Freethought & Rationalism Archive

PhilosopherJay · 03-05-2012, 08:07 AM

Hi Adam,

Thank you for this.

I searched diligently for your criteria for categorizing eyewitness authorship and I believe I found it in post #9 I do find your "Alpha and Omega principle" interesting.

Quote:

Hypothesis: For each section of the gospels proposed as from an eyewitness, near the beginning or end the name or an identifying feature will appear. (This seems closely related to the principle of inclusio enunciated by Richard Bauckham in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006).) To give it a name of its own for my purposes here, call it the Alpha and Omega principle.
Result: Seven true positives, and two false positives (Mary and Philip)
There would be no magic in the number seven as those who left written eyewitness records about Jesus, would there? Even assuming that seven is the perfect number of completeness, there would be no evidence for it, would there? Maybe there is.
Relating to the seven eyewitness sections proposed, for each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two “book-end” the text in question. :
The best recognized source is the Passion Narrative. After long attributing this to Peter, I now see John Mark as the author. His name Mark is attached to the start of that gospel, and he is often considered to be the young man who fled away naked in Mark 14:51-52. The beginning and ending identifications are weaker here, so the evidence needs doubling? Fine, this is paralleled in the Gospel of John in which he may be “the disciple known to the High Priest” (John 18:15-16). As he may also be the author of the P-Strand I derived, he may have accompanied the Pharisees who went to see John the Baptist (John 1:24). If so, the basic list he inserted into John runs from first to last: John 1: 20-21, 24-28, 35-37, 42-44; 7:40-49; 9:13-17; 11:46-50, 55, 57; 12:18-22; 20:11b-14, 16-17.

The Signs Gospel is usually seen as a source, and I name Andrew as it author, named at John 1:40. His name occurs often thereafter in narrative sections of the first twelve chapters up to the end at John 12:21 (2 times). Scholars also think that the original ending of Signs has been shifted to John 20:30-31 to conclude a later edition of that gospel. This covers from the baptism of Jesus to the Resurrection, truly an Alpha and Omega.
For each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two “book-end” the text in question. For Nicodemus, for whom I have given the argument that he wrote the Johannine Discourses while Jesus was still alive, his name appears in John 3:1 at the very start of these. At the end, Nicodemus brings spices to anoint Jesus’s body, John 19:39. The text he actually wrote was sayings only, so his name only appears in text that brackets his writings.
As for Peter, the source for Ur-Marcus, his name turns up from the first when his brother Andrew finds him (John 1:40). Acts 15:7-12 records his speech. He is the most-named apostle, helping to identify material attributable to him in both the Synoptics and Acts. Limiting the purview to the gospels, however, Peter still turns up at the end at the Sea of Tiberius, John 21:23.

I have never considered that the frequent mentioning of a character's name in a story implies eyewitness authorship before. I certainly never imagined that naming a character first and last in a section or sections of a work implied eyewitness authorship. I will have to consider the consequences of this hypothesis.

This principle might cause us to have to reassign some material to different authors. The Athenian stateman Alcibiades appears in Plato's dialogues perhaps more than any other character than Socrates. Plato's name, I believe, is only mentioned once or twice in all the dialogues. Therefore, using the Alpha and Omega principle some of the dialogues considered to have been written by Plato may have been originally authored by the eyewitness Alcibiades.

Using this Alpha and Omega principle that the first and last named character who appears in scenes with the lead character in a text is the original eyewitness author, we can now name many eyewitness authors that nobody has ever counted as eyewitness authors before:

King Agamemnon wrote the Iliad
Lois Lane was the eyewitness author of Superman.
Robin was the eyewitness author of Batman.
Mary Jane Watson was the eyewitness author of Spiderman.
Reporter Jerry Thompson was the eyewitness author of Citizen Kane.
Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were the eyewitness authors of Harry Potter.
Huckleberry Finn was an eyewitness author of Tom Sawyer.
Nick Carraway was the eyewitness author of the Great Gatsby
The Artful Dodger must have written Oliver Twist and Bob Cratchit (Tiny Tim's father) wrote a Christmas Carol
The White Rabbit wrote Alice in Wonderland.
George, Elaine and Kramer were eyewitness authors of all the Seinfeld episodes.

I cannot think of any actual works of history or literature where this principle holds. Perhaps you can give some, or at least one.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

I have named seven or eight eyewitnesses who wrote about Jesus, none of whom are Romans, so of what relevance are your last four points?
"Call me Ishmael" starts off Moby Dick, but no one thereby regards the novel as a true first-person account.

