Did the Gospel Writers Lie?

How do we deal with the fact that the gospel writers made stuff up?

Well, for a good introduction there is a site that provides excellent scripture resources on the Gospel writers. http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/SFS/an0196.asp.

But let me at least say that Matthew, an educated Jew, was writing for an educated Jewish audience of Pharisees and other scripture scholars. So he structured his whole gospel with Judaic symbolism and bible commentary in mind. His colorful story of the magi is, like so much of his gospel, a midrash (commentary) on prophecies from the Jewish Scriuptures. If people take his gospel on face value only and are looking for an historical memory, they are completely missing his point.

I don't know, it is disturbing to people to suggest that the bible cannot be taken on face value.

Did it disturb you when you heard it in college?

Well, no, it actually excited me more than disturbed me. Because I saw the possibility that the problems I had with scripture were'nt problems with you or with God but with the human writers who were involved. So that made sense. And then the journey of studying the background and authors and historical context of each book made the bible so much richer. But Catholics are traditionally unmotivated when it comes to scripture study. The Protestants have always been better at that.

But, sadly, many non-Catholic Christians take a very "face value alone" approach and I am not sure that they don't sometimes miss the point entirely.

What point?

My point. What I was about. Take the "Prosperity Gospel" for example. I really don't know how anybody who has tried to understand me at all can decide that is what I was all about. It doesn't matter what a verse here or there says. We are dealing with human writers; they had their own agendas and sometimes their writing wasn't the best. But if you get stuck on the "take things literally as they say it" approach to the scriptures, you may, first of all, miss me entirely, and secondly, you may actually end up preaching and teaching and believing something I would find offensive and even appalling.