Johnny Skeptic

But how do you propose that people distinguish between alleged eyewitnesses and actual eyewitness?

You are comparing apples to oranges. Today, there are not any eyewitnesses, and there is not any credible evidence that there ever were.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: If the Bible said that God will send everyone to hell, you would oppose it. Why?, because your emotional self-interest has caused you to accept promises that you believe will ultimately benefit you, and reject promises that you believe will ultimately not benefit you. This proves that you are not as concerned with what the evidence IS as you are with what the evidence PROMISES. That does not make any sense. Obviously, it is not possible to become a fundamentalist Christian without completely disregarding logic, reason, and morality. Your apparent interest in evidence is obviously a masquerade.

makerowner

I don't think any critical scholars accept that any of the Gospels are eyewitness accounts. In any case, they are all quite late, and on a subject about which the authors are very biased. Even if they were eyewitnesses, there are many reasons to suspect their accuracy.

When evaluating a witness, you also have to consider how trustworthy they are. Do they have something to gain by saying what they're saying? Do they have something to lose by saying something else? Can anyone else confirm what they're saying? Does what they're saying match other evidence? You also have to look at the witness's history; in this case there are several other events recorded in the Gospels that never occurred (slaughter of the innocents, census under Augustus, star over Bethlehem, earthquake and zombies in Jerusalem), so anything they say is suspect.

hatsoff

That's not the issue. I'm noting that I see insufficient reason to interpret the remark in question as an editorial aside by the Gospel authors.

rhutchin

OK. Take them as historical accounts. If you have valid reasons to suspect their accuracy, then you would judge them on that basis.

Lack of confirmation may cast doubt on an account but does not make it a false account. I don't think even you have confirmation that the events recorded in the gospels did not occur.

rhutchin

I don't see any way to do it absent more information than what currently exists.

If you had served on a jury, you would not know the eyewitnesses and there would be no difference between having them verbally explain what they saw or write it down for you to read. You are separated from the actual events and time makes no real difference.

makerowner

One key difference is that in a modern courtroom the other side has the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses to see if their story holds up. Since any possible witnesses to the events are long dead, we don't have this opportunity. What we have is at best hearsay, which is rightly excluded from courtrooms.

hatsoff

The Gospel authors were almost certainly not eyewitnesses.

aa5874

All we have are doubts about the events recorded in the gospels, and that's all you need to come to the reasonable conclusion that they may be false.

If the gospels contain information that is clearly false, and can be shown to be false today, then the NT have lost its credibility, it cannot be trusted. If the authors can make claims that millions of people in the 1st century would be able to clearly identify as false, then these authors have vitually no veracity.

Using NASA records for total eclipses of the sun during the 1st century, it is found that the 3-hour darkness, as recorded in the Synoptics, never occurred. It is fiction.
See http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...Eatlas0021.GIF

xaxxat

Touché...