Adam

I'm flattered that there is so much interest in my thread, but everyone seems to be missing the main point. Except for Vorkosigan arguing against John Mark as author of the Passion Narrative, no one is dealing with my main thesis of written eyewitness records. No one has replied to my #450 nor to this (or anything else) from my #482:

Good point, except that when I finish "asserting" here, no one critiques what I have written. When I wrapped [up] my major thesis of seven written gospel eyewitnesses in Post #144, I tried for 170 posts to get you guys back on track. Instead my Post #230 with the six layers in gMark (since amended by me to seven layers, thanks to spin's persistence or obliviousness) served as a diversion from the main issue. Plus I'm still waiting for anyone to get us beyond Doug Shaver's #153 where he lamented that no scholars have been addressing issues that could refute. Meanwhile my #450 with the Alpha and Omega principle (like Bauckham's inclusio) is still unaddressed. I took pity on you guys and entered #451 with the dozen scholars you could attack.
I don't get helpful (or unhelpful) commentary on my thesis itself, I just hear you asserting that it's all assertions. I guess I should remind you of the Coherence Theory of Truth. Does it all hang together, as my #450 seemed to do with my thesis? But no one here studies the thesis enough to say one way or the other.

Toto

I do not see enough to your argument to spend the time tracing through these indirect references.

It appears that you think that if you can show that the text could be based on eyewitness testimony, then you have shown that it was. This is not a standard of historical proof.

Adam

From your point of view, Toto,
All I have presented does not work (to your satisfaction). Naturally you do not want to waste a lot of your time on something you regard as worthless speculation. And I do appreciate the wonderful service you provide as Moderator, and could not expect you to put in even more time than you do. (I'll admit I do feel at times that there are people who post here who do not deserve the time you give to them.)

Actually it's more that I feel that I have shown that eyewitness testimony better explains what I have presented. For those of you who believe that the supernatural is impossible, not so, of course. Aside from refuting my contentions directly, however, it would seem to be open to someone here to show that the same source texts could be explained to have arisen from some conspiratorial process (Vork's quasi-Leninist organization, for one--which scholars is he talking about?) Long ago when I started making my "discoveries", I reflected that opponents would simply more bitterly turn against Christian origins from lies instead of carelessness or legends. It always winds up a matter of faith.

Toto

Adam - the generally accepted conclusion of mainstream liberal scholarship is that the texts can be best explained as literary compositions. That's what you have to argue against.

You take the Passion narrative, and treat it as a narrative of events. But the events that it describes are too improbable even where they do not involve a supernatural event, and the narrative directly references various parts of the Hebrew scriptures. There is just no reason to think that it was written by an eyewitness.

spin

Toto, there's nothing to be gained in trying. The results will be the same as when I showed that he has no idea of argument or evidence and that his eye witlesses stuff was simply piffle. I merely just gave him a few more names to toss around in the wind. Vork kids himself into thinking he is teachable. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into it, urinating into the wind--to use a masculinist image--will always have the same effect.

Adam

The Passion Narrative turns out to be not so simple, so I need to make a response here. The verses I listed in #516 are basically the story as shared by the Synoptics and gJohn. However, in my OP I made it appear that these verses are from what Teeple calls a source (S) even though he regards it as having come from the Synoptics. Actually, I included in my list of verses not just Teeple’s S but also his “G” source verses. Most of the G verses are paralleled in the Synoptics as well. The Passion Narrative style is not in the extreme Signs Source style, so Teeple could not so properly distinguish S here from G. I disregarded Teeple’s differentiation here between S and G because both provide Synoptic-like information and his criteria on style here did not really hold.

Though neither I nor anyone on this forum (or others) have found anywhere that Teeple has been refuted by anyone, it may have happened and may have been aimed at just the kind of thing I have just presented here. Back in 1975 Robert Kysar had smirked at Teeple’s differentiation between G and E (see following paragraphs), and here just above I have shown the doubtful nature of Teeple’s differentiation between G and S in the Passion Narrative. My thesis does not stand or fall depending upon whether Teeple was correct on all points, as I myself often set aside his differentiation between G and the other strata of gJohn. That even Teeple does not accept that the Passion Narrative comes from a pre-Synoptic source means that I cannot prove this to be the case, but Teeple was prejudiced by his need to date gJohn late to fit his humanist philosophy. Teeple wrote before earlier dates for gJohn became common.

The bigger issue is that our conversation here has revealed that the three earliest proposed eyewitness sources have little or no supernatural activity tied to them. One would suppose that if anyone here at FRDB had been following my thesis closely that he (or she, henceforth assumed) have pointed out that this part of my thesis would be acceptable here (at least to the HJ school). So let me point out how that would work here, for those who reject any consideration of the gospels in drawing up a picture of Jesus.

As stated already here, The Passion Narrative as shared in the four gospels can easily be accepted as factual, leaving no a priori reason to reject it as not from an eyewitness. The traditional source would be Peter, my suggestion is John Mark. If written early, gritty details would not yet have been forgotten, whereas with the passage of more time only the spectacular events of Jesus’s life would readily come to mind (and many of those are explainable as chance or psychosomatic occurrences). Even earlier as I have explained, Nicodemus wrote down what he found unacceptable in what Jesus said, and I listed those sections of John in my Post #38. My list there extends well beyond Teeple’s G source, however, so I will be happy to provide a trimmed-down list if anyone is interested. For example, John 5:17-47 would reduce to John 5:17, 19-24, 26-32, and 37-38a. (Teeple seemed to assign to the Editor E anything he didn’t want Jesus to have said and to the Redactor R anything that an editor might have muddled up.) Accepting what I attribute to Nicodemus (even if just the trimmed-down portions Teeple called G) would mean acknowledging that Jesus held an exalted view of himself, but such persons have happened in history. The Trinitarian orthodoxy of later centuries would not be there, of course, as only E and R get really extreme.