For Jay and John both, my thread on "Gospel Eyewitnesses" ran to 628 posts, but my argument without interruption can be found here:
http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/

Note that my Post #1 there has an amendment that argues that the Passion Narrative describes the most recent week in the life of the author, presumably John Mark.
It's not consensus scholarship (though eyewitness arguments are currently popular as by Richard Bauckham), but few here on FRDB accept consensus scholarship anyway. You can't dismiss me here by appealing to consensus scholarship.

outhouse · 03-05-2012, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

with no credibility or scholarships
but mainly, no validity.
The author of gmark is unknown, and written for a roman audience, probably by a roman.
claiming known authorship is a epic fail with no backing.

Still no backing for what you are saying. So I'll reply to it regardless.
Nor is there an argument, even descending to ad hominem. (I do have two master's degrees, but being a contrarian I did not ingratiate myself well towards a doctorate.)
Partly my fault there for not mentioning lately my secondary thread, "Significance of John". I wrote it thirty years when I was already touting eyewitnesses, but not proclaiming it so radically. It was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in Biblical Theology Bulletin, but wound up published elsewhere. See my Post #2 for my argument that Nicodemus must have writtten the Johannine Discourses while Jesus was still preaching. See Post #45 for Andrew or Philip as the author of the Signs Source.
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=307897&page=2

Nothing has been accomplished in source criticism of John in the last 30 years, so my article is still as relevant. The problem seems to be that Howard M. Teeple had the key answers, but was not himself in an academic position to get due attention. His chief detractor, Robert Kysar, retracted his criticism only recently, too late to do any good.

Establishing eyewitnesses for the Synoptics is an easier task, and I have done that here:
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common

and in three other articles there.

Ya, ill go with something a little more credible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John

Today the majority of scholars do not believe that John or any other eyewitness wrote it.

when you become the majority, im all ear's

The Gospel of John developed over a period of time in various stages,[24] summarised by Raymond E. Brown as follows:[25]

1.An initial version based on personal experience of Jesus;
2.A structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources;
3.The final harmony that presently exists in the New Testament canon, around 85-90 AD.[26]
In view of this complex and multi-layered history it is meaningless to speak of a single "author" of John

key word, "meaningless"

Adam · 03-05-2012, 11:26 PM

John,
"meaningless", I agree. I stated my opinion of Raymond Brown's amorphous theory in Post #80 of my "Significance of John" thread, and it is the same I had 30 years ago:
Dale C. Adams [565 Fountain Way, Dixon CA 95620]
[Above from pg. 13. This bibliography is not complete; it includes books I found helpful for either the history of source criticism of John or for the source criticism itself, for analysis or creative insight. I omitted books that I read but found unhelpful for me. Thus Raymond Brown and Barnabas Lindars are not on the list, although in retrospect I cannot say that their views are wrong, just that they have no evidence.]
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=307897&page=4

Adam · 03-05-2012, 11:31 PM

Jay,
Your #131 is a clever reply, but do any of these have source-critical analyses that yield sources congruent with my alpha-omega principle? Your link to my Post #9 in Christian Forums is to what I posted here in FRDB in my Gospel Eyewitnesses thread as #450:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....306983&page=18

I accept such classic sources for my seven eyewitnesses as the Passion Narrative, the Signs Source, the Johannine Discourses, Q, L, and two basic sources within the Gospel of Mark.

outhouse · 03-06-2012, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

John,
"meaningless", I agree. I stated my opinion of Raymond Brown's amorphous theory in Post #80 of my "Significance of John" thread, and it is the same I had 30 years ago:
Dale C. Adams [565 Fountain Way, Dixon CA 95620]
[Above from pg. 13. This bibliography is not complete; it includes books I found helpful for either the history of source criticism of John or for the source criticism itself, for analysis or creative insight. I omitted books that I read but found unhelpful for me. Thus Raymond Brown and Barnabas Lindars are not on the list, although in retrospect I cannot say that their views are wrong, just that they have no evidence.]
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=307897&page=4

I find your hypothesis invalid. While you do good work, I will still stick with Brown's findings

In view of this complex and multi-layered history it is meaningless to speak of a single "author" of John, but the title perhaps belongs best to the evangelist who came at the end of this process.[27] The final composition's comparatively late date, and its insistence upon Jesus as a divine being walking the earth in human form, renders it highly problematical to scholars who attempt to evaluate Jesus' life in terms of literal historical truth

There is no way to know who started the first portion, you have not given enough evidence [not even close] to be able to attribute a author with any certainty at all.

