Sven

You should perhaps simply do your homework. For example by asking the experts here or looking at other threads on this topic.
Apart from this, if you refuse to look at what the experts say, I can not help you. *shrug*

See, this is one of the clues why John wasn't an eyewitness - the apostel John obviously was a Jew.

k_smith123

I believe that I have an answer for this observation provided by allegoric interpretation. (An area of Biblical criticism where I seem to be alone.) In Plato’s Cratylus, Socrates claims that there is a “correctness” to names and that in order for a person’s name to be correct it must somehow reflect the nature of the person. Socrates also explains that this correctness can be “disguised” by the alteration of syllables and letters. If we accept this as truth, then we can easily associate the name “John” (G. Ioannes) with the Greek name “Ion”. In addition to being the name of a son of Apollo, Ion was also a “rhapsode” in Plato’s dialogue of the same name. Plato’s Ion is depicted as an interpreter of Homer whom Socrates accuses of being false. At one point Plato has Socrates remark:

"But, indeed, Ion, if you are correct in saying that by art and knowledge you are able to praise Homer, you do not deal fairly with me, and after all your professions of knowing many, glorious things about Homer, and promises that you would exhibit them, you are only a deceiver, and so far from exhibiting the art of which you are a master, will not, even after my repeated entreaties, explain to me the nature of it. You have literally as many forms as Proteus; and now you go all manner of ways, twisting and turning, and, like Proteus, become all manner of people at once, and at last slip away from me in the disguise of a general, in order that you may escape exhibiting your Homeric lore. And if you have art, then, as I was saying, in falsifying your promise that you would exhibit Homer, you are not dealing fairly with me. But if, as I believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty, and shall only say that you are inspired."

In Ion’s false interpretations of Homer, we can also see a parallel to Philo’s interpretations of Moses, and thus Philo might also be correctly referred to as a “John” or even “John the Baptist” given the literal timeframe involved. (I have determined that “water” is a metaphor for “writings”. I found the first evidence of this through the Babylonian god Nebo.) Then if we look at other writings attributed to “John” we find literal inconsistency with other Christian ideas and confusion. In many cases these Johns bend or break allegoric rules in order to confound those who might wish to expose allegoric secrets. At other times they can be so brutally honest that they appear to be on the side of “evil”. This occasional honesty is mixed with deception in the same way that a spy will often be agreeable with his enemies in order to gain their trust and as a result the “John” metaphor is often assigned to “spies”. Therefore, we can also associate “John” with the Old Testament spy “Jonah” (G. Ionas) whose “sign” was offered by Christ in Matthew 12:39. It is also worth noting that the name “Jonah” means “dove” in Hebrew and all four occurrences of a literal “dove” in the New Testament are associated with Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist which clearly indicates a connection between the “Jonah” and “John” metaphors. (The Hebrew word for “spy” is “tuwr” while the Hebrew word “towr” is defined by Strong’s Concordance as a “ring dove”.)

Thus we cannot trust much of any remarks attributed to a John without some form of confirmation provided by others. So far I have not yet determined how far John’s can deviate from allegoric rules, but it appears that John’s will occasionally stretch phonetic similarities to the breaking point in order to create metaphoric connections. These stretches will often seem to work in a particular instance, but when they are tested elsewhere they fail.

I hope that others will further examine this approach and see how far they can go with it.

Rycke Brown

Sven, you concede that one can see from the Gospel of John that he couldn't have been a Jewish apostle of Jesus, since he continually refers to Jesus' enemies as "the Jews." Why do I need an "expert" to tell me that? I might as well require the intercession of priests to talk to God.

I could read up on what other scholars have to say John, if I didn't have a life. But I don't see that that would get me any closer to the truth of the matter. All they have to go on is the same scriptures available to us all. A grasp of the politics of Roman-occupied Judea and the Old Testament laws are extremely helpful; I have the first from well-researched historical novels and the second from reading the Old Testament.

I also want to keep the argument accessible to all, as the Bible is accessible to all. As in arguing the Constitution, I like to argue from the text, which is also accessible to all.

Biblical argument is complicated by various translations that can vary considerably. I like to stick with the the King James Version because it is the one most used by Protestants, who are the people most likely to argue from the Bible, rather than from the authority of the Pope and Church tradition.

Why do I want to argue about the Bible? Because the best way to defend against Bible-based tyranny is the Bible itself. Jesus is libertarian, and a proper reading of the gospels reveals this. The gospel of John confuses that message by promoting a personality cult.

Sven

Because not every point is that simple.

See, the problem isn't that you don't know what the experts say.
The problem is that you don't know what they say but despite of this claim that they are wrong or have no means to know that they are correct, respectively.

