openlyatheist

I received some good responses to my question of this Christian claim, taken from another site:
"We have the records of multiple eye-witness testimonies..."
The responses were abundantly negative that the Gospels should be considered eye-witness testimonies.

So now I wanted to add the next claim from a Christian blog commenter and add it to my growing Christianity FAQ. The next claim is highlighted in bold:

"We have the records of multiple eye-witness testimonies, written during the lifetimes of tens of thousands of witnesses to the life of Jesus, ..."

How accurate a statement is this?

Toto

How accurate? Not at all.

He might try to claim that the preface to gLuke indicates that there were eyewitnesses, and gJohn tries to claim that it was written by a companion of Jesus (which cannot be verified and seems highly unlikely). These would technically be "RECORDS of multiple eyewitness testimonies" - but we are missing the ACTUAL eyewitness testimonies, and we don't know if aLuke and aJohn were falsely claiming to have eyewitness testimony, as these Christian apologists seem to be.

And these "records" were NOT written during the lifetimes of ANY witnesses to the life of Jesus, much less "tens of thousands."

These Christian apologists are doing themselves no favor by misstating the evidence.

andrewcriddle

I agree that "tens of thousands" seems wrong.
However, assuming a HJ, there would still have been numerous eyewitnesses surviving till late in the reign of Domitian. Mark, at least, was probably written while many eyewitnesses were still alive.

Adrew Criddle

Toto

Mark does not even claim to be based on eyewitness testimony.

aa5874

This is completely illogical and circular. You cannot assume Jesus existed and then claim there were probably eyewitnesses.

The NT made claims that Jesus had thousands of followers while he was alive.

There is no corroborative external eyewitness account of Jesus of the NT, anywhere.

patcleaver

There is no good evidence to think that Mark was written before the 4th century. All you really have is that some fragments, probably purchased from dishonest antiquities dealers, that have handwriting that matches handwriting from other documents that may or may not be from before the 4th century. Why are you pretending to know that Mark was written early?:huh:

If Mark was fiction and was written for an audience that knew it was fiction, then it could easily have been written in 30 CE and nobody would have disputed its accuracy any more than anybody usually disputes the accuracy of fictional books. I do not recall any skeptics denouncing the spider man movies for being false. :huh:

GenesisNemesis

Wrong. There have been millions of Christians who have existed.

:Cheeky:

mountainman

Dear openlyatheist,

It's accuracy is computed to be entirely consistent in the transcendental component with no representation whatsoever in the physical, day-to-day, historical component. It is a complex question and deserves such a straightforward answer.

Best wishes,


Pete

renassault

You're looking at the New Testament as not composed of multiple writings. The corroborative external eyewitness accounts WERE incorporated into the NT. Thus, to claim that there are no outside sources is a bit illogical.

Also, John the Baptist had thousands of followers and the only thing about his popularity outside of the NT is a brief paragraph by Josephus. So your argument doesn't have any force.

Blackclaw

Several hundred years later with no actual writing of the witnesses included...

I know we should not expect the kind of first hand witness reports we take today as evidence. But it would be nice if we could find a letter written by Mary Magdalen. One would think she might have written a letter to someone about seeing an empty tomb and angels. Or perhaps the diary of John the Baptist - "So the Savior of Mankind dropped by today..."

It is possible that these things did exist and have been lost to history. But the New Testament, if it takes personal accounts into consideration, has woven them into a story in such a fashion that we cannot tell how or even if the characters mentioned had any of their direct accounts taken into consideration or if there were even any direct accounts available to the author.