steve_bnk

When Christmas comes around and Santa Claus is flying his sleigh, NORAD reports him on RADAR. Proof positive, Santa Claus exists.

There are first hand accounts of alien abductions. It is written in books. It must be true.

The British originators of crop circles fessed up and showed how they did it with boards and rope. People still believe crop circles were impossible using human tools. People with PHD credentials insisted they were of alien origin. Strange 'unnatural electromagnetic readings'

Jesus walked on water and came back from the dead. It is written therefore it is true.

sotto voce

It's why Christmas comes around with Santa Claus flying his sleigh.

Santa Paul and Santa Peter never saw him, mind.

Atheos

I feel like I'm talking to a wall. I've never said your answer is wrong.

What I maintain is that it's not objectively any stronger than my "silly" scenario.

If one assumes the writers of the source documents from which you're working weren't intentionally trying to perpetrate a hoax, and

If one assumes they themselves weren't victimized by someone else attempting to perpetrate a hoax, and

If one assumes no motive to suppress conflicting data that would undermine their version of all this, and

If one assumes it wasn't all midrash influenced by Greek and Roman mythology, and

If one assumes it wasn't all pasted together from evolving folk tales or bedtime stories about "Jesus the Magic Jew", and

If one assumes the inferred source documents (PN, Q, L) have been forensically reconstructed with accuracy, then

Perhaps your scenario has merit. But even then it could be that everything you've concluded to this point is incorrect. Completely unnamed individuals could be responsible for the content you've ascribed to named eyewitnesses and that scenario would fit with all the available evidence, historical record and employed methodologies.

We have abundant evidence that (to the point of certainty) of pseudepigrapha. People wrote religious stuff and tried to make it look authoritative and have it gain acceptance. These things happened then and they still happen now.

I'm a skeptic. It's part of who I am, and my skepticism influences how I look at claims. For my skepticism I will not apologize. It will take considerably more than applied methodology based on apologetic assumptions about these texts to herd me in the direction of favoring your conclusions over the myriad of other possibilities one finds plausible if one simply considers the possibility that the writers of these documents had an agenda other than pure truth.

Sorry about that last sentence. I knew what I meant and it's so run-on I can't even read it.

Sheshbazzar

Now how about making a single sensible post without insult?
Again you have failed to compose a complete thought or sentence
Verse 12 of WHAT??? What BOOK??? what CHAPTER???
With your constant skipping all over the place and from BOOK to BOOK with your 'omit' this' and 'substitute this for that's',
How do you expect anyone to make sense out of, or know what you want omitted, added, or substituted here and there willy-nilly?
Your various posts have indicated you desire to produce a text of your 'Gospel' that is eclectic in nature, with verses being lifted from differing places and sources and then inserted and combined with other texts to produce a new version of text that as of yet simply does not exist.

I really don't give a flying-fiddle what Teeple would choose.
I am not having this discussion with Teeple, and nothing you drag in here about Teeple's opinions have any bearing on us being able to understand what YOU are choosing to preach.
-especially in view that you have, as you have admitted in many places, repeatedly disagreed with or deviated from this Teeple's choices and order, making your continued references to his works nothing more than worthless name dropping as you do not follow or agree with his choices.

Uh uh Adam. It don't work that way. This is your claimed text of a 'Gospel'. I or no one else here gets to decide where YOU start your proposed 'Gospel' at. Time to man-up and present your first verse and every succeeding verse (from whatever Book or source YOU choose) in its proper order and place exactly as YOU want it.

Bingo! Want a cigar?
It is a reasonable request that you finally settle on a fixed sequence of verses and content for this 'Gospel' of yours, and it would be polite towards the participants of this Forum if you actually wish to conduct further discussion of your proposed 'Gospel'.

In all honesty, I doubt such presentation will change many minds, and am certain that it will be challenged on many points.
But until you can set forth a cohesive and stable text of your version of your 'Gospel' for our collective consideration, there will remain little likelihood that anyone here will engage you in much discussion of its content.

And just as a friendly suggestion, one that I would offer even to a close family member that wished to present such a work, while it is more convenient to list verse numbers when dealing with such a large body of text, IF you are serious and sincere about reaching and communicating your thoughts effectively you will need to be willing to condescend to write out pertinent sections of text rather than simply throwing out these sequences of verse numbers. -particularly in such instances where you wish to bring in a verse from a different book or source to insert into and supplement the familiar and known normal sequence, as in these instances it is not to be expected that your readers will need to compose or to supply any connecting verbs or text that might be necessary to insert or connect this additional material.
This to a large degree is why any discussion of your actual work has stalled. And you are the only one in any position to be able to address this particular problem.

