tdcanam

Ya missed the boat mate.

He didn't write "I john was jesus beloved deciple". He wrote in the third person that "John was the beloved".

We know John wrote the verse because that is the general consensus. If have solid proof stating otherwise post it.

The Bishop

Well, how does this work as the opening of your opening statement? Your opening statement needs to set out the terms upon which you are going to argue. Instead you're jumping in with part of an argument about Josephus as if you're in the middle of a conversation.

This just isn't a very good argument. If the best you've got is that no non-Christian bothered to write about him until - well, a mere 70 years after he died, you're actually only highlighting how good the gospel attestation actually is. First of all, there are still possible eyewitnesses alive at that time. Secondly, as I've always argued, the story as told in the Gospel is not incompatible with something that wouldn't particularly be noteworthy to the Roman 1st Century chroniclers - Jesus did not actually instigate a full-on rebellion, neither was he demonstrably a subject King. Judaea was not much regarded as a source of interest to Roman writers (as I believe is demonstrated by the fact that the Pilate inscription - a 20th Century discovery - is actually the first non-Biblical evidence we have for him from anything like a contemporary source!), and the body of Jesus's work, taking place in the rural countryside amongst the peasantry, even less interesting. And yet there was a extant Christian movement in 100CE, recognisable enough for Tacitus to comment on.

Again, you're highlighting a weakness at the end. 40 years later is well within the lifetimes of substantial numbers of people. Otherwise, this would be where I would start an "opening statement" on this issue - on the lack of eyewitness authors and of the apparently curious omissions of the earliest writings, specifically the Pauline letters.

It's too easy to knock down the absence of physical evidence. It was 2000 years ago, and Christianity as a substantial, moneyed movement wasn't to emerge for three hundred years more. "to this day they can't find the empty tomb". I know this is only of interest to the devout, but "to this day" there is a place that is believed to be the tomb, but on what evidence it can be ruled in or out I have no idea.

I thought it was tragic that DavidFromTexas, having begun with some reasonable arguments, first started to go wrong by casting doubt even on the 70CE dating of Mark, and then answered this question by saying "In heaven! Sitting at God's right hand!!" You can always rely on the believer to derail themselves with their own devoutness. :banghead: Well, now you're asking the question that the debate is actually about! For that reason, and for others, you simply haven't provided enough basis to end up asking that question rhetorically as if the answer is obviously in your favour. As far as I'm concerned, your historical question can certainly only have one answer and that is, yes there has to have been a historical person if a) that person was being written about by the devout within 40 years and the non-believers within 70 years, and b) his life story accounts included certain details that don't make sense for a mythological or fictional creation. Sure, it's important for a mythical divine being to have had a virgin birth, be a miracle worker, rise from the dead and ascend into Heaven. And for a Jewish Messiah, it was essential that he have a Davidic genealogy and be born in Bethlehem. Those are obviously mythological/fictional details and this is confirmed when you see that the Davidic genealogies provided by the two authors that do one differ substantially (and certainly incompatibly) from each other. And then you see that there are two stories that get Jesus born in Bethlehem and yet coming from Nazareth in Galilee. But the Bethlehem reference is the one that is essential. Why Nazareth of all godforsaken places? Why make him a Galilean carpenter? Why call him Jesus - instead of David, or Elijah, or Moses or Immanuel (or even Maher-shalal-hash-baz).

If you have answers to those points, you maybe have the makings of a good debate.

Conversely, I'm not certain you really have the equipment you need to conduct this debate. Warthog was right. Four same-century Gospels, substantial Epistolatory evidence (of uncontested provenance) and the obvious, extrabiblically visible, beginnings of a real movement, do not constitute "absolutely no evidence". Whether the evidence is everything it appears to be or not is something that requires some study and exploration. I've always felt, however, that it is certainly disingenuous to claim lack of evidence because the oldest documents we have are "fully" two centuries after the events - when for all the rest of the history we have for that period is based on documents the oldest copies of which are 600 years or so later than the Christian ones.

The Bishop

The "general" devotional consensus is not the same as the scholarly consensus, which is not inclined to accept any document's claims of its own provenance, and surely less so if the person is writing about himself in the third person! The unbiased consensus is that we do not really know the identity of any one of the Evangelists as characters in the Christian story. They are not clearly and unambiguously identifiable with Apostles, named witnesses of Jesus, companions of Peter and Paul, or any other Church Father.

Consensus is a funny thing. Even churches I've noticed are sometimes called St. John the Apostle and sometimes St. John the Evangelist, thus acknowledging that there is certainly some doubt about it.

I don't know the dating arguments in detail, but I've always assumed that if the gospel is dated at roughly 70, then there is a good reason it can't be dated to 130. All of these things could be argued, but my objection to muddying the evidential waters in this way in order to bolster a case for a historical Jesus is that it is the same tactic used by Young Earth Creationists.

markfiend

You can't have it both ways. First you say that there's no mention in the gospels of the destruction of the Temple, then in the very next paragraph, you say that there is.