Adam · 03-06-2012, 08:59 PM

For accepting improbabilities and impossibilities, nothing exceeds in my mind the abject faith in the myth that Oral Tradition can explain the close similarities among the four gospels.

"First portion"? I have to choose between Q, the Passion Narrative, and the Discourses for what was first? My focus has been on what was the first building block (Passion Narrative), not what was chronologically first (most likely the Discourses).

outhouse · 03-06-2012, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

For accepting improbabilities and impossibilities, nothing exceeds in my mind the abject faith in the myth that Oral Tradition can explain the close similarities among the four gospels.

First of all

oral tradition laid the foundation, the romans built the hellenized version of jesus on.

mark was written from oral tradition.

Q has the possibility of being written tradition as well since the material in L and M is so close.

But original L is said to be oral tradition and probably some of M.

We know they copied Mark, That in no way means oral tradition was not used.

Adam · 03-06-2012, 11:36 PM

As usual, John,
You have no backing for what you are saying, except where you admitted that Q may be from written tradition. (Not merely that you did not present any evidence, there is no evidence.)

Philosopher Jay read my link (if only to mock me), you should read it too.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/

PhilosopherJay · 03-07-2012, 11:06 AM

Hi Adam,

I'm sorry about the mockery. It was not personal. Certainly many people, some quite scholarly, believe some New Testament gospel material does represent some eyewitness testimony.

It seems to me that you have assumed eyewitness testimony and come up only with a rule for determining whose testimony it was.

I am still looking for the criteria by which I can determine what would distinguish a story made up about Jesus from eyewitness testimony about Jesus.

To give a specific example of what I mean by eyewitness testimony, Friar Lawrence, in Act V Scene III of Romeo and Juliet gives a nice detailed summary of the events of the play.

Quote:

PRINCE
Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

FRIAR LAURENCE
I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth'd and would have married her perforce
To County Paris: then comes she to me,
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came, some minute ere the time
Of her awaking, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.

If we assume that Romeo and Juliet is a true story, then we must assume Friar Lawrence has given eyewitness testimony. However we know that Romeo and Juliet is based on the Greek Myth of Thisbe and Pyramus written some 1600 years before. Although we have a character in the story giving what appears to be eyewitness testimony, it does not prove there is eyewitness testimony to the story.

The problem with the gospels is that they are not even in the form of eyewitness testimony. Friar Lawrence identifies himself and his relationship to the characters in the story. He uses the pronoun "I" repeatedly: "I will be brief," "I married them," "Then gave I her," "Came I to take her," "Till I conveniently could send to Romeo: But when I came," I writ to Romeo," etc. He also used "me" and "mine": "But he which bore my letter," "at my cell," "scare me from the tomb," "would not go with me."

He uses "I," "Me," "My" some 17 times in 37 lines. The only time we get such "I, me, mine" eyewitness language in the NT gospels is when Jesus speaks and he is certainly not the eyewitness author.

We can always pretend that the non-eyewitness text was originally in an eyewitness form, but that is quite different than proving that it was. (unlike the gospels, the epistles are in eyewitness form, but they don't speak about a living, human man named Jesus.)

Thus there are two things that need to be proven. 1) The original text was in the form of eyewitness testimony and 2) that eyewitness text was not invented but actually produced by an eyewitness.

Without any evidence to support these two propositions, we really have to go with the appearance. These are made up fictional stories about a character named Jesus Christ and his strange adventures.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam

As usual, John,
You have no backing for what you are saying, except where you admitted that Q may be from written tradition. (Not merely that you did not present any evidence, there is no evidence.)

Philosopher Jay read my link (if only to mock me), you should read it too.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/

Adam · 03-07-2012, 08:57 PM

I think, Jay,
That I gave some pretty solid evidences of eye-witness testimony in my posts I presented here, even in the brief clips below (numbered as in the posts as at Christian Forums). #1 and #3 even give evidence they were composed at the scene or immediately afterwards:

#1 [My Post #1 OP should be amended to include in the shared source (from John Mark) also verses preceding the Passion Narrative in John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.]

#2 Not necessarily disclosing the author, but largely related to this section of John is the name “Andrew” at John 1:40, 41, 44; 6:8; 12:22(2). The name “Philip” occurs even more frequently in about the same places and in John 14:8, 9, but I long ago settled on Andrew as a more probable author, particularly when I found out that the Muratorian Canon (usually dated to 170 AD) states that Andrew started out the process of writing John.

