Sheshbazzar

Anyone at all familiar with basic logic knows that is impossible to prove that something that did not exist, did not exist.

For example, just like you with your particular faith based assertions, It is asserted by Mormons that in 1823 Joseph Smith was visited by the angel Moroni who revealed to him the location of a book of golden plates and the urim and thummim...and blah blah blah..

Do you believe this Mormon religious tale?

Here is the challenge to your 'logic'.

Using whatever method you are expecting us to employ __'to provide evidence that there were no eyewitnesses',
Employ that same method __to provide us with evidence there was no Angel Moroni or Mormon golden pates.
Go ahead, and explain to us your method for disproving the existence of Moroni and the Golden Plates.
....or Leprechauns ....little green aliens .....flying horses .....the Spaghetti monster

Adam

Thank you, Toto.
David Bossman was at least the de facto editor as of 1980 when he was enthused after receiving the first half of my "Significance of John". The second half I sent later was not as original, relying so much on textual criticism and summarization of Teeple's stylistic criteria about the final two layers of John, the E Editor and the R Redactor. The editorial board in 1981 presumably did not want to accept the article at that length with the last half containing detailed and less original work. Yet the last half would not have been easy to leave off, leaving supposed sources without the main packaging in which they were included.

Basically spin's Part 1 Post #161
(less the first two paragraphs I wrote in 1987) is what Bossman liked so much. This includes all three sources. That Nicodemus wrote the Discourses was my original idea (Sydney Temple said he wrote more than that, a core gospel), so it had to be limited to argumentation and footnoting only for its Aramaic nature. I documented the Signs Source to Temple, Freed, Willem Nicol, von Wahlde and Teeple and showed both internal and external evidence that Andrew was its author. I used von Wahlde's insight about the word "Pharisees" to develop my own P-Strand that I showed was the editing that combined the Signs Source with the third source, the Passion Narrative (giving us basically Teeple's S) and then these with the Discourses. (I did not in the paper claim the P-Strand itself was from an eyewitness, but in retrospect I would see it as from the eyewitness John Mark (not Peter) who was the author of the Passion Narrative.) If we disregard now the authorship attributions (that I still stand by), then this outline is standard scholarly opinion in the 21st Century (see my #172 re Waetjin).

As I stated at Post #121 and #123, the two sources here that were in Aramaic (Passion Narrative and Discourse Source)can be found in their entirety in Posts #1, 2, 17, 21, 22, 23, 27, 37 and 49 at
Early Aramaic Gospels and in the source-analysis structure Teeple's translation provides.
The other source, the Signs Source, was always in Greek and is at
Gospel Eyewitness Sources
at post #154, #153, #152#142,#135 #123, #109, #87, #1 .

As for Part 2 (per spin) as of 1981, I didn't have much going for me. Teeple's 1974 Literary Origin of the Gospel of John was already disregarded, and I was making radical alterations adding to the G Gnostic source (to return to a standard Discourse Source) and yet retaining a trimmed-down E Editor for the production of a John similar to ours all the way through 21:17. Critics like Kysar had assailed Teeple's separation of G from E, leaving it open to simply combine them, but that's not what I did. Teeple had violated his own method by letting ideology dictate the split between G and E. So I applied Teeple's insight about the anarthrous style of the Editor to reduce E down to just editing and his apparently eyewitness intrusions in John 13 and 21. I was out on a limb there with support from no one, but the subsequent rehabilitation of Teeple leaves it likely that I did the right thing. But let's leave Part 2 aside, I wasn't allotted the room in 1981 to justify each change I had to make. As for R I pretty much followed Teeple, but footnoting that fact was not a good argument in 1981. Nor was my attempt to separate out a Transition Strand (4th Edition) worth the trouble. Details of Lower Criticism can have other explanations than what I gave (apparently to me now) unnecessarily and probably in error. (I had gotten too enamored of all the details about the Neutral Texts, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, P66 and P75.) Nor do I believe now that John Mark was the Redactor. As I was Roman Catholic from 1969 to 1992 I guess I too readily excused the Redactor's work as satisfactory. I now see R as a later hand, maybe in Egypt, though perhaps someone who had known John Mark personally.

