Reanimator

I'm discussing Biblical reliability with a friend online, and he keeps claiming that the authors of the Gospels were eyewitnesses, hence their authority and the truth value of their testimony is based on having actually been present during the events they write about. I'm more familiar with OT origins and criticism so I'm unable to provide a satisfying answer specifically related to Gospel reliability. Can you guys and gals help me out with a layman's response to this popular "eyewitness" hypothesis? Even links to other threads would be helpful. For reference, here are some of his responses to my statements:

Thanks!

judge

The only gospel writer who has anything to say about this is Luke and Luke tells us he was not an eyewitness.

Luke 1:1

Minimalist

None of the 4 even claim to be based on eyewitness accounts.

That is just a fantasy made up by believers.

show_no_mercy

Really, there's only one account, and that's Mark. Luke/Matthew and John are just improved versions of Mark due to the fluidity of how Mark was transmitted across the Roman empire along with "corrections" of possible heretical material (i.e. adoptionist or separatist Christology). Have your friend look up the "Synoptic Problem".

Ask your friend who was the first Christian to refer to all four gospels as holy scripture, and who was the first Christian to call all four gospels by their current names.

Second, eyewitness testimony is terribly unreliable.

Third, Jesus fulfilled no prophecies about the Jewish messiah. All of the so-called "prophecies" about Jesus are quotes of the Tanakh taken out of their original context. The Psalms, for example, are songs to be sung. If there's a prophecy about Jesus in a Psalm, there can be prophecies about Jesus in Beatles songs. Funny how the Psalms are only prophetic when it comes to Jesus, as there are no other "prophecies" that the Psalms predict.

Prophecies about the Jewish messiah are only to be found on the books of the Prophets. Maybe you should ask your friend which Tanakh books are of the Prophets and which other ones are "Writings".

mountainman

The story was first widely published three centuries after the alleged events by a publisher and promoter who had a vested interest in the "Leadership by Four People" then known as the "Tetrarchy". Four gospels were comensurate with the political environment, and the legal environment in a Roman court of law in which "Eyewitness status" might be challenged. Historical propaganda authored and published at that time would have us believe the story was legitimate, but the Arian controversy suggests otherwise.

ApostateAbe

All four of the gospels are written in Greek, and the direct disciples of Jesus were Aramaic speakers, generally uneducated, and it is unlikely that they knew Greek. The gospels of Matthew and Luke were apparently spin-offs of two previous gospels--Mark and Q--a point that can be discerned by examining their shared structure, something that independent eyewitnesses would be very unlikely to do unless they were plagiarists of each other. None of the gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts, but the gospel of Luke explicitly is not an eyewitness account in the very first passage. By analogy, this significantly reduces the probability that any of the other gospels were eyewitness accounts. All four of them claim events that are unlikely to have happened but are very likely to fit the wishful thinking of Christians. Any account of a miracle is far more likely to be accurately explained as a lie, delusion, or myth than as a real miracle. Therefore, from the collection of these arguments, the gospels very likely were not eyewitness accounts.

But, someone with a dogma can not easily think in terms of probability when evaluating their own dogmas, so be prepare to be discouraged.

Atheos

It is unlikely in the extreme that any of the four canonical gospels were written by the people tradition claims they were written by.

But allowing they were for sake of argument the writers couldn't possibly be "eyewitnesses" of the vast preponderance of what they wrote.

Was "Matthew" present at the manger when Jesus was supposedly born? Did he witness the 14 generations between Abraham and David, the 14 between David and the Babylonian Captivity, and the 14 between the Babylonian captivity and baby Jesus? Did he sleep between Joseph and Mary so he'd be sure that Joseph never actually had sex with Mary until after Jesus was born?

Was he privy to the conversation between Herod and the wise men? Did he, too, get to watch the dream Joseph had that he should flee to Egypt?

Did Matthew watch "the Transfiguration" he records in Matthew 17? Perhaps he forgot to include himself in the list of disciples Jesus took to that mountain.

It is not just disingenuous, but downright deceitful to claim that the writers of the four canonical gospels were eyewitnesses of what they wrote. There's no freaking way they could have witnessed much of what they wrote, assuming any of it actually happened.

It's absolute rubbish when people claim that these "eyewitness testimonies" would be sufficient testimony in a court system. Most of what is written at best could only be hearsay.

But the most damning fact of all with regard to claims of "eyewitness testimony" is that all of the documents are anonymous. They do not reveal who claims to have written them. They are not signed, and they do not bear any chain of custody. They just appeared anonymously and began circulating some forty (being generous) to ninety or more years after the dates of the events they allegedly cover.

If a lawyer was to introduce an unsigned document with no chain of custody into a court trial as evidence that the person in question floated off into the sky and that's why nobody can find his dead body, what do you think the judge would do? :constern01:

Kapyong

Gday,

Here is what I wrote recently on this very subject, it may help :

Who claimed to have met a historical Jesus ?

