assuming there is any historical basis for any of it existing in the first place.
