The burden of proof is on you Leo. I merely responded to claims of yours with what the majority of mainstream scholars today believe. It is not a case of saying "no reputable scholar would take a view different to mine", nor is it a false appeal to the majority/authority. It is a correct appeal to a majority of experts in an area where you must be an expert to produce rational conclusions from source documents. If you feel that what I've said is wrong - the burden of proof is on you: You claim that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses - prove it; You claim they were written by Matt/Mark/Luke/John - prove it; You claim they contain historically valid data - prove it. Nonetheless, I will explain myself. Apologies to the people who don't find biblical criticism interesting :DQuote:
What kind of crap is "no reputable scholar" would take a view different from mine. That is garbage. It is to toss out arguments that you do not approve of with a value judgment based on your expectations. You don't like it that the Gospel of Mathew reads like an eyewitness account, and you don't like the Scholarship that points this out, so you blow it off. [/b]
The claim that the gospels are assigned the right names is based on very little. The texts themselves make no claim to authorship and the authors, whomever they may be, don't tell us anything about themselves.
As for claims of eyewitness accounts, AFAIK none of the gospels themselves make this claim. The claim of eyewitness, like that of the true names of the authors, is sourced in writings of men born many years after the events portrayed within. But, to run down some of the evidence which leads me to say no reputable scholar claims they are eyewitness:
- The Gospel of Mark makes no claim to be an eyewitness. It is traditionally held to be the secretary of peter. This is based on a single quote from Papias in 130C.E. This obviously could not have been a secondary source of the claim (time difference and all), so the whole case for mark writing mark is based on what some dude heard from a non-eyewitness. I mentioned internal evidence contradicting this before: the best example of this is that Mark was undoubtedly written in Greek, showing no signs of translation from Aramaic (which would have been the language Peter dictated in). Another good example is the author's ignorance of jewish law and geography.
- Again GMatt makes no claim to be an eyewitness. Matthew is traditionally held to be written by the apostle of that name. Again, this is sourced to a quote from Papias: "Matthew composed the sayings [of Jesus] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could." (In Adv. Haer. 3.1.1.). Matthew is neither a sayings gospel or originally written in hebrew. Even worse for the traditionalist in this case is the huge body of evidence suggesting that GMatt borrows extensively from GMark. This is almost universally accepted, the only caveat being which theory you subscribe to.
- Luke is traditionally a physician travelling with paul. Neither were eyewitnesses. Again, this claim is not made in the gospel itself, it is sourced to Iraneus in the 2nd century. Now, a damning piece of evidence against tradition here is the fact that luke knew the author Josephus which places the gospel ~90C.E, too late to be a companion to paul. Like GMatt the author of luke is dependant on GMark.
- You have reasons not to believe GJohn, so I'm not going to bother.
As you can see, this is not a case of me "not liking scholarship" which points towards eyewitness testimony, I just find that such scholarship is against the majority of evidence - a (very) small amount of which I detailed here. Visit this site for a comprehensive summation of scholarship on all of the extant biblical texts. You'll find ample sources for my above arguments there.
So far you've failed to produce any kind of evidence pointing towards any first or second hand testimony to the fact that jesus existed. And I think someone who wished death on two groups of people for spiritual differences and on one for their race should not use the word bigot.Quote:
But why should anybody listen to you if you refuse to entertain anything but what you blindly believe out of dogmatic concerns for scientific orthodoxy. Why should anybody believe a bigot like you?[/b]
That aside my original points stand:
- The homeric epics arose from a similar culture, yet we don't believe in an historical Odysseus
- References to jesus do not appear in contemporary texts where they have every right to. Where are these second hand accounts you keep mentioning?
- People really WERE "stupid enough to believe in unsubstantiated lies on such a large scale", the rise of Scientology in the information age should clue you in
- Still no eyewitness accounts, and I'll stand by the scholarship of the mainstream majority until you show how they are incorrect
Where's that historical jesus guy again?
-spoon