Argument from Historical Proximity

[The Pixie]

The problem is that I would have thought anyone posting here on Apologetics 301 would think it insulting to be told what everyone would assume he would already have known.

Even when I again, and again, and again, asked you for the evidence?

And of course if I had said it, it wouldn't have been "evidence". Particularly not if I hadn't listed a dozen scholars as references.

Of course it would have been evidence. However, as you were unable or unwilling to do that, prefering to make numerous posts, some quite lengthy, about not representing any evidence, so we will never know what I would have done if you had presented it.

Is it convincing evidence (of a 95% probability)? I do not think so, but at least it is start. How certain are we of the traditional death of Paul, for example?

Remember that seanD is not the author of a supposedly scholarly article purporting to show earlier authorship of the Gospels, he is just some guy on an internet form, so if he refers to the death of Paul as being well established, and I am going to let it go (though I might start a thread on it later).

I'm glad seanD got it right. So now you're a Christian?

There you go with that straw man now. I never said that showing the dating to be 95% likely would convince me of Christianity. Why would you expect it to convince me?

What it comes down to is this: Why, Adam, do you think you can make unsupported assertions in your article, and not expect to have to support them with evidence?

[Tassman]

Here again, Tassman, you claim the authority of majority scholarship, when what you say is the consensus is not. Here's a clip from Wikipedia on Elaine Pagels:
" Pagels argues that the Gospel of John was written as a reaction and rebuttal to the Gospel of Thomas."
This is not only not majority scholarship, but it is totally ridiculous. She Is a Gnostic who shamelessly distorts texts to suit her views. No wonder she is featured so often on skeptical TV documentaries. She can be made to say anything they want.
Of course, by the law of averages Tassman will get it right sometimes. What he says about John 1:14 agrees with majority scholarship.
Here's a lesson for you, Tassman. Say "majority scholarship" if you want, that's hard to refute, but if you tie it to Elaine Pagels you've disproven your assertion, because she is not a responsible scholar.

Elaine Pagels, is professor of religion at Princeton University and a recognized authority on the Nag Hammadi Library manuscripts (including the Gospel of Thomas). “Her reputation was established with the publication of her book, The Gnostic Gospels, in 1979. She has written several other books as well on the history of Christianity, establishing her as the foremost popular scholar in the field.”

http://southerncrossreview.org/29/pagels.htm

Her opinion does not support your rather idiosyncratic personal hypothesis re John, but this is no reason to dismiss her as an irresponsible scholar – a regrettable tendency of yours I regret to say with those who disagree with you.

[Juice]

Teeple's detailed literary analysis only moves John 20:30 from the end of the Signs Source after John 12, not 20:31. There's a different "Jesus" in the two verses. (Fundamentalist joke.) Technically, the name Jesus is preceeded by the article "the" in John 20:30, so it has to come from an earlier source than the word "Jesus" in 20:31 that does not have the article in front of it. ( I'm not saying that proves anything absolutely, just that there is an objective standard that can be employed if a scholar wants to claim that "There are many other signs that the Jesus did in the presence of the disciples, which are not having been written in this book" has been displaced at least one chapter beyond where it originally would have been.)
Whom are you saying has presented strong arguments against a Signs Source?

Robert Kysar gives an overview of the trends here in his paper The Dehistoricizing of the Gospel of John as found in Jesus, John, and History Consultation (2002). He says on page 93, “Source theories are forced, for the most part, to make judgments that are too tenuous to support the weight they are asked to carry.”

Eugen Ruckstuhl is famous for listing about a hundred characteristics that "prove" unitary authorship of John. But he developed his evidence from what was found most frequently in John everywhere, so it is worthless against evidence whereby characteristics are found only in more limited sections of John. Thus evidence can be unsound. Yes, technically you're right, his characteristics started with a bad argument, but for people who see only the "evidence", the bad argument underlying it may not be obvious. It wasn't obvious to even the best Johannine scholars for decades.

