Flann wrote:Hi Youkrst. The problem is that all the evidence we do have in relation to authorship ascribes them to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And there is no evidence for any other attribution of authorship.

What is the evidence? Self-identification?

We call that inconclusive.

Flann wrote:Well of course the apostles were eyewitnesses,and if you took the view that only contemporaries could do this you could never do history, but serious historians don't accept this notion.

"Serious historians" ignore the chain of custody of the documents because half the human race is Christian. There are so many fingerprints on this text that any claim to testimony is bunk. It's not apples to oranges with other historical texts.

Here's an interesting Quora answer. https://www.quora.com/What-evidence-is- ... l-document

Flann at the moment as i read your various responses i am reminded of this quote

Carl Sagan wrote:You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe

but say by some rare happenstance we could convince you.

how would things change for you?

it wasn't really a problem for me because it was the symbolic reading of the text that lead me to see the literal reading was not rational.

Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
Hi Youkrst. The problem is that all the evidence we do have in relation to authorship ascribes them to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And there is no evidence for any other attribution of authorship.




What is the evidence? Self-identification?

We call that inconclusive.

The question here is how did historians determine the authorship of Tacitus' histories or other ancient books where the authors did not include their names within the books?

No double standards. If let's say the gnostics or anyone opposed to orthodox Christianity had claimed different authorship to the gospels than the traditional ones,we would hear all about it from the mythicists.

But they didn't and Irenaeus could refute them on the basis of the books they recognized as authored by Matthew,Mark, Luke or John.
http://theologian-theology.com/theologi ... -heresies/

Critics don't recognize the obstacles there would be to acceptance, by people who had lived through the period of these gospels events,as real accounts of what actually happened.

Liberal scholars of course don't accept this, but for anyone who looks objectively at the arguments for dating of Luke or Acts there are very good external and internal arguments for pre A.D. 70 dating.

https://bible.org/article/introduction-book-acts

These liberal scholars used to,but no longer insist on dates beyond the first century for the gospels, but this was forced on them by discoveries of parts of manuscripts dated early and other evidences.

In looking at the arguments commonly employed by those who contest the authorship and earlier dating of the gospels I find their arguments weak and unconvincing.

I'll leave it to opponents to dig them out,if they think they are so strong and to produce them here.
http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/gospdefhub.php

Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
Well of course the apostles were eyewitnesses,and if you took the view that only contemporaries could do this you could never do history, but serious historians don't accept this notion.




"Serious historians" ignore the chain of custody of the documents because half the human race is Christian. There are so many fingerprints on this text that any claim to testimony is bunk. It's not apples to oranges with other historical texts.

Here's an interesting Quora answer. https://www.quora.com/What-evidence-is- ... l-document

That sounds like a conspiracy theory Interbane. Tim O' Neill did a good job on the historicity of Christ,and in particular in relation to Josephus and Tacitus.

It's amusing that I've seen at least one mythicist online claim O' Neill was really a Christian pretending to be an atheist, but his article here refutes that.
This linked article is very flawed though. He basically argues that there is little or no archaeological evidence supporting the biblical history.
He uncritically accepts the view of scholars who still hold to the documentary source hypothesis, and determine the dating of books and a supposed invented history, on this bad basis.
Kenneth Kitchen who is an ancient near Eastern historian and Professor of Egyptology,has written a 680 page book titled; On the Reliability of the Old Testament.
Kitchen specifically refutes the "documentary source hypothesis" and does so on the basis of archaeological evidence among other things.
So, O' Neill needs to address Kitchen's tome on the subject. He's dismissive of the Exodus for instance and though the evidence is much greater for later history,it's by no means to be dismissed so casually.

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/20 ... versy.aspx

Again I found him very dismissive of N.T.material with the claim that it's all the sort of thing a reasonably well informed person of the time would know.

He talked about Shirley Mac Laine and things that would be well known in relation to her like M.G.M. studios and other common knowledge of the time.
This is surprising given his interest in history.

Does he seriously think that the kind of knowledge and accurate information found in the book of Acts is just common knowledge anyone at the time could have? And specific knowledge of such a wide range of countries,their geography,titles,customs etc?

https://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/15773

He raises the Census of Quirinius with a few objections to the account in Luke's gospel. However all scholars agree that the author of Luke is the same as of Acts. The author clearly has this correctly placed in Acts 5-37 so how can Luke be getting so much right in Acts but the same thing wrong allegedly, in his gospel?

There are various possible explanations combining history and examination of the text itself.
I wouldn't be so quick to say he got it wrong in the gospel. The Jews had their own way of taking censuses and this was based on tribes.
Why wouldn't the Romans accept this as long as they got their registration?