spin

I think it's fairly obvious that poor Adam cannot help this and is compelled to continue to make virtually incomprehensible posts of this kind, ie assertions tied together by strings of numbers, be they previous post numbers or bible verses. They don't ameliorate the assertion level, but make the posts unreadable. It's against the guidelines to argue by assertion. Despite his lack of argumentation and being pointed out here, Adam persists with this evidenceless stuff that has been dealt with. He does not seriously enter into discussion and respond substantively to criticism, so it should be clear that this material is a personal agenda discouraged by the forum guidelines.

Adam

Yes, spin,
I edited in that paragraph late to my Post #182 to provide more documentation.
You forget that Shesh had demanded that I proffer such a document instead of just listing verses.
Also, at Post #33 in Early Aramaic Gospels
I had explained that that thread had aimed at substantiating the Discourses as a source by demonstrating that excerpts from q1 and John could be interleaved in such a way to show that Jesus could have said things like the Discourses in John once the latter are understood before John 11 as accumulated as charges against Jesus rather than as a fair summary of what Jesus said. I simply presented the texts we have available rather than to speculate what Jesus really said. As I have always argued since 1980, Jesus's contentiousness in the first half of John is evidence the Discourses were written while Jesus was alive, because the author of the Discourses is favorable to Jesus by the time he writes the Farewell Discourse (John 14 to 16 or 17).

I appreciate the forbearance of FRDB to allow me to quote so much from the gospels in my threads I listed in Post #182. (Note that this did not include everything: I saw no eyewitness records in what in unique to gMatthew or the Infancy Narratives.) This served the scholarly purpose of allowing my proposed verse-listings to be exposed for reasonableness as to whether they were credible as sources derived from textual criticism (a strictly scholarly question independent of whether one is a Christian or an atheist, except that orthodox Christians tend to reject source theories out-of-hand). For that purpose disregard what I have been saying about authors and dating. The pay-off is whether we have sources that can establish HJ against MJ, and maybe not just that Jesus existed, but what he was like and what he taught.

Nevertheless, my proposed sources can also be evaluated for whether my authors and dating are correct. This is difficult here at FRDB because supernaturalism is rejected categorically, and some of my proposed sources are thus rejected as impossible to be from an eyewitness or even as vaguely credible. This extends here even to rejection of sources that happen now to be extant only bound in with other supernaturalistic sources or editing, even where the sources are free of supernaturalism, as I have presented here in my Post #178 about the Gospel according to the Atheists. The hostile reception I received to that "gospel", even to just the name, discouraged me from casting either of my early gospel sources listed in Post #182 as simply my concept of the Gospel according to the Atheists. I instead used my best judgment as to what was earliest and originally in Aramaic as against what was later and originally in Greek (except for L, the Aramaic material unique to Luke added to Q when Proto-Luke was created).

For FRDB purposes for a text not condemned a priori, read in Early Aramaic Gospels without the verses from Mark. Though it is obvious (pace Jeffrey Gibson and Christopher Tucker) that there is Q material in gMark, there is no Consensus agreeing with my argument from textual criticism that even some narrative (the Twelve-Source) in Mark is from Q1 or even Q at all. Then read from Early Gospel Eyewitnesses only the verses from Luke that I place in brackets, the L material. (There is little enough of miracles there that this can be disregarded.) Disregard all text that tells of the Resurrection, as the contrasting endings of the four gospels leave the original text in doubt.

I continue to hear assertions that I have been refuted, but did I miss someone somewhere on some thread I was not following? Here's one of the places I presented my challenge regarding where I had been refuted here or pointing out somewhere else that disproves my case:
The Nature of Scholarship Post #39
I of course to not mean where someone has dismissed my entire posts or just listed what I said and labeled it an assertion. Where has my case been shown to be false?