I’m still not clear on what you mean by “sound evidence.” At any rate, you are pointing to stylistic type arguments. I’ve personally never found these type of arguments weighty. Usually what ends up happening, as you have done by calling the pro-evidence “worthless,” is that consistent similarities are dismissed (or often ignored entirely) in favor of dissimilarity. It is again very speculative and subjective.

The atheists can comfortably ignore John 1:14. They can easily argue that John cannot be so different as it is from the Synoptics if it was supposedly written by an eyewitness (John the Apostle) who was also present for all the scenes in the Synoptics. But they can't so easily dismiss the eyewitness evidences to so much of John being set in Judea and involving men (Andrew and Philip, Nicodemus) who were not part of the Peter, James, and John group.

Differences can be reconciled. Some atheists will dismiss anything that comes from a Christian on the grounds that it comes from a Christian. Case in point, Tassman. It’s naïve to think they will accept your far reaching pet theories if they won’t even accept that the text of John claims to be an eyewitness to Jesus at 1:14.

[Juice]

We're all biased. The challenge we all face is to find and apply a research methodology that compensates for our biases insofar as compensation is possible. My historiographical methodology may or may not be a good one -- I'm obviously not the best person to make that judgment -- but so far as I can tell myself, I use the same one whether I'm investigating Christian origins or the beginnings of Greek philosophy or any other historical development.

At this stage I have no reason to doubt your sincerity as we haven't really had much interaction with one another. Try responding here to test how you apply your methodology regarding discrepancies between accounts. The other thing you could do is try proving the authorship of a text that purports to be an eyewitness to Julius Caesar. Try proving it using internal and external evidence. Try proving it with greater certainty than say the authorship of the Gospel of John. You can do it here if you wish or rather than derail the thread just consider it a thought experiment. I think you'll find it illuminating.

[Juice]

You are not presenting evidence, this is the problem you’re making assertions.

Pot meet kettle... Actually, I’ve presented a lot of evidence so far, most of which you have utterly ignored like my reference to 1 John in my last post, Philippians ch 2, the points where Paul speaks of an earthly Jesus and so on. You dodge evidence like it wasn’t there. You appeal to anonymous scholarship like your life depended on it. You repeat falsified assertions like you just don’t know what else to do. You commit logical fallacies galore. But you do provide a certain entertainment value. That much I'll give you.

This hotchpotch all stems from my defending your accusation that I that I was relying “anonymous scholarship”, which seems to be your way of characterizing my references to “majority scholarship”. I was not and have demonstrated this.

The accusation stands. Have you even read the link on appeals to anonymous authority yet? Obviously not. Here let me help you. This is what it says…

This fallacy occurs whenever a person claims we should believe a proposition because it is also believed or claimed by some authority figure or figures — but in this case the authority is not named. Instead of identifying who this authority is, we get vague statements about “experts” or “scientists” who have “proven” something to be “true.” This is a fallacious Appeal to Authority because a valid authority is one who can be checked and whose statements can be verified. An anonymous authority however, cannot be checked and their statements cannot be verified.

They give an example…

2. Most doctors agree that people in America take too many unnecessary drugs...

[The] above proposition may be true — but the support offered is completely inadequate to the task of supporting them. The testimony of “scientists” and “most doctors” is only relevant if we know who these people are and can independently evaluate the data which they have used.

Remind you of anyone? Get it yet? Or do I need to spell it out even further?

Once again: The Prologue is a theological assertion, i.e. metaphor. It is not biographical and it is not an eyewitness claim. Certainly the author is setting the scene for the Jesus story but the Prologue is not the story itself. It is the overture, if you like; the opera is yet to come.

Not “biographical”? You’re parroting Adam because you don’t know what else to do now. It doesn’t need to be stated in a “biographical” type genre in order to reflect the author’s claim that Jesus lived with them. Deep down I know you know this. The reason I know you know this is you avoided my question earlier: Even if it were “poetic imagery,” as you call it, poetry can still reflect the author’s observation of actual history. Do you deny this?

