Gaps in Evolution

[buffalo]

On a side not, how do you all explain away the fact that jesus shared many of the characteristics of the other mythological gods?

Then you now need to address my unanswered questions about the Divine Attributes which you have ducked for quite awhile now.

 

[Contarini]

well I was talking about wikipedia there it may not be a solid source in itself, but at least it gives you links to follow

So follow them to solid scholarship.

where else? anywhere else.

Name the contemporary historians active in Jerusalem who might have written about Jesus.

other prophets

Which other prophets?

have little things written about them all over the place

Where? For a supposedly skeptical and critical person, you are extremely vague.

romans loved to take note of all sorts of little things; censuses, taxes, criminal records, when they execute someone.

Are you seriously claiming that we have records of every execution carried out by the Romans? What historians of the Roman Empire share this confidence on your part?

also matthew didnt write matthew, mark didnt write mark, luke didnt write luke and john didnt write john. its all hear-say from decades after everyone around was dead.

That’s overly confident. Again, you make sweeping statements with no support.

Matthew almost certainly didn’t write Matthew in its present form, I agree, though it’s possible that one of the sources used by the First Gospel was written by or associated with Matthew. Most scholars date Matthew to some time after A. D. 70, possibly the 80s or even 90s. However, it should be noted that one reason for this is the assumption that the detailed prediction of the fall of Jerusalem couldn’t have been written before the event happened. I tend to agree, because of the differences between Matthew and Mark on this point (best explained in my opinion by the fact that Matthew was writing after the event had occurred, while Mark wasn’t). But obviously a Christian isn’t going to start with the assumption that genuine prediction can’t occur.

Mark may have been written before A.D. 70. I think it was, but I take a more conservative view than many. Your claim that “Mark didn’t write Mark” is unfounded. There’s no way to know for sure one way or the other. But the traditional claim that Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome based on the recollections of Peter does not contradict any evidence of which I am aware. If you know of some, share it.

I think the most reasonable opinion is that Luke did indeed write Luke. Most scholars put Luke very late in the first century, admittedly. I agree that Luke was almost certainly written some time after Matthew and Mark, so probably no earlier than about 80. However, that does not exclude Lucan authorship. If Luke traveled with Paul in the 50s, he could have been born as late as A.D. 30.

Finally, John was almost certainly written at the very end of the first century–some would say early 2nd. However, we have a papyrus fragment of the Gospel from about 120, and one would assume that it must have been in circulation for a while before that. So a date too long after 100 is not plausible. Chronologically, it’s not impossible possible that the Apostle John might have written the Gospel if he lived a very long time (which tradition says he did), but this does seem unlikely. It’s a lot more likely that it was written by his disciples.

Therefore, your claim that the Gospels were written decades after the eyewitnesses were dead does not quite fit John, let alone the other Gospels. Someone who was about Jesus’ age (i.e., born at the very end of the first century B.C.) could quite possibly have lived to read (and thus, logically, to write) any of the Synoptics. This assumes a long life for the person in question and/or a relatively early date for Matthew and Luke, but these things are not impossible. (I hope I don’t have to point out that the human life span was pretty much as long then as it is now, although life expectancy was much less.)

Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) has argued that there is good reason to believe that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony by people who survived to the time when the Gospels were being written. He points out that the standard scholarly dates for the Gospels match the time when the eyewitnesses would have been dying off. I’m not yet sure that I accept Bauckham’s argument, but he is a serious scholar and his argument cannot just be dismissed.

Edwin

 

[buffalo]

So follow them to solid scholarship.

Name the contemporary historians active in Jerusalem who might have written about Jesus.

Which other prophets?

Where? For a supposedly skeptical and critical person, you are extremely vague.

Are you seriously claiming that we have records of every execution carried out by the Romans? What historians of the Roman Empire share this confidence on your part?

That’s overly confident. Again, you make sweeping statements with no support.

Matthew almost certainly didn’t write Matthew in its present form, I agree, though it’s possible that one of the sources used by the First Gospel was written by or associated with Matthew. Most scholars date Matthew to some time after A. D. 70, possibly the 80s or even 90s. However, it should be noted that one reason for this is the assumption that the detailed prediction of the fall of Jerusalem couldn’t have been written before the event happened. I tend to agree, because of the differences between Matthew and Mark on this point (best explained in my opinion by the fact that Matthew was writing after the event had occurred, while Mark wasn’t). But obviously a Christian isn’t going to start with the assumption that genuine prediction can’t occur.

