Juststeve

Toto:

A skeptic takes no evidence at face value. Neither does a skeptic discount evidence merely because it comes from a religious text. That's what mythers do in service of their creed.

I am quite willing to entertain reasoned arguments for rejecting the claims of the author of Luke and the author(s) of John about the provenance of their information. Do you have a reasoned argument or do you expect me to join you in rejecting evidence merely because it comes from a religious source?

I already reject many if not most of the claims made by the authors, not because they are in religious texts, but for much sounder reasons.

Steve

aa5874

Your statement is erroneous. It is HJers who BELIEVE the Bible contains history just like Creationist.

Creationist BELIEVE ADAM and Eve were real persons and You Believe a character described as the Child of a Holy Ghost was a REAL human being.

HJers are not really different to Creationist they just BELIEVE less of the Bible.

HJers appear to be WEAK CREATIONISTS.

What a load of BS. You accept that the Bible contains history while you simultaneously DISCREDIT the stories as fiction.

You are in a most absurd position, and far worse than the Creationists. The Creationist do NOT discredit the Bible.

The Bible says in gLuke that Jesus was the Son of a Holy Ghost and in gJohn he was God the Creator and you REJECT those claims and say Jesus was an ordinary man.

The authors of gLuke, gJohn and gMatthew are EVIDENCE against you. They Corroborate and Confirm that you have CREATED your own Jesus.

YOU ARE A CREATIONIST without a credible source.

You CREATED your OWN Jesus from your imagination AFTER you REJECTED gLuke and gJohn.

Duvduv

I forgot to add that on the weight of the entire picture of the context and content of what we find in relation to these texts I am not at all pursuaded that the judgment for assigning them to the 1st or 2nd centuries is any stronger than assigning them to the 4th century.

As you said but in a different way:
"The only conclusion to be be drawn is the likelihood that this part of the gospel story was introduced in the 2nd century" is a bridge too far.

And even if that is so, it does not mean that the texts appearing in the 4th century appeared out of thin air.

Adam

It's not as simple as saying that gJohn all comes directly from the Beloved Disciple, because there is too much evidence of verbal similarity with the Synoptics in the Passion Narrative, especially with gLuke. I don't know of anyone who sees the Passion Narrative in the Synoptics as having come from the Beloved Disciple (or maybe there is, as someone thought that Mark himself was the Beloved Disciple), so there is the problem of where the Passion Narrative comes from. John 21:24 is probably saying that the Beloved Disciple testifies to material in gJohn besides the Passion Narrative source.

The unholy alliance comes in again here between traditionalists and mythicists, because both prefer to believe that any dependence of gJohn is on the Synoptics rather than upon a common written source. Church Tradition accepts that gJohn was written later. Conversely, MJ theorists don't want an underlying source that was written early. However, that alliance is not holding up well. Peter Kirby dates the Passion Narrative to 30-60 CE and gJohn to 90-120 CE.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

Toto

I think you just made that up. A skeptic would require some evidence before believing things written in any text, especially a religious text.

I would expect you to require some evidence for those claims instead of shifting the burden of proof to the other side, as Christian apologists try to do.

Or you could simply read the mainsteam scholarly literature on the sources for Luke and John. No respectable scholar treats John as based on the testimony of this unknown "beloved disciple."

So you have already established the general unreliability of the anonymous authors of these gospels. Is there any reason to give them the benefit of the doubt on their claims for sources?

Juststeve

Toto:

Why do I find Luke not totally reliable? For at least two reasons: 1) he makes claims that we have very good reason to believe cannot possibly be true; and 2) he says he bases his claims on the testimony of unknown witnesses of uncertain veracity. In the second instance Luke is relying upon hearsay from an unknown number of witnesses, some of whom may contradict what he is telling us, and even with respect to mundane details even Luke himself cannot claim to be a witness. I judge that unreliable although not certainly false. I have been trained to judge hearsay accounts as unreliable.

His description of how he got his information falls into a different category. His description is a matter of which Luke has personal knowledge. He is telling us what he did to gather information for his Gospel. He made an investigation. Other than a prejudice causing me to think that just because Luke is writing a religious book, what reason do I have to doubt that he made an investigation if that's what he says he did. It is in the universe of reasonable ways to prepare for writing a book. In fact research is the most common way to write a book not founded on personal experience. I can see no apologetic motive for saying "I checked it out" rather than saying I got this from God, or an Angel, or I saw these things myself. In short while there is reason to question most of what is in Luke I see no reason to question Luke's own mundane account of how he gathered his information. Do you have a reason for doubting Luke's own account of how he gathered information? What is it?

Steve

aa5874

If you have been trained to judge hearsay accounts as unreliable why are you still using hearsay for the history of YOUR Jesus???

Please Identify what is unreliable in gLuke but historically accurate with respect to the Jesus story??

Why do HJers claimed THEIR Jesus was scarcely known when in gLuke Jesus was WELL KNOWN.

HJers have CREATED their own Jesus in THEIR OWN image WITHOUT credible sources.

There is NO obscure preacher man in the Bible called Jesus the Lord, Savior, Messiah and Son of God.

outhouse

I have and it is admissable in a court of law, and you can be convicted on it.

Toto

This is strange. Hearsay is not admissible in court with certain exceptions, but it is often accurate.

Once again, you are trying to shift the burden of proof. Do you really think that you have to accept Luke's statement if you can't figure out a way to discount it? It doesn't matter whether it is religious, or historical, or fictional.

But if you really need a reason to reject that statement, consider these points:

"Luke" never tells you who he is. The work is anonymous. No one was willing to stand up and claim credit or blame for the work, or vouch for it.

Luke never names his sources. Luke gives no details about the sort of research he performed - how he located his sources, why he thought they were credible. He never gives us statements of the sort you find from actual investigators - X said this, but in contrast Y said something else, and X was in a position to know . . .

Luke obviously relied on Mark, but does not credit Mark. Luke probably relied on Josephus, but did not credit Josephus. Is this "rsearch" or plagiarism?

I can't see any reason to accept "Luke's" formulaic statement that he has gathered testimony from various sources.

PhilosopherJay

Hi JustSteve,

What could an "investigation" mean? I assume it could mean a lot of different things. For example some of my students investigate a topic I give them by going to a dozen sources or more and spending several months doing research. Others go to one of the buy-a-college-paper websites, pay $20 and send it in with their names attached. How do we know what kind of investigation this writer did?

Warmly,

Jay Raskin