Professor Pagels opinion is relevant in that she represents majority scholarship. Your opinion does not. And you have reduced the point to merely “inconsistencies between accounts do not necessarily imply non historicity”, snipping the main point that “ascertaining "authentic" material in the gospels is virtually impossible in the absence of independent evidence.

So, put together, the argument consists of the fact that there are numerous flat contradictions and inconsistencies in the New Testament and the combination of these PLUS the difficulty in obtaining “authentic” material renders any harmonization of contradictions virtually impossible.

Pagels and her Jesus Seminar buddies do not represent the majority view of NT scholarship. Further, you didn’t quote her with a reference anyway so we have no idea the context of what she actually said. Her opinion on how difficult it is to ascertain authentic material, without some understanding of the methodology she uses to arrive at this conclusion and a baseline by which to measure, is meaningless. Your opinion on the “virtually impossible” task of reconciling discrepancies is noted. I disagree it is “virtually impossible.” Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Lastly, if you think “flat contradictions and inconsistencies” are indicative of non historicity I would challenge you to respond here.

Regarding Caesar, your comparison is laughable. There is no doubt whatsoever that he existed while there is considerable doubt that Jesus did (i.e. the miracle-working god/man). We have only one source for the Jesus story but numerous sources for Caesar as well as an abundance of coins, statues, busts and a heap of geographical evidence which confirm the Caesar story.

Here's what is laughable (or sad actually). The unwavering faith you place in what is in most cases late second hand hearsay from biased and anonymous Romans that try to deify Caesar and speak of the supernatural in relation to him. THAT is laughable considering the grounds upon which you reject Christian texts!

I challenge you to provide one text that purports to be an eyewitness of Julius Caesar. Then prove, with internal and external evidence, the identity of that author with greater certainty than the author of John. This should be fun to watch. Ready, set, go…

Yet again, all you do is reinforce my very point that the epistles of Paul and other early writers speak of Jesus entirely in terms of a spiritual and heavenly figure and are only concerned with him from the crucifixion onwards. Jesus’ earthly life is never mentioned.

Except where it IS mentioned. Jesus is BORN in the flesh, in the line of David (Romans 1:1-14). I’m pretty sure that predates the crucifixion doesn’t it? It is not a theological reference either. Jesus on the night he was betrayed had a meal and said some words (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). This is not merely a theological reference either. If Jesus is spoken of in the context of the crucifixion then his EARTHLY life IS mentioned! Or do seriously think Paul was talking about a spiritual and heavenly crucifixion? Seriously, dude, do you even stop and think about this stuff for more than 3 seconds?

Paul falsifies two notions you've been erroneously trying to peddle in this thread. 1. If someone is reporting theology they are not concerned with reporting history. 2. High Christology is necessarily indicative of late composition. When are you going to address how Philippians ch 2 falsifies the argument that high Christology is indicative of later composition? How much longer will you continue to dodge this?

When something is unknown it can neither confirm nor deny a proposition. But, given the average life expectancy of the era, i.e. 35 years, the probability is that the author of John died several decades before the accepted date of composition. There is nothing more that can be said and I don’t know why you go on about it.

You're trying to use logic, not your strong suite remember? Things are known Tassman. Things like 1) some people in the ancient world around the time of Christ are recorded to have lived to around 100 and 2) The diet of the followers of Jesus included fish and 3) People that have a high intake of fish tend to live longer lives. These things all go to support the proposition that the author of John could have lived long enough to compose an account even if he was around age 100. Your non-argument amounts to “we don’t know.” I’ve already shown why the reasoning in your appeal to life expectancy is fallacious. Your rebuttal to this? Just state your argument again.

It is your job to show why you are arguing against majority scholarship and this requires more than just a continual bare assertion that John 1.14 is an eyewitness report of Jesus when majority scholarly opinion doesn’t think so.