Mark may have been written before A.D. 70. I think it was, but I take a more conservative view than many. Your claim that “Mark didn’t write Mark” is unfounded. There’s no way to know for sure one way or the other. But the traditional claim that Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome based on the recollections of Peter does not contradict any evidence of which I am aware. If you know of some, share it.

I think the most reasonable opinion is that Luke did indeed write Luke. Most scholars put Luke very late in the first century, admittedly. I agree that Luke was almost certainly written some time after Matthew and Mark, so probably no earlier than about 80. However, that does not exclude Lucan authorship. If Luke traveled with Paul in the 50s, he could have been born as late as A.D. 30.

Finally, John was almost certainly written at the very end of the first century–some would say early 2nd. However, we have a papyrus fragment of the Gospel from about 120, and one would assume that it must have been in circulation for a while before that. So a date too long after 100 is not plausible. Chronologically, it’s not impossible possible that the Apostle John might have written the Gospel if he lived a very long time (which tradition says he did), but this does seem unlikely. It’s a lot more likely that it was written by his disciples.

Therefore, your claim that the Gospels were written decades after the eyewitnesses were dead does not quite fit John, let alone the other Gospels. Someone who was about Jesus’ age (i.e., born at the very end of the first century B.C.) could quite possibly have lived to read (and thus, logically, to write) any of the Synoptics. This assumes a long life for the person in question and/or a relatively early date for Matthew and Luke, but these things are not impossible. (I hope I don’t have to point out that the human life span was pretty much as long then as it is now, although life expectancy was much less.)

Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) has argued that there is good reason to believe that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony by people who survived to the time when the Gospels were being written. He points out that the standard scholarly dates for the Gospels match the time when the eyewitnesses would have been dying off. I’m not yet sure that I accept Bauckham’s argument, but he is a serious scholar and his argument cannot just be dismissed.

Edwin

Markan priority is dead.

THE AUTHORS OF THE GOSPELS [According to the Clementine Tradition]
By
Dennis Barton

 

[Contarini]

Evolution has no place nor need for a god

The scientific theory does not. But if one accepts everything that the theory claims, one is still left with the philosophical question of why the universe is the sort of place where such an amazing process happens. This isn’t a scientific question and can’t be answered by the scientific method.

Where do you posit god interfering with evolution

I don’t. I am not enough of a scientist to make that argument. It seems to me as a layperson that evolution is so extremely improbable that there are a lot of places where divine Providence must have guided it in a rather dramatic way. But many scientists, even Christian ones, tell me that it isn’t so. (Others, of course, embrace ID or some other version of divine “interference,” but given how many Christian scientists tell me ID is bunk I’m not going to rest any weight on it.) So I’m not talking about “interference.” I’m saying, as Aquinas said 800 years ago (much wiser than many modern Christians with their “God of the gaps”) that God’s activity is shown in the very regularity of the laws of nature, not (or not only) in their suspension.

and what evidence do you have for it?

It isn’t a scientific argument. It’s a philosophical argument. The existence of anything at all–the existence of a universe that behaves in an orderly manner–demands metaphysical (not just scientific) explanation. God is the Being from whom all being derives. Not some cosmic watchmaker who does or doesn’t “interfere” with the mechanisms He made, but the life by which all things live. There are of course specific arguments for God’s existence (Aquinas’s five ways are not perfect but are a decent place to start; Scotus’s argument from possibility is more rigorous; and modern philosophers have come up with new and refurbished ones such as the so-called “kalam” argument). But more generally, one either sees the need for an explanation of reality beyond the scientific or one doesn’t. I’m not sure there’s any way that someone who sees such a need can persuade someone who doesn’t.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Markan priority is dead.

The dictum of one Catholic apologist with a website is not enough to kill a major scholarly theory.

You would have been on firm ground if you had pointed out that Matthaean priority is not dead, or has come back from the dead. But Markan priority remains the dominant view among scholars (whatever you and Mr. Barton might want to think).