#3 If he took it upon himself to do what he said, the words recorded in the next three chapters from Jesus seem well suited to be a record of what Jesus said that might be worthy of condemnation. Later chapters reveal more and more favor towards what Jesus had to say, concluding with John 17. In John 19:39 Nicodemus brought spices for Jesus’s burial. He had obviously become a Christian. The marked change in attitude toward Jesus shows that Nicodemus wrote all this (or at least notes) while Jesus was still alive.

#4 As the primary Petrine sections conclude at Acts 12:17, it is most likely that all this eyewitness testimony of Peter (as well as the earlier eyewitness testimony of John Mark in John 18-20 as initially stated) was written down in 44 A. D.

#5 Acknowledge that Matthew wrote most of the Q discourses, but also allow for the Twelve-Source narrative, which would seem most likely to have come from him. His name (=Levi) occurs first at Mark 2:14, and very little occurs before that.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

03-05-2012, 11:26 PM	#133
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	John, "meaningless", I agree. I stated my opinion of Raymond Brown's amorphous theory in Post #80 of my "Significance of John" thread, and it is the same I had 30 years ago: Dale C. Adams [565 Fountain Way, Dixon CA 95620] [Above from pg. 13. This bibliography is not complete; it includes books I found helpful for either the history of source criticism of John or for the source criticism itself, for analysis or creative insight. I omitted books that I read but found unhelpful for me. Thus Raymond Brown and Barnabas Lindars are not on the list, although in retrospect I cannot say that their views are wrong, just that they have no evidence.] http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=307897&page=4

03-05-2012, 11:31 PM	#134
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	Jay, Your #131 is a clever reply, but do any of these have source-critical analyses that yield sources congruent with my alpha-omega principle? Your link to my Post #9 in Christian Forums is to what I posted here in FRDB in my Gospel Eyewitnesses thread as #450: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....306983&page=18 I accept such classic sources for my seven eyewitnesses as the Passion Narrative, the Signs Source, the Johannine Discourses, Q, L, and two basic sources within the Gospel of Mark.

03-06-2012, 08:59 PM	#136
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	For accepting improbabilities and impossibilities, nothing exceeds in my mind the abject faith in the myth that Oral Tradition can explain the close similarities among the four gospels. "First portion"? I have to choose between Q, the Passion Narrative, and the Discourses for what was first? My focus has been on what was the first building block (Passion Narrative), not what was chronologically first (most likely the Discourses).

03-06-2012, 11:36 PM	#138
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	As usual, John, You have no backing for what you are saying, except where you admitted that Q may be from written tradition. (Not merely that you did not present any evidence, there is no evidence.) Philosopher Jay read my link (if only to mock me), you should read it too. http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/

03-07-2012, 08:57 PM	#140
Adam Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Dixon CA Posts: 1,150	I think, Jay, That I gave some pretty solid evidences of eye-witness testimony in my posts I presented here, even in the brief clips below (numbered as in the posts as at Christian Forums). #1 and #3 even give evidence they were composed at the scene or immediately afterwards: #1 [My Post #1 OP should be amended to include in the shared source (from John Mark) also verses preceding the Passion Narrative in John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.] #2 Not necessarily disclosing the author, but largely related to this section of John is the name “Andrew” at John 1:40, 41, 44; 6:8; 12:22(2). The name “Philip” occurs even more frequently in about the same places and in John 14:8, 9, but I long ago settled on Andrew as a more probable author, particularly when I found out that the Muratorian Canon (usually dated to 170 AD) states that Andrew started out the process of writing John. #3 If he took it upon himself to do what he said, the words recorded in the next three chapters from Jesus seem well suited to be a record of what Jesus said that might be worthy of condemnation. Later chapters reveal more and more favor towards what Jesus had to say, concluding with John 17. In John 19:39 Nicodemus brought spices for Jesus’s burial. He had obviously become a Christian. The marked change in attitude toward Jesus shows that Nicodemus wrote all this (or at least notes) while Jesus was still alive. #4 As the primary Petrine sections conclude at Acts 12:17, it is most likely that all this eyewitness testimony of Peter (as well as the earlier eyewitness testimony of John Mark in John 18-20 as initially stated) was written down in 44 A. D. #5 Acknowledge that Matthew wrote most of the Q discourses, but also allow for the Twelve-Source narrative, which would seem most likely to have come from him. His name (=Levi) occurs first at Mark 2:14, and very little occurs before that.

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.