Assuming your arguments are representative of the scholars you think represent the majority then I’ve been doing my job this whole thread. Or haven’t you been paying attention? After all this time you still have not falsified the argument. Further, I provided more evidence in my last post from 1 John that supports John 1:14. You again utterly ignored it.

I’m “conceding” nothing of the sort. The Johannine doctrine of the pre-existence of Jesus, while it is the accepted Christian dogma today, was first delineated in John’s gospel as a part of the ongoing evolution of the Jesus tradition - as I’ve outlined numerous times.

FALSE! Philippians ch 2 remember?
”Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!“

But never mind. Just keep your fingers in your ears, keep your eyes closed, contiune to hum, and continue to ignore the evidence post after post. Maybe if you do long enough the evidence will eventually disappear...

...or not.

Oh dear! Yes, I neglected to add the word “contemporary” this time even though I’ve meticulously included it in the other times I’ve made the point about no contemporary sources of Jesus’ life.

Oh dear! Unless of course John is an eyewitness account. But Oh dear! once again, you ignore the fact that your assertion that “Conversely, secular texts do not have anything like the same level of deliberate alterations to promote particular viewpoints” has been refuted. Again, you just ignore the evidence and arguments and instead just ramble on about forgetting to insert the word “contemporary.”

Since when were Josephus and Tacitus sources contemporary with Jesus? There were plenty of writers around at the time that were, notably Philo, who was Jesus’ exact contemporary with family in Jerusalem and a philosopher/historian specializing in Judeo/Hellenistic religious thinking – exactly the sort of person who would have been interested in the Jesus story. But not a word do we hear.

So what? Philo also never mentioned Gamaliel either.

Regardless of deification attempts re Caesar (a common practice in that era re those deemed great, e.g. Jesus evolution as a divinity) there is ample independent evidence and artifacts re Caesar’s life whereas all we have for Jesus is a series of apologetic writings and no mention or any other evidence of Jesus very existence from any other contemporary source. And only hearsay accounts from later sources and not many of those either.

Oh, so in the case of Caesar it doesn’t matter about the theological assertions and god-man claims because, well, there are some artifacts and stuff. Okay, got it.

The basic assumption of historical/critical methodology is that any possible natural explanation of claimed supernatural occurrences is more likely than attributing them to supernatural forces. This is equally true of Caesar as it is to Jesus. But the history of Caesar does not depend on the supernatural and the historical significance of Jesus does depend on the supernatural.

Historical methodology argues to the best explanation of the available evidence. The best explanation is the one which beats all others in both scope and explanatory power. If the best explanation were a supernatural one, on what grounds would you reject it?

[Adam]

What it comes down to is this: Why, Adam, do you think you can make unsupported assertions in your article, and not expect to have to support them with evidence?

My assertions were supported by common knowledge it did not occur to me you would not know already. Either you already knew it and were just being obstructionist, or you know so little that it's no wonder that we cannot have a productive conversation.

[Doug Shaver]

Try responding here to test how you apply your methodology regarding discrepancies between accounts.

That post addresses no issues relevant to any point I have made in this thread.

The other thing you could do is try proving the authorship of a text that purports to be an eyewitness to Julius Caesar.

Yes, I could, if I had a good reason to spend the time it would take to find and analyze all the evidence relevant to the question of who actually wrote that document. In the meantime, I notice there seems to be no debate within the scholarly community as to who that author was, and I assume that there is a good reason for that practically unanimous consensus. But if I were to undertake my own investigation, I would have no trouble concluding, if the evidence seemed to warrant such a conclusion, that the consensus was in error. Anyway, within the NT scholarly community, there is nothing like that sort of consensus about the authorship of any gospel.

[Adam]

Robert Kysar gives an overview of the trends here in his paper The Dehistoricizing of the Gospel of John as found in Jesus, John, and History Consultation (2002). He says on page 93, “Source theories are forced, for the most part, to make judgments that are too tenuous to support the weight they are asked to carry.”

