Godless Wonder

Good quesiton. My ignorance may be showing.

Family Man

And Raymond Brown, Catholic priest and distinguished NT scholar, thinks that John is two or three layers removed from an eyewitness account. See his Commentaries on John for details. Given that John was written a good 60 years after the fact, I'd tend to agree with Brown.

Malachi151

The idea that anyone writing anything about 2,000 years ago can be considered a first hand account is asinine.

Let's see, we have so called first hand accoutns of giants, dragons, harpy's, imps, gods of every sort, deamon posessions, cosmic battles, etc, etc.

My theory on the Jesus is this:

The story of Jesus is loosely based on real events and real people.

Some guy, maybe Jesus or the guy that this part of the story of Jesus was patterned after, was crucified for blasphemy and stirring up rebellion. As he was on the cross an unruly crowd gathered and he was fast becoming a martyr. In order to keep the peace and prevent riots due to killing of this person who many liked, the Romans tried to poison him to make him die quick to get him down and stop causing a scene.

They poisoned him, he passed out, they took him down, and put him in the tomb. Later, some followers went a revived him and when he was well enough he snuck out and ran away from town to save his life, living out the rest of his life in some far off place, out of the public eye.

This of course woudl explain the basic story, assuming that the story is even true at all and not just total make believe.

Malachi151

Also, question them to refute the accounts of any other myth.
All of the Greek myths are written as first hand accounts as well, so that the Hindu myths, etc, etc.....

Also, I suggest that you post this link for them to read:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/sp...geofreason.htm

Bede

That's your prerogative. But given you don't know when John was written and that Fox accepts the usual c. 90AD date, I'd say your reasoning was a bit slippery. Not going to debate this, as my point was simply that there are a variety of opinions and atheists are not all in the sceptical camp. Nor are all Christians in the conservative camp.

Incidently, I don't think you read Brown right. Not two or three layers but two or three redactions. I would agree with him as the last chapter and much of the last supper narratives were added at different times. The empty tomb account remains a first hand desription from John.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

leonarde

Gee, that'll be interesting for all those generations of schoolboys including yours truly who read "The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar in Latin class. Seems our pal here "knows" that Julius Caesar wasn't a participant!

leonarde

Well, loosely speaking, a number of us loosely agree with you. But only loosely!

Kosh

Pathetic.

Amaleq13

You wouldn't have the actual quote handy would you? Or at least the page number?

Also, in a different thread on this same topic you wrote:
I replied with the following quotes on the subject from The Catholic Study Bible (1990, Oxford Press, pg146 of the NT section) which carries both a Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur:

"Critical analysis makes it difficult to accept the idea that the gospel as it now stands was written by one person."

"...the inconsistencies were probably produced by subsequent editing in which homogeneous materials were added to a shorter original."

"Other difficulties for any theory of eyewitness authorship of the gospel in its present form are presented by its highly developed theology and by certain elements of its literary style."

"Although tradition identifies this person [the author] as John, the son of Zebedee, most modern scholars find that the evidence does not support this."

I then asked:
Am I wrong to consider this a "conservative" source?

You chose not to offer a reply but I would still be interested in your answer.

I would also be interested in whether you disagree with any of these statements.

capnkirk

Here we go with semantics again. I have only read the first three or four posts, and I am confused. Here's why (presuming, for argument's sake that there was a resurrection):

There were absolutely NO witnesses to the "Resurrection". It happened in the dead of night in a crypt with either an opened or a closed door.

It seems that what witnesses claimed to have seen was either: "the Resurrected Jesus" OR "the Ascension". It is very difficult to follow the various arguments when the definitions of the terms used (or implied) by the posters isn't consistent.

OBTW, if this ground has been covered later on in this quite long thread...just ignore me.