Frank's Report 5th April 2011

We had a lively time last Saturday. This was partly because we had a new member, which prompted us to introduce ourselves and speak of our ‘journeys ‘ in the faith, Although we had come to know one another fairly well, we discovered that there was still a lot we did not know.! Our new member had been encouraged to explore PCN by her enthusiastic 80 year old Godmother who had read Spong. Borg etc. and had visited conferences at which they were speakers. Mavis introduced chapter 2 of our book, on the sources of our knowledge of Jesus introducing extra material - a time-line for early Christian writings – and an outline of the ‘synoptic problem’ which explores the sources of material in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke , Mark is the earliest to be written. i. Matthew and Luke use material from Mark in their gospels. ii Matthew and Luke seem to use material ( chiefly sayings of Jesus) from another unknown source ‘ often called “Q” (Quelle= German for source.) iii Matthew and Luke also have distinctive material from independent sources. Mavis’ presentation was much appreciated by the group. I will lead the next session on “What Jesus stood for” (Important if we want to avoid making him in our own image…) I will send – probably in a separate e-mail – copy of an excellent document ( from Free to Believe sources) entitled “How the Bible gave us Evangelicals and Liberals “ Look forward to seeing you on MAY 7th Frank G.

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