Wow, great link! (Though I found it hard to access at first, perhaps because someone else was using it at the same time?) Kysar has been writing his whole academic life about source theories regarding John.
However, on that same page Kysar assesses Fortna and von Wahlde as both having source theories that are standing up adequately to scholarly scrutiny. (Fortna dated the Signs Gospel to the '40's and and von Wahlde also sees it as early.) And likewise now in the 21st Century, Kysar has stated elsewhere that he should not have dismissed Teeple in 1975 like he did. That makes at least three source theories still in scholarly contention--it's just that no one version has proven its worth above the others. In Kysar's whole article the emphasis is on source or redaction theories, and little space is given to unitary theories.

I’m still not clear on what you mean by “sound evidence.” At any rate, you are pointing to stylistic type arguments. I’ve personally never found these type of arguments weighty. Usually what ends up happening, as you have done by calling the pro-evidence “worthless,” is that consistent similarities are dismissed (or often ignored entirely) in favor of dissimilarity. It is again very speculative and subjective.

Well, it was Teeple (p. 20-21) who ridiculed Ruckstuhl's method.
"Basing a study on the characteristics of several or all of the authors in the gospel dooms to failure any effort to uncover the literary genre. This is a fatal error in method."
In contrast, Teeple's method of contrasting styles seems sound to me. Names lacking the article are found throughout John in a coherent editorial strata that if correct, would mean that its stylistic characteristics would likewise be spread throughout John.

Differences can be reconciled. Some atheists will dismiss anything that comes from a Christian on the grounds that it comes from a Christian. Case in point, Tassman. It’s naïve to think they will accept your far reaching pet theories if they won’t even accept that the text of John claims to be an eyewitness to Jesus at 1:14.

Yes, but let's take the moral high ground of being open to new evidence. Then they're put up against the evidence instead of having the evidence on their side.
It is true that historicity regarding John is becoming more recognized, but usually at the expense of downgrading the Synoptics. We need better explanations of why they're so different instead of shooting ourselves in the foot by leaving no good reason for the difference other than the Apostle John having supplemented them in his extreme old age, yet adding no Beloved Disciple eyewitness testimony except in three chapters out of 21.

[Doug Shaver]

There is so much resistance to my arguments because they run into opposition from both sides that don't listen to reason.

I actually don't have much time for debating anyone who thinks it is not possible for any reasonable person to find his arguments unpersuasive. For the sake of the lurkers, though, I will make a few comments on your "Underlying Sources of the Gospels" (hereafter "Sources").

The sources underlying the gospels can be established by general comparison and by detailed analysis.

That is such a vague observation it can mean just about anything. The provenance of any ancient document is a simple matter of historical fact, not literary exegesis. The assertion that person X wrote document Y has to be supported by factual evidence, otherwise it is at least reasonable to doubt that X actually wrote Y. By factual evidence, I mean a uncontested fact of a nature such that, to some high degree of probability, it is logically inconsistent with a denial that X wrote Y. The same goes for any assertions about when the document was written and what sources the author might have relied on.

You have not provided such evidence for your theses. You may say you have, and you may say it over and over, but your saying so does not make it so; and your continual insulting of everyone who disagrees with you does nothing for your credibility. These are matters about which people of unquestioned competence and integrity can and do disagree. On the few points about which they do agree, we lay people are not to be faulted if we suppose that they are probably correct.

It is best called “Petrine Ur-Marcus”. It was written in Aramaic at that time.It can be found in Mark (and comparable verses in Matthew, Luke, and even John)

The notion that the canonical gospels in their extant form are the result of evolution from earlier versions is not especially controversial, except perhaps among the most conservative scholars. But the claim that in most cases the originals were in Aramaic is without any compelling evidence that I'm aware of, and I particularly don't see any in this article.

This shows that there was originally a gospel with only a few chapters covering the life of Jesus.