ETA: Some food for thought
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markan_priority

Yeah. And a bunch of other documents from this century. And loads of techniques for analysis of literature. In case you don't know: These techniques work very wel, for instance, for documents which are known to be forgeries and/or plagiats by other means.

I don't know how exactly these things help you solve the two problems:
(1) They were eyewitnesses.
(2) We have three reports against one or one report against one.

Please note that I only disagree with your views on these two points. That John most likely was not an eyewitness and disagrees with the other three gospels entirely agrees with my view.

At least one thing we can agree on.

Rycke Brown

Sven,

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that Luke was also not an eyewitness. There's all that stuff about Jesus' early life that he says he got from Mary the mother of Jesus, and his account of Jesus talking to the thieves on the cross contradicts Matthew and Mark. But Luke doesn't bother me, because his Jesus is fairly compatible with the previous accounts. John's is a complete contradiction.

But, I have no particular reason not to believe that Matthew and Mark witnessed most of the events they write about. They have slightly different accounts with slightly different emphasis. I think Matthew had a more complete account and a better understanding of the incident of the young man who asked what it took to be saved. But Mark tells the story of Jesus eating with unwashed hands and telling the Pharisees off about their hygeine rules better than Matthew does. I find Mark's Jesus more angry and less forgiving of human weakness than Matthew's, which is why I generally prefer Matthew.

I also find it difficult to believe that none of the writers was an eyewitness. It doesn't fit with my general faith in and knowledge of mankind and writers. Out of four witnesses, it is quite likely that one will be a liar, and one will have only hearsay. However, it is quite unlikely that all four will be liars, or claim direct witness when they have only hearsay.

Nor does it contribute to the debate. I am less concerned here with absolute, literal truth (which no man owns) than with figuring out the "real" views of Jesus, who didn't write a word of the Bible. In this, I can ignore Luke, who contributes nothing to the understanding of the first two accounts, but doesn't contradict their message either.

But I have to drive a stake through the heart of John, because he gives Christians the "easy out" of uncritical belief, praise, and public piety without the hard work of actually loving their neighbors and making the world a better place. Faith has its place, but as Peter keep tells Paul, without works it is dead.

(Which is where we get the phrase, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul." Taking the gospel of John and the epistles of Paul together, it is easy to believe that one can only be saved by faith alone. But you have to ingore Peter, James, and the other 3 gospels.)

Some general knowledge of the history of the time and place and knowledge of Jewish law is helpful in deciding the general veracity of the accounts, because one can eliminate the obvious errors that wouldn't be made by actual Jewish witnesses, such as the appalling ignorance and prejudice against Jews displayed in John.

And then there's the slaughter of the innocents, which appears in Matthew but not in Luke, and that one would think would appear in some Roman or Jewish history outside of the Bible. (Mark claims no knowledge of Jesus before he came out of the wilderness; I'd say his account is the least embellished.)

It seems that Matthew felt that the Messiah had to be a descendent of David, even though Jesus pointed out that he couldn't be, that he was greater than that. So he made up a geneology and early life that would make that possible, as did Luke. But neither the geneologies or the accounts of Jesus' early life in Luke and Matthew are compatible. I figured from the start that they were made up, that the apostles knew nothing about his early life and little about his family, from whom he appeared to be estranged and he didn't talk about. Which is why it's so ridiculous that His mother Mary would be so involved in his life in John.

When arguing with Christians about the Bible and the views of Jesus, it doesn't work to say that none of the gospel writers were witnesses. If you want them to listen, you have to concede some truth, or it isn't worth arguing about; there's no common ground. It is more productive to point out that one gospel is not only inconsistent with the others, but is pernicious in its message, and reject any arguments that rely on that gospel.

Sven

Hmm. Here seems to be one of your central problems: You for some strange reason assume that the gospel writers actually claim to be eyewitnesses. It would greatly help if you provided the verses in which they do. Good luck.

I'm afraid you first would have to find evidence that he actually existed. Note that I don't necessarily subscribe to the "Mythical Jesus" position, but given my limited knowledge, his historicity is at least problematic.

As would be expected if he copied from Mark. *shrug*

AFAIK, the other authors make other errors. Such as writing about towns which did not exist at the time. For more: see below.

See, one of the points against Matthew being an eyewitness.

Yeah. The one from which Mark and Luke copied from and then added some more material. You are actually quite close to what biblical scholars say.

And this is why it is also ridiculous that they were eyewitnesses. After all, they just could have asked Mary or Josef about their ancestors.

Depends. I actually learned this in school (Germany) - from a priest!

Only that there's no truth in your claim that they were eyewitnesses.

Febble

OK, let's leave aside the issue the issue of what, in the gospels, might be literally true: you allege that the message of John is "pernicious".

I disagree - or at least, I happen to find it the most inspiring of the gospels, John presents Jesus as our window on God, and his "message" appears to me to be, simply, that God loves us, and requires that we love each other.

