Johnny Skeptic

What do you mean by "first surviving attestation"?

Anyone can claim to be any eyewitness. How do you decide whether or not a certain source was actually an eyewitness?

DCHindley

Personally, I don't think this is especially likely. The author of the gospel of Mark (who I call "Mark" for convenience sake), who certainly existed, had to have sources, but I really don't know why it was later claimed to be Simon Peter. I always thought that Mark was supposed to be John Mark from Acts.

DCH

andrewcriddle

The first attestation in a work that has survived into later times.

Given the low rate of survival of ancient works into modern times the first surviving attestation will usually be later than the first time an ancient work was actually alluded to.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

But when did "Mark" exist?
When did Peter exist as a follower of Jesus?
And when did Jesus exist with a follower called Peter who told "Mark" about Jesus?

Once it accepted that Jesus did not exist then it is very likely that there was no disciple called Peter.

The author of gMark did not get his story about Jesus from Peter, the story of Jesus was very likely to be fabricated from out-of-context prophecies in Hebrew Scripture or a similar source.

Johnny Skeptic

No, if the Apostle Peter was one of Mark's sources, then Peter's information is "alleged" to have been firsthand. How do you tell the difference between an alleged eyewitness and an actual eyewitness?

DCHindley

You can't be sure Peter was an actual eyewitness. That is why, I am sure, Andrew placed an "if" in his statement.

While I don't want to put words in his mouth, if I know Andrew he has identified many possible scenarios, each with different implications when analyzed in conjunction with information we might encounter from other sources.

The possibility that Peter was the Author-of-Mark's principal source is expressed by Church tradition as found in the writings of ante-nicene church fathers from the 2nd century. It is what they thought, not necessarily what actually was the case.

FWIW, "if" the Apostle Peter was one of Mark's sources, that still makes Mark's gospel a secondary source. Had Peter wrote anything himself, then that would be a primary source if we could be reasonably sure it was genuine. Yes, we do have genuine legal documents from this general period, signed & sealed. However, the likelihood of such a "gospel of peter" being real is relatively low.

DCH

aa5874

Well, what happens IF you DON'T know Andrew?

There is ONLY ONE source for Peter or ALL the sources for Peter are apologetic.

And there is ONE scenario that Andrew has FALIED to analyze or is AFRAID to analyze that PETER and MARK were fictitious first century characters.

There is also the possibility that Peter was was not even in existence and could not have been the author of or gMark's priniciple source.

Why do you think "they" thought that Peter was the Author of Mark's priiciple source rather then "they" wanted their audience or readers to BELIEVE so?

"They" wanted ALL people of the Roman Empire to believe gMark was written since the time of Philo.

"They" wanted ALL people to believe gMatthew was written since the time of Philo and BEFORE gMark.

"They" wanted ALL people to believe PAUL/SAUL wrote All the Epistles with the name Paul.

"They" wanted ALL people to BELIEVE fiction.

So, in effect the evidence is relatively NO good that Peter was a primary source for gMark.

There is NO good evidence for Peter and Mark.

andrewcriddle

Peter's status as a witness to Christ appears to have been widely accepted in the early Church.

Do you have any grounds for thinking that Peter claimed to have witnessed things which in fact he knew he had not witnessed ?

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

But, the status of Jesus as the offspring of the Holy Ghost who walked on the sea during a storm with Peter in his arms and who transfigured in the presence of Peter with the resurrected prophets Elias and Moses was widely accepted by the early Church.

Do you have any grounds to think that Peter actually claimed he witnessed Jesus walking on the sea during a storm and that he was with Jesus when he transfigured with resurrected Moses and Elias?

There is a massive difference between "acceptance" and "evidence"

Johnny Skeptic

But that does not matter very much since the first century Christian church was very small. Is was not very difficult to convince a few ancient people that all kinds of outlandish things were true. Even today, many people believe that men have not landed on the moon, and some people believe that the earth is flat. According to Rodney Stark in "The Rise of Christianity," there were only approximately 7,530 Christians in the entire world in 100 A.D. In the article "The Impossible Faith," Christian apologist James Holding quotes well-known Christian Bible scholar N.T. Wright as saying "This subversive belief in Jesus' Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in the obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire."

If you mean do I believe in the hallucination theory, no, but I am not aware of any good reasons why people should believe that Paul's vision was from God, that Peter believed that he saw Jesus walk on water, and that Peter believed that he saw and talked with Jesus in a group setting after Jesus rose from the dead. Other than Peter and possibly the author of the Gospel of John, who else claimed firsthand that they saw Jesus after he rose from the dead, and why should anyone believe Peter and John?

Why don't you believe supernatural claims in other religious books?

I believe that it is reasonably possible that Paul invented Christianity after he falsely believed that he had an authentic vision, that 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 is an interpolation, and that, as I will later quote spin as saying in another thread, "the earliest manuscripts are well after the reputed times (even P.52 which is tendentiously dated in the first half of the 2nd c., but arguably much later), so there is no way to connect them with the purported events they deal with."

It is reasonable to assume that there were plenty of innocent but inaccurate revelations in ancient times, and they are not certainly not uncommon today among Pentecostals and Charismatics.

Consider the following comments that Spin made in another thread:

http://freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=287411

I request that you go to that thread and reply to what spin said. Or, if you wish, I can ask spin to participate in this thread.