Yes. That would be Mark's gospel. It covered the life of Jesus in just a few chapters. Or rather, it covered the last year or so of his life, having nothing to say about anything prior to the beginning of his ministry. Perhaps the original version was even shorter than the one we have now, but I don't know of any compelling reason to think it had to have been.

Likewise for your claim to that Peter made some contribution to the original mark. The current scholarly consensus denies this, and you offer no fact that is even possibly inconsistent, let alone probably inconsistent, with this denial. We have no compelling reason, absent a presupposition about the reliability of church tradition, to think the author of Mark's gospel was ever acquainted with Peter or even was contemporary with him.

The truly Q material underlies Matthew, Luke, and also Mark as an Aramaic original that causes the word use to be different in the derivative gospels.

You do not explain how those word-use differences are inexplicable except on the assumption that the original Q was in Aramaic. Until you provide that explanation, you don't have an argument. All you have is an assertion.

the radical change is that even narrative in Mark may be from Q.

Yes, it is possible, on the assumption that Q included some narrative material. That assumption has to be justified before we can infer anything from it. Rank speculation about Q cannot tell us anything at all about Mark.

The Higher Critics have suggested . . . .Conservatives have continued to hold . . . . I say split the difference.

Good politics. Bad scholarship. Historiography has nothing to do with negotiations.

This Q-Twelve-Source text remained in Aramaic. Next came a further stage of additions in Aramaic. The traces of who did this can be discerned by looking for personal clues.We need active characters in Luke who appear nowhere else in the Synoptics.The key name is Simon.

So, Luke mentions a Simon-not-Peter who is never mentioned by Matthew or Mark, and from this it follows that this Simon was his source? Logically speaking, exactly how does this follow?

At the final stage the Proto-Luke text was used by Luke the Physician in writing his gospel in 63 A.D.

There is no evidence aside from church dogma that the author was a physician to whom Paul referred by the name of Luke. There is no reference to the dogma before Irenaeus wrote about it in 180 CE, and Irenaeus says nothing about how he got his information. And no matter who wrote it, its existence is nowhere attested before Irenaeus. Your date of composition is based on a pack of assumptions about who the author was and what his motivations were.

You say you have evidence in the time when Luke's narrative ends, but your mere assertion that this is evidence for anything does not make it so. You need some proof of the extreme unlikelihood that anybody writing a story about Paul could have failed to mention Paul's death if he had been writing after Paul died. There is no way to make that argument work without bringing in a whole slew of presuppositions to the effect that church tradition should be regarded as more or less infallible.

[Doug Shaver]

you claim that no characteristics of Q can tell us when it was written or by whom.

No, I do not claim that. The characteristics to which I referred were characteristics of Matthew and Luke which lead us to infer the probable existence of Q. Since we cannot know anything about Q except by inferences from what we see in Matthew and Luke, Q has no independent characteristics from which we can infer anything.

you would have found that tracing Q into the Gospel of Mark would lead you to the name Matthew (Levi) in Mark shortly after that Twelve-Source document begins. So it does tell us something about possible authorship, namely by Matthew

You say so. That does not make it so.

And tracing Q as a source that underlies all the Synoptics plus the Gospel of Thomas indicates that it is early, perhaps so early that it derived from notes taken while Jesus was alive. Nothing refutes such a dating

I don't need to refute what has not been established. Nothing other than church tradition establishes first-century authorship for the gospels, and I have zero reason to place any confidence at all in church tradition.

More internal evidence is that Luke states that he wrote from sources

It is a fact that he said so. There is no contradiction between "He said he did" and "He did not." And he does not say that any of the sources he consulted was an eyewitness to anything. He does not say that he read any document produced by an eyewitness. He does not claim to have had any conversations with any eyewitnesses.

It's not just that Luke met people who told about Jesus, but that these eyewitnesses wrote it down.

Luke attests to the existence of eyewitnesses. He does not attest to having met any of them or to having read anything they wrote. He does not say who they were, he does not say where they lived, and he does not say when they lived. If they all died before he was born and not a one of them had left any writing at all, that would be entirely consistent with every word he wrote.