I’ve noted this before on the Internet (especially among Catholics, but it may be just because I talk to Catholics more than to conservative Protestants on the Internet). People find minority support for a traditional scholarly position and translate that into the confident claim that the dominant modern view is now “dead” or “outdated,” as if there is some evolutionary law that whenever a conservative position is reasserted by a few scholars it must eventually win the field.

Go to SBL or any other gathering of NT scholars and you will find that Markan priority is alive and well.

Edwin

 

[akoso]

I have already explained, thats hersay. It’s not even good enough to get someone convicted of shop lifting let alone count as evidence for the supernatural. I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but there is anything but a consensus (by historians) regarding Jesus’s existence. Please point me to this “consensus”.

Charles - you change your argument so often. You start out by saying there is no historical evidence for Jesus even being alive. Then when people provide evidence, rather than refuting it or accepting that you’re wrong, you just move down to the next point on your list of things to argue about. Now you’re moving on to some stuff you remember from when your friend told you to watch the movie Zeitgeist. Why not stay on topic?

Jesus was born over 2000 years ago. Do you doubt the existence of Herod the Great? What about Antigonus II Mattathias, his predecessor? There is much less “evidence” and “historical records” for the existence of these men and many others from that era and before… and yet the “evidence” demonstrating the existence of these, and other men, are not questioned.

 

[Contarini]

On a side not, how do you all explain away the fact that jesus shared many of the characteristics of the other mythological gods?

Well, I really shouldn’t bother answering this since you haven’t listed any of these characteristics of named the gods who shared them. There are Christian apologists who point out the significant differences behind the apparent similarities (most miraculous birth stories aren’t actually virgin birth stories; most “dying and rising gods” are actually nothing of the sort–a point borne out by Jonathan Z. Smith in his article on the subject for the 1987 Encyclopedia of Religion, which is hardly a work of Christian apologetics–etc.). But there are similarities, and they can be explained in one of two ways:

1. Jesus is the truth to which these stories pointed; or
2. Early Christians embellished the story of Jesus in the same way that other stories of superhuman figures got embellished.

Obviously, if no. 2 were true of the event of the resurrection itself, then that would destroy anything like historic, traditional Christianity. But pretty much any of the other details of the story could be embellishments without the basic Christian claims being affected.

Edwin

 

[buffalo]

The dictum of one Catholic apologist with a website is not enough to kill a major scholarly theory.

You would have been on firm ground if you had pointed out that Matthaean priority is not dead, or has come back from the dead. But Markan priority remains the dominant view among scholars (whatever you and Mr. Barton might want to think).

I’ve noted this before on the Internet (especially among Catholics, but it may be just because I talk to Catholics more than to conservative Protestants on the Internet). People find minority support for a traditional scholarly position and translate that into the confident claim that the dominant modern view is now “dead” or “outdated,” as if there is some evolutionary law that whenever a conservative position is reasserted by a few scholars it must eventually win the field.

Go to SBL or any other gathering of NT scholars and you will find that Markan priority is alive and well.

Edwin

Protestants with an agenda came up with Markan priority.

Please produce a magisterial document that makes it official.

 

[Contarini]

Protestants with an agenda came up with Markan priority.

Please produce a magisterial document that makes it official.

Why should I do anything of the sort? I didn’t claim that Markan priority was official Catholic teaching. First of all, I know it’s not (although it’s certainly a view that Catholics may hold, so it’s not “dead” even in terms of Catholic magisterial teaching), and second, I’m not Catholic and I was responding to someone who wasn’t even Christian. I was talking about the scholarly consensus. Your request for a magisterial document is bizarrely irrelevant, as are your claims about the origins of Markan priority. The fact is that most NT scholars still hold to it.

Edwin

 

[curioosbadger]

sure, seeing as the earliest document making these claims/implications is from 52 ad and there is such an abundance of authors writing about the event as if they had actually been there, when theyre 2 or 3 generations removed (aka bold faced lying), Im inclined to throw the whole thing out.

sorry, I thought I was referencing the zombie uprising, my mistake.

 

[buffalo]

Why should I do anything of the sort? I didn’t claim that Markan priority was official Catholic teaching. First of all, I know it’s not (although it’s certainly a view that Catholics may hold, so it’s not “dead” even in terms of Catholic magisterial teaching), and second, I’m not Catholic and I was responding to someone who wasn’t even Christian. I was talking about the scholarly consensus. Your request for a magisterial document is bizarrely irrelevant, as are your claims about the origins of Markan priority. The fact is that most NT scholars still hold to it.