So Joseph being of the tribe of Judah would naturally have gone to Judea and Bethlehem. There is no need to assume an invented literary device to get Jesus born in the 'right place'.

http://www.biblehub.com/commentaries/luke/2-1.htm

Flann wrote:That sounds like a conspiracy theory Interbane.

It's called bias, not conspiracy. When the beliefs examined are sacred cows, you will have bias. It's a given. Are you honestly saying the bias is not sweeping? I'd question your understanding of human nature.

Flann wrote:Liberal scholars of course don't accept this, but for anyone who looks objectively at the arguments for dating of Luke or Acts there are very good external and internal arguments for pre A.D. 70 dating.

If this is your argument to support a chain of custody, I don't think you understand what that entails.

Flann wrote:The question here is how did historians determine the authorship of Tacitus' histories or other ancient books where the authors did not include their names within the books?

Show me clearly how you know John wrote the book of John, and how his writings were unaltered after they left his possession.

But do me a favor and don't reference other people's conclusions. I don't care about their conclusions. I care about the reasoning they used to arrive at their conclusions.

If the gospels bore the names of the men who wrote them, perhaps someone naive enough to believe that could tell us why they are titled "According to Matthew" (kata Matthaion) and "According to Mark" (kata Markon), etc as opposed to "by Matthew" or "by Mark." "According to..." implies they are not the writers but that someone wrote them from the viewpoint of this person or, more properly, the community this person led. Why would Mark call his gospel "According to Mark"?

Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
That sounds like a conspiracy theory Interbane.




It's called bias, not conspiracy. When the beliefs examined are sacred cows, you will have bias. It's a given. Are you honestly saying the bias is not sweeping? I'd question your understanding of human nature.

The thing is that even sceptical scholars like Bart Ehrman are forced to accept there was an early belief in the resurrection and a high Christology, and have to try to rationalize it away.

So how did historians determine the authorship of Tacitus' works and other ancient authors who didn't autograph their writings?
You have to adopt a double standard to accept one and reject the far better attested gospels. So who's biased?

You can't explain the rise of Christianity, Interbane. Sacred cows? Were they real or invented? Did they just invent a resurrection story and endure meaningless hostility for what they knew they fabricated?

Why didn't their enemies just produce the dead body of their sacred cow? Easy!

It was Pilate and the Jewish religious leaders who were in control not the few Christians.

Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
Liberal scholars of course don't accept this, but for anyone who looks objectively at the arguments for dating of Luke or Acts there are very good external and internal arguments for pre A.D. 70 dating.




If this is your argument to support a chain of custody, I don't think you understand what that entails.

What I'm saying is that the arguments are better for earlier dating than the liberals accept, even though they keep getting pushed earlier than they would like,by the discoveries of new data.

They want to say there is some charismatic preacher who died and that years later these gospels were written by mysterious unknown people,with fictional inventions of the supernatural in them.

But fiction will not be accepted close to the events by people who know the facts of history.

Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
The question here is how did historians determine the authorship of Tacitus' histories or other ancient books where the authors did not include their names within the books?




Show me clearly how you know John wrote the book of John, and how his writings were unaltered after they left his possession.

But do me a favor and don't reference other people's conclusions. I don't care about their conclusions. I care about the reasoning they used to arrive at their conclusions.

You have two possibilities here. The apostle John was an eyewitness who wrote John as the gospel itself indicates.
Or some unknown person wrote this pretending to be John and an eyewitness.

The real question is how the phony John would get the Christians to accept his account as authentic and from the pen of the apostle John.
And he according to the critics would be inventing a completely fictitious account of the miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus.
The problem is that from Paul's writings belief in the resurrection is early and even before John's gospel.

They didn't just accept everything as authentic and that's why the later gnostic 'gospels' are not accepted. There were criteria for acceptance.
All the attestation that exists is to the authorship of John including from gnostics who were not in league with the orthodox.
Did I see John writing it? No I didn't, but I didn't see Tacitus written either.

There has to be reasonable standards for evidence. John was exiled to the Isle of Patmos by Nero. Paul was beheaded by Nero.
You can join the mythicists and say Jesus didn't exist and wasn't crucified by Pilate, but it's quite clear from Isaiah53, Psalm 22, Daniel,(including the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple), Psalm 2 and other messianic prophecies that these things were prophesied hundreds of years beforehand.

My reasons are many for why I think author was John. Jesus himself predicted his gospel would be preached in all the world before his second coming.

As far as unaltered text is concerned you would have to look at the manuscript textual evidence. Of course there are copyists errors but no reason to think there are dramatic changes based on comparative textual criticism. Ehrman is extreme here,and Dan Wallace more balanced on the whole subject of textual variants.