In summary, I am politely and reasonably requesting a list of the verses -in the sequence and order- that you endorse, with a orderly and STABLE content, and a FIXED beginning and ending.

Secondly, that rational discussion of your form of Gospel may proceed, the first chapter of your Gospel be fully presented in writing, with whatever verse divisions and numbering you may choose.
This will be a very important factor if you wish to introduce verses from 'Luke' into the text of 'John' and vice-versa.
Title your production with your own chosen NAME, do not attempt to present it as 'Luke's' Gospel' or 'John's' Gospel' as it will be your unique creation, ordered and edited to fit your personal predilections. Thus when we discuss the contents of YOUR Gospel we may use the verse numbers and versification that you supply, and not become entangled in any misconceptions that the verse numbers or revised text you so produce is, or refers to our well known received Christian texts.


Respectfully, Sheshbazzar

Adam

Yes, "respectfully", Shesh, I appreciate that.
By 12th verse in my Post #208 I mean in the prefatory material I now see to the Passion Narrative, John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14 etc. That brings us to 13:18 or 21 (and concludes at 13:38), either of which seems like the corresponding Synoptic verse, yet neither of which Teeple shows as from the source. I shouldn't have said which one Teeple would choose. Yet as originally written John 11:54 would not have looked much like it now does, but more like, "After Jesus aroused the authorities against him, he had to go about in secret. That's when he came to my house," and continue with John 12:2. But why would I make a point of writing up my "own" gospel written in such a way that assumes the eyewitness status I need to first prove? In any case, this prefatory material can only be identified because it is a source underlying the Synoptics as well, so does not need to be inserted into the Proto-Luke text but at most footnoted to it as verses doubly attested by their presence in gJohn. It is relevant to help establish the eyewitness nature of the source underlying the Passion Narrative in gJohn.

As to Luke, Luke 3:1-2a look more like Luke's editing and tend to be excluded from Proto-Luke. I don't need to make a particular point of where to start "my" gospel, and would probably enclose 3:1-2a in brackets, but as needed there as a historical marker that we need 2000 years later but that the first readers in Jerusalem around 50 CE did not need, as Jesus was still fresh in their memories. In Proto-Luke it may have read "In the xth year of Caiaphas as High Priest", whatever.

Even scholars who agree with me that there are layers within Q do not agree on the limits of each layer, so for me to list out Proto-Luke verse by verse, but with Q2 deleted would be presumptuous on my part. And indeed they probably were in Proto-Luke; I'm just saying "my" Q2 verses came from a different and less trustworthy source. For a "Gospel According to the Atheists" I should not censor out verses that make Jesus look like a doomsday prophet. I just need to give my best shot at what verses come from whom and let the reader decide the nature of the Historical Jesus we thus come up with. When I arguing HJ as in this thread, it's best to include all sections that would not get dismissed automatically as supernatural.

The verses of Proto-Luke as listed in my Post #208 from Church WOW read in straightforward fashion, but requiring the reader to discern what he wants to dismiss as figurative or necessarily second hand like the Temptation in the Wilderness (Luke 4:1-13).

I admit that my Passion Narrative reading is not so easy. In addition to the verses listed above in John, there is also
John 18:1b, 1d, 3, 10b, 12, 13b, 15-19, 22, 25b, 27-31, 33-35, (36-40); 19:1-5a, 9-19, 21-23, 28-30, 38b, 40-42.
However, for me to type them out in a text would make it look more authoritative than is its nature, and in any case would call for lots of explanatory footnotes. I'll consider doing something about it.

Adam

Excuse my misunderstanding of your definitions of words, but dismissing all I write as "conjecture" and not even "evidence" does strike me as saying that I am wrong.
I appreciate your ingenuity in imagining various scenarios that would defeat even what I present as eyewitness evidence. Frankly, this is what I had expected would be the rebuke to me here, that the underlying sources were all liars or forgers. I still feel entitled to present the case for written eyewitness records of Jesus. Eyewitnesses can be wrong. People can present themselves as eyewitnesses of what they never saw. People can lie. But they could indeed be eyewitnesses who are mostly telling the truth, and even if not, could be excellent disproofs of mythicism. What I do not feel is legitimate is to dismiss the possibility of eyewitnesses without first studying the evidence. You say I don't have evidence, just conjecture, but that's just your opinion based on your false assumptions as to my assumptions.