Edwin

Just to be clear to the poster it is not magisterial.

I agree there are many scholars who hold to it. That however is an argument from popularity.

This is a discussion for another thread, so I will not go further.

The poster was claiming that the Gospels were hearsay which I was defending against.

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Then you now need to address my unanswered questions about the Divine Attributes which you have ducked for quite awhile now.

Ducking, lol.

Dude the question is nonsensical.

Here’s my made up man. Here’s my made up attributes to fit my made up man. Look my made up attributes fit my made up man.

WOW!!! God must be true!

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Charles - you change your argument so often. You start out by saying there is no historical evidence for Jesus even being alive. Then when people provide evidence, rather than refuting it or accepting that you’re wrong, you just move down to the next point on your list of things to argue about. Now you’re moving on to some stuff you remember from when your friend told you to watch the movie Zeitgeist. Why not stay on topic?

Jesus was born over 2000 years ago. Do you doubt the existence of Herod the Great? What about Antigonus II Mattathias, his predecessor? There is much less “evidence” and “historical records” for the existence of these men and many others from that era and before… and yet the “evidence” demonstrating the existence of these, and other men, are not questioned.

I said contempary. Any it’s not a point i really care about. Even is there was a man called jesus that provides no evidence for the whacky claims of christians.

 

[buffalo]

Ducking, lol.

Dude the question is nonsensical.

Here’s my made up man. Here’s my made up attributes to fit my made up man. Look my made up attributes fit my made up man.

WOW!!! God must be true!

So your claim is that man can not distinguish between God and Zeus?

 

[Charles_Darwin]

The scientific theory does not. But if one accepts everything that the theory claims, one is still left with the philosophical question of why the universe is the sort of place where such an amazing process happens. This isn’t a scientific question and can’t be answered by the scientific method.

I don’t. I am not enough of a scientist to make that argument. It seems to me as a layperson that evolution is so extremely improbable that there are a lot of places where divine Providence must have guided it in a rather dramatic way. But many scientists, even Christian ones, tell me that it isn’t so. (Others, of course, embrace ID or some other version of divine “interference,” but given how many Christian scientists tell me ID is bunk I’m not going to rest any weight on it.) So I’m not talking about “interference.” I’m saying, as Aquinas said 800 years ago (much wiser than many modern Christians with their “God of the gaps”) that God’s activity is shown in the very regularity of the laws of nature, not (or not only) in their suspension.

It isn’t a scientific argument. It’s a philosophical argument. The existence of anything at all–the existence of a universe that behaves in an orderly manner–demands metaphysical (not just scientific) explanation. God is the Being from whom all being derives. Not some cosmic watchmaker who does or doesn’t “interfere” with the mechanisms He made, but the life by which all things live. There are of course specific arguments for God’s existence (Aquinas’s five ways are not perfect but are a decent place to start; Scotus’s argument from possibility is more rigorous; and modern philosophers have come up with new and refurbished ones such as the so-called “kalam” argument). But more generally, one either sees the need for an explanation of reality beyond the scientific or one doesn’t. I’m not sure there’s any way that someone who sees such a need can persuade someone who doesn’t.

Edwin

I’m not a big fan of philosophy, when it comes to understanding the universe science it where its at. Philosophy and religion don’t even come close.

 

[buffalo]

I said contempary. Any it’s not a point i really care about. Even is there was a man called jesus that provides no evidence for the whacky claims of christians.

Do you agree with historians there was a Jesus?

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Do you agree with historians there was a Jesus?

I’m not convinced, but like i said its not something i really care either way about.

 

[Charles_Darwin]

So your claim is that man can not distinguish between God and Zeus?

Which god?

 

[akoso]

I said contempary.

What type of contemporary evidence would you like? And how might this differ from the historical evidence that is given about other figure that have lived over 2000 years ago?

Any it’s not a point i really care about.

Clearly you do… YOU were the one who brought it up.

 

[Contarini]

Which god?

God is not a god. If you want to talk to theists at all, you need to learn our vocabulary. Otherwise you won’t get anywhere.

Edwin