Are you suggesting that gospel reports of Jesus' allusions to the destruction of the Temple are evidence that the gospels were written before the Temple was, in fact, destroyed? :huh:

Diogenes the Cynic

From more than 12 years of both formal and independent study of mainstream scholarly sources. Did you think this question was clever?
And I do consider it and it's one of the reasons that I'm still undecided on the HJ question. While the James passage is substantive if authentic, I think a decent case can still be made for interpolation (even if it was only the "called Christ" part), and since there is no other extra-Biblical corroboration for it, I don't think it's strong enough per se evidence to confirm the historicity of Jesus. Please understand something here, I'm not trying to make an argument that Jesus didn't exist. My position is that we don't have enough data to have certainty either way.
This is just silly. You first have to establish that it IS evidence. In order to present the Talmud as evidence, you first have to prove that it actually talks about the Jesus of the NT. What is your proof that it does? It's a moot point anyway because the Talmud is nowhere close to contemporary so that in itself disqualifies it as evidence.
You're the one who wants to present Tactitus as evidence. It is your burden to establish that Tacitus got his information independently of Christians. If you can't prove that, you don't have corroboration.
Your evidence for this is what? Matthew? Luke? This is not only circular (trying to use the Gospels to prove the historicity of the the Gospels), it's inaccurate. Matthew and Luke both say that Joseph was descended from David (through contradictory bloodlines) but they also say that Joseph was not Jesus' father, so what difference does it make?
Your memory serves you poorly. There is no claim for this anywhere in the New Testament.
Your evidence for this is what again?
And you know this how?
You're asking me to accept a movie as historical evidence? Yes, of course I know the story. We are not debating the content of the story, we are debating its historicity.
I cited the mainstream consensus. The fact that some absurdly early dates have been "published" (mostly by hardcore religionists and non-scholars) does not give them any credibility. Surely you know that.
There IS mention of the destruction of the Temple in the Gospels. That's how we know that Mark was written after 70 CE.
Weren't they free from all that stuff already? Who was forcing them to sacrifice at the Temple?
They didn't.
So now you're admitting that the Gospels DO mention 70 CE? Very good. We now agree that they must therefore have been written later than 70.
What a weird non-sequitur. You want me to prove that the apostles didn't write anything and your proof that they did is that the Gospels claim that peter walked on water? Well, if the apostles wrote anything, we don't have it anymore. The proof that we don't have any writings from the apostles is that we don't have any writings from the apostles. It's not so much a claim as an observation.
The Gospel of John never names the Beloved Disciple. Why do you think it was John? What is your evidence that the author of GJohn should be identified as either of them?
Really? Are you sure about that? Chapter and verse, please?
No it isn't.
Try Kirby's page on GJohn for a start.

Toto

Chuckle? You have just confessed to unethical behavior. Please do not cut and paste material without 1) providing a source 2) understanding it.

The words you used seem to be floating around the internet. One source is here, but Google turns up a few message boards.

The apologetic arguments that you have cut and pasted have been refuted numerous times. Your post only raises questions about your integrity and experience.

edited to add:

PS - Boro Nut is a satirist.

Dean Anderson

So you are saying that if I write "Pervy is the greatest Admin that IIDB has ever had", it shows my humility because I am writing in the third person about myself rather than in the first person?

He was - according to you - still writing about himself, whether he used the first person or third person.

And he still - according to you - claimed to be Jesus's favourite. This is not the claim of a humble man.

But then, when the text says (and I paraphrase here): "This is what the beloved disciple said, and we know that what he says is true" rather than something along the lines of "This is what I witnessesed with my own eyes, and I swear upon my honour that it is true to the best of my ability to recall.", you think that:

1) John wrote it this way, in a way that makes it sound as if the author is explicitly not John, because he was very humble.

...is a better explanation than...

2) The author meant what he said, and was not John.

Tell me, is saying how great I am, but wording it in the third person to make it sound like someone else is independantly saying how great I am the act of a humble man? Or just bad apologetics?

The general consensus of who?

The general consensus of apologians is that John wrote the verse.

The general consensus of scholars is that he did not.

I know which group I trust more.

Dean Anderson

Shh... Don't give the game away...

tdcanam

I said maybe John wrote in the third person out of humility, (Like not want to say outright, I was the beloved.) I was not implying fact here.

Also, I asked people where they got their info. from. This is not an insult. It was a question. I really would like to know about your info. on dates and people.

But what of the failure to write about ad70 in these late dated works?

I am not a hostle and can only give the information I have found. Give me some time eh. I'm remodelling.

Diogenes the Cynic

The book does name the Beloved Disciple, does not say he was the author of the Gospel of John and does not say that John was the author. Do you understand and agree to all these points? If so, which ones do you take issue with.
You can get the information from pretty much anywhere you look in mainstream schoalrship.
There is no such failure as I've already pointed and and as you yourself have already acknowledged.