Sheshbazzar

I use less words to say more.

לך אדם אכלך גלל צאת ומות׃


ששבצר העברי

Doug Shaver

Nearly all the fundamentalists I've ever talked to have said the contrary, and they have said it rather adamantly.

What is your source of all this information about God's plans?

Adam

I have never talked to Fundamentalists about this, as I have never considered they have anything worth saying. I'll assume for now that you are correct. I wonder, however, how could they think Luke could have written inerrantly without a lot of help, as he never knew anything directly about Jesus. But if they can believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, I guess they can believe anything.
It was not obvious to me until I recently got to this point where I could identify seven eyewitness records in the gospels. If the gospels had been late to be written, then non-eyewitnesses could have written the first sources, with eyewitnesses (if any were still alive) only later being prompted by God to write. I find no evidence of this later scenario. If one assumes that the Apostle Matthew wrote gMatthew in its final form, I could be shown to be wrong, but how could that be so when the uniquely matthean material looks least like it came from an eyewitness?

Doug Shaver

I have always regarded it as obvious that if I wanted someone's attention and consideration, I had to give them as much as I wanted to get from them.

Besides, I used to be a fundamentalist myself. If I had, in those days, taken the attitude toward my intellectual adversaries that you take now toward yours, I would still be a fundamentalist.

Doug Shaver

How does any of that tell you anything about God's plans?

Aren't you just presupposing that whatever actually did happen must have been planned by God? If you change your mind tomorrow about who wrote what, won't you then have to change your mind about what God's plans were?

Adam

As I admitted in my Posts #368 and 418, I failed to include a link to the first of my four articles with the basic argumentation for Peter as an eyewitness. So I'm reissuing my #52 (fourth in my series) not just linking the article, but incorporating it "between the lines" below: (the complete series now is Posts #1, #!8, #38, #436 (enlargement of #52), #74 (pending enlargement with same new link http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common ), #132, #144, #170, #230, and supplemented by #335.)
Continuing my focus on eyewitness testimony I will consider later the editions of John that brought the sources together and turn to where we left off in tracing the two narrative sources in John that got worked in to the Synoptics. I have already explained in that long fifth paragraph (Post #157) how the Passion Narrative in John got expanded into the Ur-Marcus found still in many of the passages where Mark overlaps Luke. Aware that the early state of John had placed Signs Source in front of the Passion Narrative and incorporated Nicodemus’s Discourses, all set primarily in Jerusalem, next John Mark sought to write a gospel set primarily in Galilee and adding events in the middle of Jesus’s ministry instead of just the earliest and latest. To do this he got biographical information from Peter and used Matthew’s Q. The date of 44 AD for this seems early, and sets the 1st edition of John as even earlier. In that process the eyewitness testimony of Peter came in. Up to this point we already have four eyewitnesses, John Mark, Andrew, Nicodemus, and Peter. The verses attributable to Peter (including verses in Mark 14 and 15 already written by John Mark) are these, [Ur-Marcus]:
Mark 1:16-28,x. 2:18-3:5,xv. 5:1-43,lx. 8:27-9:13,xlv. 9:30-31,v. 9:38-42,v. 10:13-34,xxv. 11:27-33,vi. 12:18-23,iii. 12:35-13:17,xv. 13:28-31,v. ,14: 28-42,xx. 14:48-52,v. 62-72;xv. 15:3-27,xxx., 33-40,xii. and continuing in Luke 24:1-3,iv.,11-12,v; and Acts 1:6-4:31, 5:17-42, 9:32-11:18, 12:1-17.
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying (This is from the third of my four articles on this website. Roman numerals indicate number of indications in the passage of details that an eyewitness might include.)

In Addition I suggest that the rest of the verses in Acts 1:6-12:25 and perhaps up to 15:35 be considered additional testimony by John Mark. As the primary Petrine sections conclude at Acts 12:17, it is most likely that all this eyewitness testimony of Peter (as well as the earlier eyewitness testimony of John Mark in John 18-20 as initially stated) was written down in 44 A. D.
Note that these are the verses specified in my article, “Underlying Sources of the Gospels”, less the verses therein from John Mark or Andrew as seen initially above. However, I have added in Mark 14:62-72 as from Peter (or John Mark) even though in my article I followed my stylistic rules and listed it as from Q. (I’ll make an exception now by pleading that the word-use in Mark and Luke is dissimilar only because John Mark and Peter were both involved here, but as eyewitnesses from slightly different vantage points.)
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Turning to an argument towards the same thing, but starting from Acts of the Apostles and the Synoptic gospels, consider here the opening from my first article at the above website ( http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common }
The four Gospels and Acts can be shown by simple common sense to be very early in date. Putting aside a priori theology that Christ is God on the one hand, or on the other hand historical method that proceeds as if supernatural events cannot happen, let’s see what the texts themselves show.