Toto

Adam:

This board is committed to free speech, but our patience is wearing thin.

You cannot just shift the burden of proof to your critics and claim victory because no one has disproved your case to your satisfaction.

Consider your statement:

Showing that something "could have" been the words of Jesus is a long, long way from a proof that he did.

Can you at least acknowledge this??

Adam

Of course. "could have" proves nothing at all in itself. However, it does show that Q and the Johannine Discourses are not so different that they "could not have" (sorry!) sprung from the preaching of the same man, Jesus. They serve to disprove the argument that gJohn is so different that it must be phony.

Higher Criticism for almost two centuries has taken for granted that gJohn in too different from the Synoptics to be regarded as of equal value. Some still does, as with Maurice Casey and James Crossley. Adolf Harnack was very firm that gJohn is of no historical value. In recent decades studies of archaeology and of competing calendars has improved the regard for gJohn. John A. T. Robinson dared in 1976 to date it before 70 CE.

Similarly, Higher Criticism long assumed that gJohn was surely later than the Synoptics and dependent upon them for the similarities in the Passion Narrative. Ever since Bultmann, however, the case has been growing ever stronger that gJohn is independent of the Synoptics and an underlying source explains the similarities in spite of the differences, similarities that are too great to be just from oral tradition, particularly in the light of Teeple's textual analysis of sources within gJohn.

In my opinion my solution obtains the best of both worlds here, acknowledging that a common (non-supernaturalist) source (the Passion Narrative) underlies them, but another non-supernaturalist Discourse Source gives a quite different picture of Jesus because it was intended to show Jesus in the worst light.

I of course realize that absence of replies does not prove my case. I would have expected someone to argue against the substance of my arguments, however, or even just to link to or footnote to someone somewhere whose contrasting views do not just assume what is to be proven. Or even just a good presentation of the Consensus against me that is sound enough that even FRDB members would accept it?

Instead I receive insults and counter-assertions (assertions saying that I have provided not evidence but just assertions--they're not even statements that the contrary is true) and calls for censorship. I have proven that I do not have an agenda by reconstituting my argument on eyewitnesses to accommodate Mythicists here who cannot abide any proposed source that includes miracles. (HJ people seem willing to consider the possible authenticity of the ordinary matters in a source that does contain the incredible.) I entered into the spirit of the HJ vs. MJ war here, but no one even entered into battle against me on that front. So when I accommodated Shesh's demands for the texts (itself a departure from an "agenda", since I was heretofore probing for help here for further answers, answers I'm still seeking regarding the expansion of Q1 into its current versions within the three Synoptics and Q2 within Matthew and Luke), I went ahead with my best judgment instead of catering to a non-existent constituency here for any "Gospel according to the Atheists". (There again, I can accommodate any demand for that by extracting the appropriate parts from my threads listed at Post #182.)

Sheshbazzar

I asked you to provide us with your reconstruction of a -readable text- beginning with the first verse in your imagined eyewitness Gospel.
I had to pound on you relentlessly for many posts to even get you to decide what that first verse might consist of, and then you chose one plucked from the middle of a narrative!, thus making for a senseless beginning.
What I was requesting, a reconstruction of your imagined first chapter, could have been contained in a post smaller than the one you just posted above.
Instead, you continued to diddle around stringing together senseless lists of verse numbers, hacked from here and there, from this gospel and that, strung together willy nilly, and then subjected to you revising and rearranging these sequences with almost every post.
I doubt that there is a person here that has been able to follow how you propose your imagined 'original' eyewitness text to have read.

Stringbean

You folks got more patience than I do...I give up following long ago.:huh:

Adam

Yes, except for your recent comments on this thread, about the last I recall from you was October 1, 2011 in your Post #50 in Gospel Eyewitnesses. Back then I had barely turned from gJohn to the Synoptics and there were still almost 600 posts to go in that one thread alone. You stated it about as well as anyone has since:
Anyone have anything else to add?

Stringbean

Nope. I am done. Thanks.