Granted that my analysis is not consensus opinion, nevertheless it has every right to quash atheists who keep muttering that there is no eyewitness record in the gospels.

I won't try to defend those who say categorically there is none. However, it's still a fact that none of the gospel authors states, explicitly and unambiguously, that he is presenting eyewitness testimony. That is not some pigheaded atheist dogma. It is affirmed by a substantial fraction of Christian scholars -- probably the majority of them, but I don't know that for a definite fact. If so many Christians can accept that the gospels contain no eyewitness testimony, then it must be at least a very defensible inference from what is actually in the texts.

They cannot legitimately dismiss the gospels for lacking eyewitness information when that's just the point to be proven.

A point not argued doesn't need to be proven. I'm not arguing for the nonexistence of eyewitness testimony in the gospels. I'm arguing for nonexistence of a cogent argument for thinking there is some.

[Adam]

I actually don't have much time for debating anyone who thinks it is not possible for any reasonable person to find his arguments unpersuasive. For the sake of the lurkers, though, I will make a few comments on your "Underlying Sources of the Gospels" (hereafter "Sources").

I appreciate your solicitude for hangers-on who might be corrupted, but you misunderstand my epistemological statement apparently from one of my posts in this thread . (It's not from my formal article--Here's the link to it.)
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Underlying
I was not saying that everyone is impossibly unreasonable, but rather that those on the far Right (Evangelicals and conservative Catholics) and those on the far Left (atheists) both have biasses which diminish their openness to a more moderate viewpoint.

That is such a vague observation it can mean just about anything. The provenance of any ancient document is a simple matter of historical fact, not literary exegesis. The assertion that person X wrote document Y has to be supported by factual evidence, otherwise it is at least reasonable to doubt that X actually wrote Y. By factual evidence, I mean a uncontested fact of a nature such that, to some high degree of probability, it is logically inconsistent with a denial that X wrote Y. The same goes for any assertions about when the document was written and what sources the author might have relied on.
You have not provided such evidence for your theses. You may say you have, and you may say it over and over, but your saying so does not make it so; and your continual insulting of everyone who disagrees with you does nothing for your credibility. These are matters about which people of unquestioned competence and integrity can and do disagree. On the few points about which they do agree, we lay people are not to be faulted if we suppose that they are probably correct.

Whoa! Even my first sentence doesn't get any allowance to indicate what I intend to say and eventually produce evidence for? Maybe I should not be so quick to graciously assume you are not someone with an irremediable bias?
And you know so much about historiography of ancient documents that nothing less than violation of the Principle of Contradiction allows a word to be written? If so, here's the complete historiography of the world before 500 A. D. " "

The notion that the canonical gospels in their extant form are the result of evolution from earlier versions is not especially controversial, except perhaps among the most conservative scholars. But the claim that in most cases the originals were in Aramaic is without any compelling evidence that I'm aware of, and I particularly don't see any in this article.

Here again, we're just in my first paragraph, but I do give evidence two paragraphs later. See my comment below regarding that section.

Yes. That would be Mark's gospel. It covered the life of Jesus in just a few chapters. Or rather, it covered the last year or so of his life, having nothing to say about anything prior to the beginning of his ministry. Perhaps the original version was even shorter than the one we have now, but I don't know of any compelling reason to think it had to have been.

No, that would be John 18-20 in which the primary overlaps with the Synoptics occur. The entire 16 chapters of Mark cover Jesus's ministry.

Likewise for your claim to that Peter made some contribution to the original mark. The current scholarly consensus denies this, and you offer no fact that is even possibly inconsistent, let alone probably inconsistent, with this denial. We have no compelling reason, absent a presupposition about the reliability of church tradition, to think the author of Mark's gospel was ever acquainted with Peter or even was contemporary with him.