The proper starting point is the Gospel of Luke and its continuation, The Acts of the Apostles. In the second half of the latter, the author at times slips into “we” (or “us” or “our”) sayings that indicate he was with Paul of Tarsus during the latter’s missionary journeys. These three passages are Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-21:18, and 27:1-28:16. At the conclusion of these, Paul is still alive and in Rome, which can be dated by reference to Paul’s epistles in the New Testament to be about 64 A.D. The most sensible date for the Gospel of Luke and its complementary Acts is thus 64 A.D. The author (presumably Luke) could have written this much later in his life, but it would by common sense analysis still be early.

The Lucan author employed sources, as he himself tells us in Luke 1:1-4. These would necessarily have been earlier. At least one source bears some connection to the apostle Peter, whose name appears frequently in the Gospels and in the first fifteen chapters of Acts. The mention in Acts 15:7-11 occurs in the context of Acts chapters 13 to 28 that focus on Paul, so the source connected with Peter seems to end at Acts 12:19. The death of King Herod Agrippa I (12:23) sets the date at 44 A.D. This likely sets the date of the writing of the source and also establishes the likely author, as this is when Peter “went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark.” Church tradition also supports this logic, that Peter’s scribe was Mark, and critical scholarship calls this source “Ur-Marcus.” It would have been as well titled “Ur-Lucas” to acknowledge that it underlies not just the Gospel of Mark, not just the Gospel of Luke, but also the Acts also written by the writer of Luke.

The earliest version of this Ur-Marcus was evidently written in Aramaic and included at least the Passion Narrative {and the Feeding of the 5,000}, as these are recounted in all four of the canonical Gospels. The composition of the Fourth Gospel, John, seems best regarded as having been rotated in composition among a team of the apostles, making an early date sensible for it as well.

Peter (after Jesus, of course) is the focus of the Ur-Marcus Aramaic draft, but his name is primary in many other passages of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as well. Verbal identities in the Greek among these passages between the Gospels of Mark and Luke establish that this second (?) draft should be called Greek Ur-Marcus. This stage of the collaboration between the men Peter and Mark would thus be most likely not long after 44 A.D. (End of supplemented section.)
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Note [by studying the verses above] that what I call Petrine Ur-Marcus excludes not only that Marcan material not found in Luke, but also anything that I say derives from Q [shown below, also called here “Twelve-Source”]. It is distinguished from the latter by its style in which frequent consecutive words are exact in both Mark and Luke. This came about because Luke copied Petrine Ur-Marcus in Greek into the already existing Proto-Luke. (Peter is the fourth identifiable eyewitness.)

Stringbean

Well I keep reading this thread and see nothing. Spin was right in a previous post assertions.

Sheshbazzar

You are not persuading anyone here, and volume in and of its-self is not an effective persuader.

If any of this was of any real value, you would be presenting it to your fellow christian believers.
That you are instead posting it here seems to indicate your awareness that even your fellow believers would not buy it.

Kind of like a peddler with spoiled meat, knowing better than to try to sell it in the best neighborhoods,
he will try to unload it on the bad side of town.
Guess what. We got noses over here too. And it stinks just as bad here as it would over there.



Sheshbazzar

Adam

Let me explain the situation, Shesh.
I posted what's in my series here up to #170, in Theology Web (entering into a thread titled "Argument from Historical Proximity",
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...ical-Proximity
which is yet another Atheist thread in their "Apologetics 301" sub-forum (their main one at that Dominionist Christian site), where Atheists seemed to be getting away with claiming that consensus scholarship supports them. The Christians there, however, took no notice of my attempt to educate them in Higher Criticism as not necessarily detrimental to Christianity. They prefer to believe in unitary canonical gospels authored by the conventional four evangelists. Atheists (and other non-Christians) paid a lot of attention to me, as I was undermining all their unquestioned presuppositions. However, even they would (could?) not engage on my specifics. I was so successful in refuting them that I asked whether there was any atheist or such website that would give me a fair hearing and not automatically ban me. After several times posting that challenge, FRDB was recommended to me.

The critiques over there from atheists were so inadequate that they never spotted that I had only delineated the Synoptic portions attributable to Peter and Matthew, but had not provided the link to my initial Noesis article in which I had presented the argument that shows they were eyewitnesses. I assumed that I was ready to "take my show on the road", as I put it. I also explained that I needed to find if my thesis had flaws, and I expected atheists would be more exacting than anyone else. Yet I am finding the same (usually hypocritical) dodge of citing consensus scholarship plus increased boldness in just dismissing anything in the Bible as inherently impossible. I do get my money's worth in some astute critiques, however.

I have also posted my series (up to the #170 post) in Christian Forums, but with zero response. They don't let non-Christians argue on the main forums, and the conservative Christians there aren't interested in Higher Criticism. I can see why. If one accepts it for the gospels because it gives early enough dates, one can't easily renounce it for the Torah where it gives late dates. I have a hard time understanding people who claim to worship the Truth, but wave away obvious truths about the nature of the texts. If you want to read my (now expanded fourth and fifth) fundamental posts in consecutive order without intervening posts (but in tiny print), go to
http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/

Doug Shaver

That's a pretty nice fantasy you're having, Adam. Enjoy it while it lasts.