You’re saying that some apostles checked the gospel accounts for accuracy?
That’s news to me.
John died in the 90’s AD, he wrote one of the gospels and all the others were written long before his death. That he would not have read the writings would be odd. Clement of Alexandria states that John wrote to supplement the accounts found in the other three gospels, which would mean he had to have read them in order to supplement them.
In addition Peter, writew in 2 Peter 3:14=16 of Paul’s writings. He would have had to have read Paul’s writings therefore.
Many scholars believe that Jesus and his disciples also probably spoke Greek as a second language to some degree. Over half of the inscriptions found on Jewish tombs in Palestine from the 1st century are in Greek. It was indeed the common language of the Roman Empire.
Good point, I stand corrected. We don’t have to worry about translation errors from text to text, but form Jesus’ spoken word to the first texts, we do.
It’s all rubbish.
J’s disciples were simple folk; illiterate for the most part - certainly not bi-lingual.
Fact is, what we call the Bible was written by Greek first language speakers, long after the events they pretend to record.
Mostly due to the influences of Saul of Tarsus.
Not really relevant to my point that the Apostle John could have corrected any errors from the 3 earlier gospels. Even if John couldn’t read or write at all, whether Aramaic or Greek, I don’t think it would have been any problem for him to find another Christian that could both read and write both Aramaic and Greek fluently.
At any rate you didn’t provide any specific evidence to support your statement?
Besides the Greek inscriptions on Jewish tombs:
Matthew was a publican (tax collector) and would have almost certainly have been literate and bi-lingual otherwise he would not have been able to function in that role. And given that publicans were despised by almost all peoples (Jews in particular hated them as traitors to Rome), it is highly unlikely that someone would have made it up that he was a publican.
Additional evidence that Jesus and his disciples would likely be bi-lingual in Greek as a second language is that most of them were from Galilee. Galilee was mostly Hellenistic, not Jewish, and had been for 300 years prior to the first century AD. Jesus of Nazareth and most of the apostles were from Galilee. They would have interacted with people who would have spoken only Greek. Greek was the dominant language of Galilee.
Professor R. T. France has this to say about the differences between Jews in Judea and Galilee in the first century.
- Racially the area of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel had had, ever since the Assyrian conquest in the eighth century B.C., a more mixed population, within which more conservative Jewish areas (like Nazareth and Capernaum) stood in close proximity to largely pagan cities, of which in the first century the new Hellenistic centers of Tiberias and Sepphoris were the chief examples.
- Geographically Galilee was separated from Judea by the non-Jewish territory of Samaria, and from Perea in the southeast by the Hellenistic settlements of Decapolis.
- Economically Galilee offered better agricultural and fishing resources than the more mountainous territory of Judea, making the wealth of some Galileans the envy of their southern neighbors.
- Culturally Judeans despised their northern neighbors as country cousins, their lack of Jewish sophistication being compounded by their greater openness to Hellenistic influence.
- Religiously the Judean opinion was that Galileans were lax in their observance of proper ritual, and the problem was exacerbated by the distance of Galilee from the temple and the theological leadership, which was focused in Jerusalem.
Really no such thing as historical facts, things are just established as having a certain probability of being true, some more likely as being true as others.
And again, no specific evidence presented to support this statement.
What dates based on what evidence?
How exactly did Saul of Tarsus accomplish this influence? Saul of Tarsus died at the latest in 67 AD. John the Apostle around 100 AD. Over 30 years is plenty of time for John to squash any inaccurate influence of Paul. And John was an Apostle, his word on any subject would have trumped anything Paul wrote.