Orthodox_Freethinker

Have we been posting in the same thread?

As I showed before, St. Paul insisted upon the importance of preserving oral tradition:

2 Thessalonians 2:15
So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by epistle.


Given that the Gospels are essentially anonymous works, we will never know their authorship with absolute certainty. However, we are not looking for what is absolutely certain but for what is reasonable.
You have not even come close to demonstrating that holding to the historical tradition on their authorship is unreasonable. E
ver since the Gospels have been directly named, it has unanimously been of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
If you have reason to not believe these men were the evanglists, please share it. Hopefully, you'll also have hard evidence in your favor.
So far, you've presented as reasonable a case as claiming that Charles Darwin never wrote the Origin.

Peace.

pharoah

OT, you keep bringing up Darwin as a comparison. So let's suppose that The Origin of Species had been written anonymously. How would we go about ascertaining that Darwin wrote it? The following seems to be a commonsense approach to me, but I could be way off base.

Probably the best evidence would be comparison to other works that he is known to have written. If the writing style seem to be identical then we can say with a high degree of confidence that he did write it, assuming that we have no reason to doubt his ability to make the knowledge claims that he makes within the book. We can't do this with Matthew because we have no other works for comparison.

The next best evidence would be a document written by him claiming authorship. If style comparisons still leave room for dispute, or if there is nothing to compare with, this may be enough to sway most, again taking into account such issues as trustworthiness and credentials. Again, we can't do this with Matthew because we have no document from him claiming authorship.

The next best evidence would be testimony from the people who knew him best that he did write it. We are on more shaky ground here, because now we also need to evaluate their trustworthiness. If Darwin had the proper credentials to write the book most scholars would again probably agree that he wrote it. We have no such testimony from any contemporary of Matthew that he wrote a gospel.

The Origin of Species was written in 1859. Let's suppose that it had been written anonymously, that Darwin had not written anything else, that we knew nothing else about Darwin, and that it was not "discovered" until 1900. Some guy named Papias tells you that he knew somebody who knew Darwin who claims that Darwin wrote the book. He doesn't even tell you who the identity of the person that claims to know Darwin. There are other people who also claim that Darwin wrote the book, but their evidence is either weaker than Papias's or they offer no evidence at all. Can you honestly claim that Darwin's authorship has been established?

Amaleq13

Your failure to respond to questions and challenges to your claims has often made me wonder.

Even if we ignore the majority consensus of scholars that Paul did not write this letter and assume that everything Paul wrote was founded on oral tradition, it does absolutely nothing to support your claim that the 2nd century church fathers were relying on oral tradition in attributing specific authorship. Do you really not understand that?

Where is your evidence that the 2nd century attributions of authorship are based on oral tradition?

Agreed.

No, we are looking for what is supported by reliable evidence. So far, all you've offered is that we simply trust the 2nd century church fathers despite the absence of any supporting evidence for their claims and then, reading that claim back into the texts, allow anything consistent with the claim stand as evidence for it.

Is that really all you've got to support your claim? If so, there is really no point in continuing this discussion because you've clearly got nothing but your faith to support your position.

No, all I've shown, with your help of course, is that holding to the church tradition of authorship attribution is more a matter of faith than reliance upon evidence.

No matter how many times you repeat this, it continues to be inadequate to establish the truth of the claim.

No matter how many times you attempt to shift the burden, it continues to be wrong. It is up to you to give me a reason to believe your claim. As it stands, there apparently no good reason to accept the 2nd century assertions of authorship as reliable claims.

Orthodox_Freethinker

What I can claim is that if Darwin were not the author, someone would have disputed it.

Peace.

Orthodox_Freethinker

How is your opinion that the attributed authorship of the Gospels is false supported by reliable evidence? Please provide whatever evidence you have. I provided the unanimous testimony of the early Christian era coupled with the internal evidence of the text. I am honestly interested in whatever negative evidence you are able to provide. Otherwise, you are like a creationist whose only argument against evolution is "Goddiddit".

Peace.

Amaleq13

This will be my last effort to disabuse you of your desire to shift the burden from yourself to others. It is not the responsibility of others to establish that these 2nd century assertions are false. It is the responsibility of anyone asserting their truth to establish it with supporting evidence.

I do not accept the 2nd century attributions of authorship because the assertions do not appear to have any basis in reliable evidence.

Both of these have been refuted and you have offered no rebuttal.

Unanimous unsupported assertions are still unsupported assertions.

The alleged internal evidence of Matthean authorship has been refuted as incapable of establishing the claim and, again, you have offered no rebuttal.

As I've already stated, your failure to offer rebuttals suggests you are incapable of supporting your assertion. Therefore, there continues to be no evidence to support it and no good reason to accept it as true.

It is difficult to reconcile this self-proclaimed honesty with your seemingly disingenuous posting behavior.

Honesty would require an acceptance of the burden of proof. Your statement above is simply a continuation of your efforts to shift it to someone else. The claim and burden originally belong to the 2nd century church fathers but it shifts to you when you assert it as true.

Honesty would require an attempt to answer questions put to you.

Honesty would require an attempt to offer a defense against refutations of the evidence you have produced in support of your position.

Talk is cheap but behavior never lies, Orthodox_Freethinker. Your behavior is not that of someone genuinely interested or willing to engage in an honest discussion.

I'm not going to waste any more time on someone unwilling to defend his assertions.

Orthodox_Freethinker

If you were truly interested in an honest discussion, you would have already provided evidence that the authorship of the Gospels is other than the names attributed to them.

I'm not going to waste any more of my time on someone who isn't able to provide any evidence whatsoever in favor of his assertions.

Again, whether you like it or not, the burden of proof is on the one who doubts unanimous historical testimony. Even if you disagree with that observation, you should at least attempt to provide evidence in your favor.

Peace.

Sven

How do you know?

How do you know? I hope there's more behind this than the following verses:

Does this mean that if Homer had written something similar like this in the Ilias, you would also think that he had "paid careful attention to preserving historical fact"?
How gullible are you?

Xixax

O_F,

I am positive that the mentioned Apostles had nothing to do with the authorship of these gospels. I know this, because I am the one who wrote them.

You may say, but the church fathers said that they were authored by the Apostles!

They were unwittingly referring to me, as they had never met an apostle, and did not know any better.

You may claim that I could not have lived that long, to which I demand proof.

After all, my claims of authorship and exceptionally long life will be backed up by every poster on this forum, and it will then be up to you to prove otherwise, as the unanimous testimony of infidels.org will say that I authored them, and that I have lived long enough to have done so.

(See the problem with your demands and obstinate behavior yet?)