The third eyewitness that there is no intrinsic reason to reject here is the author of Q. True, I have argued here that the author was the Apostle Matthew, and that his Q also extended into the narrative we find in gMark (and the other Synoptics) known as the Twelve-Source. Set that aside as unproven (just another of my creative ideas that I seem to expect everyone to hail as brilliant whenever I come up with them), Q itself is sayings that by their nature don’t involve supernatural events. (Even the Q saying, “Go back and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see again, the lame walk, those suffering from virulent skin-diseases are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to like…”, comes from Q2, because the Lk 7:22 verse is 99% the same as Matthew 11:4-5. So there can be these three eyewitnesses to Jesus without running afoul of rules against the supernatural.

The next thing to do would be to explain how it could all go so wrong with the next four proposed eyewitnesses. In the Gospel of John the next stage was the writing of the Signs source and its assimilation of two of the above eyewitnesses. (My post #18 in this thread.) This source has such unique non-Johannine style that it was probably added in towards gJohn by the person who wrote it, thus not corrupting its distinctive style. His ambition was to bring together the heretofore naturalistic writings about Jesus with a consciously supernatural series of signs that showed that Jesus must be the Messiah. Almost none of his seven signs can be explained on naturalistic grounds. Whatever (When this scribe got over to writing Synoptic pericopes he wrote down miracles that can be more easily explained away—had he already picked over the best?) Next in the process he combined his three texts (the Passion, the Nicodemus Discourses, and the Signs Source) and added editorial touches, the P-Strand I have developed at some length (because it is my idea, but therefore needing even more explanation than I have given it even yet). Nothing in this paragraph requires an early date, so with this one we reach a stratum about Jesus that involves the supernatural.

The next stage towards gJohn brought in the Beloved Disciple, seen particularly in John 13 and 21. I attribute it to the Apostle John, but since it incorporates the preceding strata and thus the supernatural, this attribution would not be acceptable for FRDB. Presumably the Beloved Disciple would be regarded as an idealization and not an eyewitness as I view him. The theology gets more conventionally “later” in type. The verses I attribute to this strata would have to be much increased above the already long list I have in Post #144, making it better agree with Teeple’s listing of E.

My eyewitness listed in my #52 is Peter, but so much supernatural is told therein that anyone here would prefer to date it later than any eyewitness could have written those verses I call Ur-Marcus. One would wonder what is the usefulness in Mark 5:1-20 for 2000 pigs to be plunged into the lake.

Still left for consideration is another of my unique proposed eyewitnesses, the Simon I propose as the author of Proto-Luke. With his father Cleopas he presumably witnessed the Resurrected Jesus during the Walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). Setting aside the aftermath in which Jesus ate fish with them, the appearance to Simon and Cleopas could be interpreted as a vision. The scientific need for no violations of the laws of nature does not imply that there could not be spiritual beings that do not interact with us in physical ways. They would not even have to be “God” as usually defined, so even proper Atheists could regard such communications as possible and normal. Fifty years ago I assumed that such epiphenomenalism was all the religion that could be scientifically acceptable. There is not much in Proto-Luke that necessarily requires more than this amount of spiritual interaction. (Is this how James Randi explains the multitude of faith healings in our time?) Q1 does not get us very far from the Cynic Jesus beloved by the Jesus Seminar. (Q2 is included, but subtracting this element of a later accretion to Q we get away from the eschatological Jesus.) There is the problem of the Twelve-Source material that is in Proto-Luke (apparently, but not necessarily others would say), but miracles are not particularly prevalent in it or in the uniquely Lucan material (aside from the Infancy Narrative). We can retain the possibility of Proto-Luke as a nearly complete gospel acceptable to FRDB (did Marcion know it?), and it was according to my research the gospel the Christians in Jerusalem would have been using in 62 CE when they chose Simon to be their new bishop.

Ready to consider whether even FRDB atheists can accept parts of my written eyewitness gospel sources?

Zenaphobe

Just a quick question, but why would an eyewitness not identify themselves as the author of their own work?

Was it common place in that period and culture to write anonymously, especially something as important as eyewitness testimony?

Thanks.

Adam

But they are so prosaic! Here, I'll take the list I gave most recently at #516 and eliminate Chapter 20 and the roman numerals and shorten the one long section to agree more closely with Teeple. This lists all of Teeple's S and G. Read these, you'll have to agree!

John 18:1b, 1d, 3, 10b, 12, 13b, 15-19, 22, 25b, 27-31, 33-35, (36-40); 19:1-5a, 9-19, 21-23, 28-30, 38b, 40-42;.

Toto

What is this even supposed to mean?

If you want to present this case, make it a bit easier to understand what you are talking about.

Adam

I'm saying not just that the shared Passion Narrative has nothing supernatural, but the content is too banal to warrant investigation of supposed literary forms. It's just a simple statement of events regarding the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus plus Peter's humiliation. What's so hard about reading basically a chapter of gJohn?