It won't convince you Interbane. I honestly don't know what would.

DB Roy wrote:If the gospels bore the names of the men who wrote them, perhaps someone naive enough to believe that could tell us why they are titled "According to Matthew" (kata Matthaion) and "According to Mark" (kata Markon), etc as opposed to "by Matthew" or "by Mark." "According to..." implies they are not the writers but that someone wrote them from the viewpoint of this person or, more properly, the community this person led. Why would Mark call his gospel "According to Mark"?

I've seen this 'argument'. Usually the ancient titles were described as possessive. Plato's Republic,Tacitus' Annals etc.
The gospel though is the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ,as in the opening of Mark. It's not strictly speaking the Gospel of Mark.
I really don't see why there should be an issue here. There was more than one gospel so it's a simple way of distinguishing one from another. The four gospels are not clones of each other so it's quite reasonable to use the expression "according to."

I suppose one quibble is as good as another for some people.

http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/the-gosp ... anonymous/

The thing is that even sceptical scholars like Bart Ehrman are forced to accept there was an early belief in the resurrection and a high Christology, and have to try to rationalize it away.

Of course there was belief. That reinforces my point. People are gullible. Belief is everywhere, spread fervently across hundreds of religions. Christianity isn't the only belief people have died for. That does not mean their belief was true. People die for false beliefs all the time.

You can't explain the rise of Christianity, Interbane. Sacred cows? Were they real or invented? Did they just invent a resurrection story and endure meaningless hostility for what they knew they fabricated?

Christianity rose because it inspired people, they believed the teachings. I don't see your point.

What I'm saying is that the arguments are better for earlier dating than the liberals, accept even though they keep getting pushed earlier than they would like,by the discoveries of new data.

I'd speculate that there were writings around the time of 30AD. I wouldn't question that. What I would question is how you could tell what is authentic testimony, and what is rehashed and remixed under the pen of a more flowery writer some decades later. We're so ignorant of the chain of custody that it can't be trusted.

The real question is how the phony John would get the Christians to accept his account as authentic and from the pen of the apostle John.

The earliest Christians had their beliefs, but did their beliefs come from the pen of the apostle?

There has to be reasonable standards for evidence.

There has to be multiple levels of what we accept as reasonable. Let's say we overhear a guy who walked into the store claiming he wanted to buy a light bulb because one at home burned out. This is mundane, and we can accept it as true without further evidence because it happens a million times a day.

Then, another guy walks in and claims that he wants to buy an entire aisle in the lumber section. He's building a wooden go-kart track. Well, we don't just accept him by his word. At first, we take his words on faith, but then we check into it, by asking around via gossip or looking it up online or asking a friend that's in "the know". The amount of evidence that's real before believing the man is greater than the light bulb man.

Then, let's say a third guy walks in. He wants to buy the store. And not just the entire store, but every franchise in the country. So he's come to you to check out this store in particular. Okay, so you'll take his word on faith of course. But the reasonable evidence required before belief is justified is much much greater than the previous two.

Then, let's say a man walks in and tells a story of how he witnessed someone come back from the dead, after being dead for 3 days.

There is an exponential increase in the incredibility of these claims. With the increased incredibility, we require greater evidence. Not just for the claim, but for everything surrounding the claim. For the person seeking to purchase the entire franchise, we'd compare pictures of him to what we see on the internet. We'd ask our friends if they knew of him. And, we still wouldn't believe until the purchase actually happened.

The reasonable standards for evidence for damned near everything concerning the bible are astronomical. It changes our understanding of the world. The impossible is possible.

I asked what evidence you had that John wrote the gospel of John. You have some evidence. But due to the claims contained in that gospel, the entire enterprise becomes suspect. All evidence must be reexamined. What is a reasonable standard of evidence for a contemporary writer is now no longer reasonable. Because the way the world works is, we require different levels of evidence for different rarities of claim. The saying "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" isn't just a skeptical tagline. It's the way we parse the world around us, but for some reason you don't want to apply it to the bible.

Interbane wrote:Quote:
The thing is that even sceptical scholars like Bart Ehrman are forced to accept there was an early belief in the resurrection and a high Christology, and have to try to rationalize it away.




Of course there was belief. That reinforces my point. People are gullible. Belief is everywhere, spread fervently across hundreds of religions. Christianity isn't the only belief people have died for. That does not mean their belief was true. People die for false beliefs all the time.

We're going round in circles. Let's start here. Why would they believe he rose from the dead,and why didn't the powerful and influential religious leaders just produce the dead body?

The same reason people committed mass suicide believing aliens were going to save them - because someone told them it was true.

You cannot use people's belief as evidence.