Vorkosigan

Shit. I think there are a lot of atheists who are pastoring out there, because they consider the alternatives worse. Especially for themselves.

Of course we speak as if we know more than we do. After all, those who know, do not speak!

What concrete evidence connects the Luke of Paul's journeys with the writer of the Gospel that bears his name?

Vorkosigan



Vorkosigan

Roland

How could Matthew and John both be eyewitnesses when not a single thing they record Jesus as having said matches up between the two accounts? Why would Mark (by way of Peter), Matthew and then Luke record many of the same quotes while John records entirely different quotes? If they were all writing separately, one would reasonably expect to see an even meshing of the things Jesus said amongst the four gospels. (Roughly 25% of Mark would be in Matthew, 25% would be in Luke, 25% would be in John etc.). Instead, we find three accounts that line up almost perfectly and a fourth that goes off almost entirely on its own. Hence, it is entirely unlikely that Matthew and John could BOTH be eyewitnesses. It is clear that, if the other three gospels are accurate, then whoever wrote John made up the quotes to fit his theological interpretation of who he though Jesus was (as reflected in all the powerful "I am" speeches which none of the other three ever bothered to record).

Roland

In addition, why do two of the eyewitnesses (Matthew and Peter, by way of Mark) show Jesus' cleansing of the temple as having happened at the end of his ministry, while John shows it as happening at the beginning (and Luke, in his researches, goes with Matthew and Peter, rather than John)?

And why do Matthew and "Peter" show us Jesus making only one trip to Jerusalem (and, again, Luke does the same), while John shows him going there repeatedly? Did Matthew and Mark just happen, by coincidence, to make all these same editorial choices and deliberately leave out what the other eyewitness, John, chose to include?

David B

Heaven's Gate! Kamakaze and the conviction of the divinity of the Japanese emperor. Jonestown. Those other mad buggers who were in a big suicide pact in Switzerland and Canada, as I recall. Suicide bombers who believe in eternal bliss with virgins thrown in.

Members of cults can be led to all sorts of crazy behaviour. What is so different about disciples of Jesus and disciples of these other cult leaders?

David B (wonders if he would be ready to view Jesus as just another cult leader)

robto

If you're going to debate these things, you really need to study them a bit more first. Papias mentions only the gospels of Mark and Matthew. Strange indeed that he doesn't mention the gospel of John, if he was a disciple of his! And what he says about Matthew is very interesting:
First of all, according to modern scholarship, Matthew was written in Greek. Secondly, it's not "the oracles [or sayings]" of the Lord, it's a complete narrative. Whatever book Papias is thinking of, it's not the same book as the Gospel of Matthew that we have. Scholars suggest that either (1) Papias knows of a sayings gospel, something like the Q document, that was ascribed to Matthew (and the comment that "each one interpreted them as best he could" seems to imply that he knew of more than one Greek version of this), or (2) that Papias is reporting unreliable rumors. As far as his historical reliability, here's what he has to say about Judas's death:
This contradicts both Matt 27:5 (Judas hanged himself) and Acts 1:18 (he fell headlong and his entrails spilled out). It also contradicts the harmonized version, beloved of the inerrantists, that says Judas first hanged himself, then the rope broke, he fell on the rocks, and his entrails spilled out. Of course he might have hanged himself, then the rope broke and he fell onto a rocky Roman road and was run over by a chariot, you never know.
No, he only refers to the writings that have been "handed down", not to any conversations with "the people who were there". Read Luke 1:1-4.
It's clear that the author based his gospel on an earlier writing, which scholars call the "Signs Gospel".

That may be true for some posters on this site, but for modern scholars, the goal of historical research is to establish what really happened, to the best of our ability. That's why it's called "historical research". You can't do that if you start off by assuming that you know what the answer is. You have to consider ALL the sources in an unbiased fashion.
Or that they didn't expect them to be 100% accurate. If you go to see a movie about, say, John F. Kennedy, you don't expect every word he says in the movie to be historically documented as his actual utterance. Nor do you expect every scene to be a true event. You make allowances for dramatization and the director's interpretation. Maybe this is similar to the way early Christians viewed the gospels.
I'm still waiting to hear how Friday->Sunday equals three nights.

Diogenes the Cynic

It's actually the father in the book who is the "skeptic." Boyd is the apologist fielding "tough" questions from his "agnostic" father. I put "skeptic" and "agnostic" in quotes because the character of the father in the book is essentially the typical apologist, strawman "skeptic" who swallows every answer uncritically, who never sees the logical fallacies being thrown around by the Christian and who mirabile dictu undergoes a wondrous, Jack Chick style conversion at the end and accepts Christ as his saviour. My feeling on reading this book was that the father was either completely fictional or that he just wasn't very smart. He certainly wasn't very skeptical. He accepts a number of unfounded assumptions and circular arguments without so much as a whimper.

To give an example which illustrates the basic level of exchange, the father asks how he can be sure that the Old Testament claims are true. Boyd's answer is that Jesus accepted the OT as true, therefore it must be true. The father completely accepts this as a valid answer.

It's really a lousy book. Exactly the kind of thing that seems convincing to those who are already converted but is laughable to anyone else.

Aspirin99

Ahaha...that's funny. Oh well. I have the book now, but I've not read it. Now I look forward to reading it. Thanks.

aChristian

Read Eusebius book 3 chapter 4. There are more examples I'm sure.

aChristian

You are missing the point. The people who lived back then wrote down who wrote the gospels. Just because you don't understand why John told parts that the others didn't doesn't mean he wasn't an eyewitness. You are just making up 'history' by saying the disciples didn't write what everyone back then knew they wrote.

aChristian

Probably two cleansings of the temple and different authors tell of different trips to Jerusalem. (Jews were supposed to go up three times a year.) However, as I said above, you are missing the point. The history says that the disciples wrote the gospels.