Here you are:

I don't honestly care whether Jesus actually said those words or not. If I'm going to believe in a God, that's the God I want to believe in.

Diogenes the Cynic

Luke never says that he got anything from Mary. He makes no claim that he talked to any witnesses at all.
Not surprising since he copied directly from them.
There are many reasons why the vast majority of NT scholars have long ago rejected any possibility of eyewitness authorship for any of the Gospels. You need to understand that Matthew copied almost all of Mark's Gospel verbatim into his own. He also added the Q material (a sayings source which he shared with Luke) as well as his own (absurdly fictional) Nativity fable and some other goofy details (like the zombie assault on Jerusalem). Now why would an apostle need to rely so heavily on secondary sources like Mark and Q? Why would an eyewitness copy an account from someone who wasn't there rather than writing his own memoirs?

It also needs to be pointed out that Matthew makes no claim to being a witness. The tradition that Matthew was written by the apostle of that name arises from a 2nd Century claim by Papias (as quoted by Eusebius) who claimed that the Apostle Matthew wrote a logia (a sayings gospel) in Hebrew. If such a Gospel ever existed, it isn't Canonical Matthew. Matthew isn't a sayings gospel and wasn't written in Hebrew.

To sum up, Matthew is an anonymous work, written around the 80's CE (or later), in Koine Greek (how did a Palestinian Jew know literary Greek?) which is reliant on at least two other written Greek sources. The author makes no claim that he was a witness and does not name himself. What reason is there to believe that he was a witness other than a very shaky 2nd Century patristic tradition?

Mark is no a witness even by tradition. The tradition is that he was a secretary of Peter's (again, this stems from dubious 2nd century patristic tradition). There are a number of reasons why this tradition is not tenable, including (but not limited to) the fact that Mark hates Peter (he paints him as a coward who abandoned Jesus and was never redeemed), makes several blaring mistakes in geography as well as Jewish law and customs and uses specific literary structures which cannot result from verbatim transcriptions of verbal memoirs. (Papias claims that Mark wrote down everything Peter said in no particular order. Mark is an exquisitely ordered composition and how did Peter know Greek anyway?) Aalso, like Matthew. Mark makes no claim to have been a witness or to have interviewed witnesses.
None of the authors claim to have been direct witnesses. None of them claim to have known any witnesses.
There are even worse errors in Mark (his trial before the Sanhedrin contains a catelogue of procedural errors all by itself and Mark has the Sanhedrin convict Jesus of a crime that didn't exist under Jewish law). There is also some pretty nasty anti-Jewish polemic in Matthew.
There isn't any "truth" to concede. It is a completely uncontroversial conclusion of contemporary NT scholarship that none of the Gospels wre written by witnesses. This is an assumption which can be adopted in scholarly papers as a matter of fact and is not expected to be defended (in fact, it's the opposite which would have to be defended).

Rycke Brown

Diogenes and Sven, I concede, at least on the points that the writers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not claim to be eyewitnesses. I'm not sold on the idea that the other two are copied from Mark. If they were written down from the oral stories of a people schooled in oral traditions, they would be passed on largely intact, and if the stories came from eyewitnesses who had talked among themselves a lot, they would differ very little from the beginning, except in the emphasis of the original storytellers and of the eventual writers.

Febble, I consider the gospel of John pernicious precisely because of such pap as you quote. It is not intelligible enough to take any real guidance from. "Love one another as I have loved you." Not anywhere near as much guidance in that as in, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

The message most people take away from John is the Jesus loves them, and if they love and believe in Jesus, they'll go to heaven, regardless of their behavior towards others. They reject the harder lessons of Matthew and Mark for John's easy refuge of salvation through belief and love unconnected to their daily lives.

I like Matthew's Jesus the best, because he is an activist giving good advice to activists. (His Sermon on the Mount is a speech to his apostles, not the multitude.) His lessons for others are cloaked in parables because it is dangerous to speak directly to strangers, but those "who have ears to hear" will understand, even today.

I went looking for Jesus' political philosophy when I started reading the Bible, and I liked what I found in Matthew and Mark the most. But his rules for personal salvation are also simple and relatively clear. Six simple laws: Don't steal. Don't murder. Don't bear false witness. Don't commit adultery. Honor your father and your mother. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Number 5 varies between Matthew, Mark, and Romans 13, but the total is always 6. An interesting fact that argues against copying and in favor of parallel traditions.) They're specific and action-oriented. As Paul puts it, "Love does no ill to a neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law."

Sven

I see. Instead of talking the one week time since your last post here to actually do some research, you prefer to simply repeat your claims. At least you concede that none of the gospel writers claimed to have witnessed the events.

I'm done with this thread.