It is frequently claimed that we have multiple eye-witnesses who claimed to have met Jesus.

This is probably why believers respond with cries of
"why would they die for a lie?"
"how could it all be a hoax?"
"that's just a conspiracy theory"
when a sceptic claims the Gospels are not true history.

Because -
believers are convinced we have numerous reliable claims from identifiable people that they met Jesus - thus if Jesus did not exist, then all those eye-witness claims must have been a "hoax". If Jesus was not historical, the claims to have met him must have been a "lie", If Jesus never lived then all those multiple claimed eye-witnesses must have been involved in a "conspiracy".

So, let's examine the evidence -

How many :
* identifiable people
* claimed to have met Jesus
* in authentic writing.
?

Paul
Paul never met a historical Jesus, and never claimed to.
He did claim to have had revelations "thru Christ" etc.
He did claim to have had a vision of Christ.
And others (Acts) claim Paul had a vision of Christ.

It is worth noting that Paul does not place Iesous Christos in history :
* No places - Paul never mentions Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Calvary, etc.
* No dates - Paul never places Iesous Christos in time.
* No names - Paul never mentions Mary, Joseph, Pilate, Judas, Nicodemus, Lazarus etc.
* No miracles - Paul never mentions the miracles/healings of Jesus
* No trial/tomb - Paul never mentions the trial or the empty tomb etc.
Paul's Christos is a heavenly being, not a historical person.

the 500
Paul claims 500 others had a vision of Christ. The Gospels do not mention that, no other writer mentions that, and we have no names or evidence for any of the 500. Even IF it happened - they had a VISION like Paul - nothing historical.

G.Mark
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to traditon, Mark was a secretary of Peter and never met Jesus. This Gospel, like all of them, started out as an un-named book.

G.Matthew
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to tradition it was written by an apostle - but it never says so, and it mentions Matthew without the slightest hint that HE was writing it.

G.Luke
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to tradition it was written by a follower of Paul.

G.John
According to tradition this Gospel was written by the apostle John, and the last chapter says :
" This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true."
This is part of a chapter that was added to the Gospels, and it is clearly someone else making a claim for the book. It most certainly does not even come close to specific claim that anyone personally met Jesus.

Jude
This letter contains no claim to have met Jesus.

Johanines
1 John contains this passage :
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make our[a] joy complete.
Some believers assert this is a claim to have met Jesus.
What did he see and hear? He certainly never says it was Jesus. He just had a spiritual experience and wants to tell everyone about it - "God is light". Nothing here about any historical Jesus at all.

James
There is no claim to have met Jesus in this letter - supposedly from Jesus' BROTHER ! Yet it contains NOTHING anywhere about a historical Jesus, even where we would expect it. It is clear this writer had never even HEARD of a historical Jesus.

Revelation
No claim to have met Jesus.

the Petrines
2 Peter has this passage :
1.16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
Here we see Peter directly claim to have witnessed Jesus' transfiguration. The ONE and ONLY such direct personal claim in the entire NT.
But -
2 Peter is the very latest and most suspect book in the whole NT - scholars agree it is a forgery, so do many Christians, ancient and modern. A late and deliberate forgery that claims NOT to be based on "cunningly devised fables" - probably in direct response to critics claims. THAT is the one single book that contains a claim to have met Jesus.

Clement
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.

Papias
Does not claim to have met Jesus or anyone who had.
He did claim to have met Presbyters who told him what some disciples had said.
Discusses two books of Matthew and Mark , not called Gospels, not quite like modern Gospels.

Polycarp
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.
Irenaeus claimed Polycarp met discples who met Jesus

Ignatius
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.

Justin
Never claimed to have met anyone who met Jesus.
Discusses UN-NAMED Gospels not quite like ours.

So,
the entire NT contains only ONE specific claim to have met a historical Jesus - from the most suspect forgery in the whole book.

There is NOT ONE reliable claim by anyone to have ever met Jesus.

But -
there is a vast body of CLAIMS by later Christians - claims that are NOT supported by the earlier books, or by history.

So,
If Jesus wasn't historical, there is NO LIE, NO HOAX and NO CONSPIRACY requird at all - because there are NO actual claims to have met Jesus to be a hoax or a lie or a conspiracy in the first place.

Just later claims, and books, and claims about books.


Kapyong

Roger Pearse

The demand that the gospels should explicitly tell us about their authors is a slightly curious one; the "Lord of the Rings" contains little about its author, and you will look in vain in most newspaper articles for the biography of the journalists who wrote them.

The information transmitted in the historical record is fairly straightforward and was summarised by Tertullian, ca. 200, in Adversus Marcionem book 4; that Matthew and John were the apostles of that name, and that Mark and Luke were "apostolic men", in Tertullian's phrase; that they were associates of the apostles. The same narrative appears throughout every discussion of authorship in antiquity.

That is the evidence; make of it what you will.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

schriverja

I'm confused, are we treating LOTR as historical? Why would any background info on Tolkien be in a document that was clearly intended to be fictional?