Iskander

Since you are inviting I will ask you a question.

How does your work benefit from your discussing it here?

Adam

"texts", not "text". There were seven, not one. I can extract them one-by-one for clarity. With which one should I start? If you keep asking for this without specifying, I guess I would start chronologically with the two written while Jesus was still alive, Q1 and the Discourses. Then comes the Passion Narrative, written immediately afterward.

I have recently stated again (Post#184) why the Discourses are best explained as written largely before the Trial of Jesus. Q1 is regarded as ceasing before the Resurrection, which makes sense if the author knew the Passion Narrative was written immediately thereafter leaving "nothing" for Q1 to add.

Adam

Even spin can let slip some knowledge helpful to me, as I have thanked him for several times.

In the bigger picture, however, I had expected strong arguments (or references to books or articles) against my eyewitnesses, but all here are content to rest upon conventional Consensus even without accepting the Consensus where it rejects their own views. I had expected to need to modify my views in any sort of ways, but instead my position has hardened. That's not good, because it can make me perceived as intransigent (quite incorrectly) or as full of pride and ego (guilty as charged). That contradicts the proper attitude of a Christian.

That I have grown not to take opposition seriously leaves me vulnerable when some top scholar like Jeffrey Gibson comes along and gives me what for. Maybe that's what I needed, and I have at least benefitted from that.

Iskander

Thank you for your reply and good luck with your work

Sheshbazzar

You have no evidence that even a single verse of the Gospels were written while 'Jesus' was alive.

This claim is just one of your unprovable and empty FAITH based assertions.

You cannot even provide positive and persuasive evidence that there ever was a flesh and blood 'Jesus'. Just another one of your unprovable and empty assertions.

Your claim that 'Jesus' lived is a FAITH based assertion.

Your claim that these texts were written while 'Jesus' was alive, is a FAITH based assertion.

Not one of the Gospel authors ever claimed they had ever seen, met, or had ever heard any 'Jesus' of Nazareth speak.

The Gospel writers (all anonymous) composed religious STORIES, made up dialog, reported private and unspoken thoughts, narrated private conversations that took place in situations where they could not have been present.

They composed a religious fiction not a factual account of any real person.


Baloney. it is a fictional religious tale. There was no trial of 'Jesus', outside of the writers creative imaginations.

There was no 'Resurrection' (you said you could make your case leaving the stupid 'miraculous' horse shit out of your argument ?)
It doesn't matter what Q1 is regarded as, if there was NO 'Resurrection'. Its a freaking STORY, there were no witnesses.

What's next? You going to try to persuade us that many dead zombie saints arose out of their graves and went traipsing around Jerusalem in their rotting burial shrouds? or that zombie Jesus levitated off into the clouds while five hundred 'eyewitnesses' watched?

Nothing you have written about this mythical horse shit makes any sense.

Adam

Amazing implicit concession here, thank you, Shesh.
My thesis goes much farther than almost anyone else in claiming that some gospel source texts were written while Jesus was alive, yet Shesh provides no evidence at all against that. Is even that not a weak point readily refutable?

Naturally if they were written that early, there would be no need to claim the writer lived during the time of Jesus, as it was still the time of Jesus. In contrast, each of the extant gospels (and some precursors like Proto-Luke and the Signs Source) takes pains to establish Jesus within the well-known, but past, ministry of John the Baptist.

Sheshbazzar

It is nothing more than a FAITH based claim.

And it only 'goes further than almost anyone else' because even most Christians have enough sense not to abuse logic as badly as you are.

By that kind of abused 'logic' , you would have to likewise conclude that the angel Moroni led to Joseph Smith the Golden Plates and Urim and Thummim because a STORY was composed about it.
BIG '"IF". IF there were proof for, or substance to your FAITH based assertions, there would be no 'if' to it.

They were or, they were not.

You cannot provide proof that they were, and that is why you are still dealing in "if's".
If you assert that there is no 'if' to the matter, you will only make yourself a liar.

Go back through your posts in this forum, and count the number of times you have based your line of reasoning,
and your final position on a premise that you had to preface with 'could have', 'may have', 'possibly', 'quite possibly', 'perhaps', 'likely', and 'if we assume'

If we were to assume all of the things you are assuming in your thesis, it would only make asses out of all of us.

There has never been a single Gospel text, or fragment of one found that has ever been dated to 'Jesus' lifetime'.

There has never been recovered any non-Biblical writing from the first century that mentions any 'Jesus' of Nazareth',

even though it is claimed that he was one of the most famous people living at that time. (Matt 4:23-25)

There is no reason, other than your religious FAITH convictions to assume that any such thing has ever existed.

We don't share your religious faith, convictions, or faulty assumptions.

Your making chop-suey out of the Gospels in this Forum, is not ever going to turn them into anything other than the highly mythical religious propaganda fabrications that they are.


.

Adam

I'm still waiting for email back from Bauckham. I'm not holding my breath. "Credible" opposition would mean something more than just claims that I have presented no evidence. I get no specifics on what is supposedly wrong beyond assertions that all that I say is assertions.

Yes, I'm quite aware (as I'm quoted above) that my thesis is much more extreme than his. I am claiming that written eyewitness records remain preserved in the gospels. Few orthodox Christians are willing to accept that. They prefer to tout entire canonical gospels either written by an eyewitness (Matthew and John, both easily shown not to be credible as entirely from scratch from apostles) or merely recounting eyewitnesses that the writers
consulted. Bauckham prefers to play to his constituency. I have no constituency, so I can say exactly what I think the truth is.

Jeffrey Gibson

How you, <edit> know what Bauckham "prefers" to do is beyond me.

How dare you impugn his motives or his scholarship. Just who the hell do you think you are?

I'm afraid you wouldn't be able to recognize the truth if it slapped you in the face.

JG

Adam

Responding to #173Right. But that's presumably why the editorial board at BTB voted against me even though the Editor was favorable. I spotted John Kloppenborg's name among the Associate Editors, and his excellent later work on Q is marred by the ideological focus precisely opposed to my stylistic work on John following Freed, Nicol, von Wahlde, and of source Teeple."rubbish". That's hardly helpful. You didn't even respond to my humility that "spin's" Part 2 might be less worthwhile than Part 1. (And in point of fact I wrote Part 2 when I was entering into a period of depression that was reducing my mental functioning.) I should expect a Paul Anderson to be open to a rehabilitation of gJohn? The critical literature abounds with scholars acknowledging sources for gJohn, but few recognize sources of historical worth much less that they were written by apostles. Positions once taken are seldom reversed. Here again specifics would be helpful. Is there a scholar out there whose viewpoint would be aided by my research or who at least is open-minded about considering early sources in gJohn?
You gave no specifics, so am I to assume you only read Part 2? In Part 1 I gave stylistic specifics from Temple, Freed (hapax legomena, rare words in the Signs Source), Nicol (synoptic style in the Signs Source), von Wahlde (the word "Pharisee"), all serving to document sources with gJohn even before I turned to Teeple for the later over-all Editor. Yes, it would have been nice to preface all this with a study of the literature (as O'Grady's 1982 article, and which I could have done as well, but precisely such a study was what knocked out my article due to space limitations). I used what was useful, not mentioning even relevant Becker and Schnappenberg with similar views, and not of course arguing against Barnabas Lindars and Raymond Brown with their amorphous conclusions that lack any evidence to argue against!