Angrillori

Yeah I guess. That grey is "just a shading," so it's worthless.

buckshot23

The effect may be similar but the intention is no where near accurate.
I objected to the use of consensus. I also object to the absolute language used in this forum on the subject. We can all have our beliefs and base them upon whatever we want. There are shades of gray. I am not saying that the consensus opinion is wrong just putting it into perspective. Through all of this I am not even sure what consensus we are talking about. It is irrelevant to my points.

FatherMithras

Fine, but from now on, never make a definitive statement. For example, when you say "Please pass the milk" you need to say "please pass me what MAY be milk based on what I know about the container and where it was bought from." or "The sky MIGHT be above the ground, but that's not an absolute, it is only the consensus view right now."

When something has no support, you don't need to pretend it's worth giving validity. Until any kind of reasonable argument is made that they were written by who they're named after, there's absolutely no intelligent reason to pretend they were.

FatherMithras

Objecting to the consensus is nonsensical.

Llyricist

So why do you seem to have a habit of jumping into discussions with points that are not relevant to the pont of contention in the discussion?

Why? This isn't a concensus of Tom Dick and Harrys of the street, it's a concensus of scholars in the relevant field.
In the discussion you jumped into, the particular dating and non-authorship of the Gospels either is or is not what the concensus of Biblical scholars says it is.

ETA: as a clarification I meant that the concensus of scholars' position either is or is not "X"

There is no level of uncertainty about what their position is, it either is or is not X. And that was the point of contention before you entered the thread.

There was nothing to put into perspective yet, the point of contention was what the concensus is, not whether it has merit.
After several people pointed out that it was the concensus of scholars specializing in Biblical studies? Read the posts

No, your points were irrelevant to the discussion, plus, they are wrong, they apply well to Tom, Dick and Harrys, but not as well to scholars in the relevant field.

And btw, the evidence against traditional authorship is very strong, just because they don't know who DID write them does not prevent them from being able to discern who did not.

Red Expendable

How about the years of research done to reach that consensus?
Does that mean anything to you?

RedEx

Y.B

A scientific consensus based on evidence and the most parsinomous interpretation thereof is different from a democratic consensus.

It's really not that difficult to understand. :huh:

Doug Shaver

When we're talking about authorship of the gospels, do you have any idea on what specific factual evidence the scholarly community (excluding fundamentalists) bases its opinion that the gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Do you have a cogent argument proving the inadequacy of that evidence to support that opinion?

I agree that it is not correct to say, "It is certain that M, M, L, and J did not write the gospels." But when the evidence supports, to a certain high level of confidence, the belief that they did not, it becomes pedantic to insist that people always say "It is my opinion that they did not" rather than "They did not." This is particularly so when the evidence that they did is so weak as to be practically indistinguishable from no evidence at all.

Richbee

Back on topic, please!

Sven

OK, no problem. You can start to get back on topic by conceeding that your statement:

In summary, the general consensus of modern scholarship accepts the following ten details as established historical facts:

is horribly wrong (OK, apart from point 10, but for different reasons than you imply).

After this, we can go on and discuss why the consensus is different than you claim.