And here you are lecturing me about pseudepigrapha, when it is steve bnk and such who are arguing that my source documents don't need to be considered because they are not pseudepigrapha!

steve_bnk

There is no evidence subject to validation. It doesn't matter which documents you pick and how you tie them together. No document is any more objectvely valid than any other.

Referencing one doucment with another neither of which are validated is what is called Christian Scholarship. It leads to books by one Christian author cited by another as a scholarly reference when neither has a basis to begin with.

Adam

Whatever.
I rarely mention that my purpose in working up eventually to my seven written Gospel Eyewitnesses was irritation with New Atheists coming over to Theology Web and tiresomely asserting as a given that there are no eyewitness records in the gospels. They claim that the Consensus does not allow for eyewitness written records. My purpose was to put a stop to this arrogant certainty of theirs.

Arrogant certainty remains the order of the day over here in FRDB, but (and I may be fooling myself) I think I see less of confident boasts that there are no eyewitness records in the gospels. It's not necessary that I prove my point that seven eyewitnesses left written records about Jesus. I just want to dispell the certainty that there weren't.

As a side-issue, I unexpectedly encountered Mythicism prevalent over here, and I contend that my Gospel Eyewitnesses thread does refute MJ. It's not that I can prove any or all of my seven eyewitnesses to be genuine and factual. It's enough that several people (different styles, different perspectives, etc.) wrote at an early time period. Whether they wrote lies or not about Jesus, they wrote about Jesus, and without enough consistency to indicate a fictional source. Some real person must have stimulated various contrasting views (much like reports about Socrates). QED.

So I guess it does not matter that I cannot get Vork, Joe, spin, Shesh, Atheos, Toto, or any steve to make a serious investigation at my theses, because I have already accomplished as much as can be done in a climate like this. The most that can be done here is to sow doubts, and these doubts are too troublesome for anyone to investigate whether I might be right.

steve_bnk

'..Arrogant certainty....tiresomely asserting..' indeed.

We have seen all the tiresome same generic arguments. You/they come here to show us the error of opur ways while prpoclaiming to be interested in discussion. Discussion is a two way street. We never see any objectve evidence beyond subjectve opinion demanded to be taken a scientific level proof.

And again I do not see what you are trying to prove, a Jesus as son of a god, or a simple non divine human.

'..Whether they wrote lies or not about Jesus, they wrote about Jesus, and without enough consistency to indicate a fictional source. Some real person must have stimulated various contrasting views (much like reports about Socrates). QED. ..' That is what we call opinion not proof.

As I said I think there may have been an historical figure or JC being a composite character represntative of the Jewish threads of the times. I can not prove it.


Proof is claimed to be references between modern authors based on unvberifiable ancient texts, and attempts to claim validation for the ancient texts.

I read the Oxford Bible Commentary that goes with the NRSV/Oxford Annotated Bible. A group of real scholars and theologians were commisioned to go over all the available documents and scraps.

The Oxford Bible Commentary (or via: amazon.co.uk)

It is a long read, but they cover all the known discrepancies and contradictions. For example there is a NT reference ro a type of building construction that post dated the alleged time frame of the gospels. They also discuss the diferent methods of ancient historical analysis methods and the plus and minus of each.

The commentary goes though each OT/NT book discsusing probability of authorship, dating, context, and translation issues.

No where do they make a claim for proof of the events themselves. They were all believers and scholars at major schools, you would be hard pressed to argue their scholarship.

Take a look.

Adam

Much better this time, steve bnk, thank you.
What am I trying to prove? Other than the forgery or lying problem, I suppose accepting my seven eyewitness gospel sources would favor the Son of God, God the Son hypothesis. That won't fly here, so I turned to disproving the MJ theory by identifying four sources that can't be rejected here a priori. One would think that HJ people here would welcome that, but people are too set in their ways to think new thoughts. (Same everywhere, whether speaking of MJ, HJ, or Biblicist people. Rationality is not a human strong suit.) The best that can be done, apparently, is to moderate somewhat some people's unwarranted certainty.