I doubt that you know that the current scholarly consensus denies Peter made some contribution to the original Mark. Apart from your acceptance of the reliability of church tradition that the gospels say so much about Peter because Peter was the most important apostle (the first pope, after all), you have no reason to deny that the many occurrences of the name "Peter" in the gospels could give some indication as to who was the source for this information. Peter's name occurs 14 times in John 18-20 section that overlaps with the Synoptics, and it occurs 14 times in Mark in text preceding that section of John. I don't ignore this evidence, but you do.

You do not explain how those word-use differences are inexplicable except on the assumption that the original Q was in Aramaic. Until you provide that explanation, you don't have an argument. All you have is an assertion.

I can't provide absolute proof in any case, but the differences are too great to be careless word-use in Greek and there is too much similarity to stem from common oral tradition. The most likely underlying language is Aramaic (I have never seen another suggested). And since we are talking about Q here (or my extension of Q, in which I am not alone among scholars), I can make the same argument about the many similar-but-not-equal Q passages between Matthew and Luke. Perhaps not all of Q was originally in Aramaic, but most reasonably most of it was.

Yes, it is possible, on the assumption that Q included some narrative material. That assumption has to be justified before we can infer anything from it. Rank speculation about Q cannot tell us anything at all about Mark.

Good point. My reasoning regarding the Gospel of Thomas shows that Q material is likely present in Mark. The demonstrable cases are parables. However, since Thomas includes no narrative, I can't prove Q narratives are in Mark. However, just right above I have argued that certain sections of Mark and Luke have similar-but-not-equal verbiage, and these sections include narrative. Do you contend for yet another small source underlying the Synoptics? Ur-Marcus and Q (and hypothetical M and L) are not enough for you?

Good politics. Bad scholarship. Historiography has nothing to do with negotiations.

Good point, but a hypothesis that can accommodate the facts on both sides is better than a hypothesis that is apparently refuted by the position most opposed to it.

So, Luke mentions a Simon-not-Peter who is never mentioned by Matthew or Mark, and from this it follows that this Simon was his source? Logically speaking, exactly how does this follow?

Here again you are blinded by your unthinking acceptance of Christian orthodoxy, that the Simon mentioned in Luke 24:34 has to be Peter, even though the name Peter does not occur after 24:12 (and even then in a verse disputed by Westcott and Hort). Allow me to quote from my article:
'As to the other, “The Lord has indeed risen and has appeared to Simon.” Traditionally everyone assumes this refers to Simon Peter. However, scripture does not mention any prior appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter. No, the plain meaning is that Jesus had appeared to Cleopas and a different Simon. Just as the Q-Twelve-Source ended at this point, so did Proto-Luke.'

There is no evidence aside from church dogma that the author was a physician to whom Paul referred by the name of Luke. There is no reference to the dogma before Irenaeus wrote about it in 180 CE, and Irenaeus says nothing about how he got his information. And no matter who wrote it, its existence is nowhere attested before Irenaeus. Your date of composition is based on a pack of assumptions about who the author was and what his motivations were.

Your first three sentences tell us nothing that all of us havn't already been told by you or others, so let me focus on just your last sentence. No, I make no assumptions. However, I could not cover everything is each of my four articles on Noesis, so you have to look to the first paragraph of my first article there, in which I cite the three "we" sections and that the related Acts of the Apostles comes to a conclusion in 64 AD (or earlier). I admit that The Pixie did not think I presented this well, but he was satisfied in j#176 with seanD's elaboration in his recent post #175. I have no position on what the author's motivations were (as I don't accept Acts 28:30-31 as necessarily his), but I do not presuppose that he was a deliberate liar.

You say you have evidence in the time when Luke's narrative ends, but your mere assertion that this is evidence for anything does not make it so. You need some proof of the extreme unlikelihood that anybody writing a story about Paul could have failed to mention Paul's death if he had been writing after Paul died. There is no way to make that argument work without bringing in a whole slew of presuppositions to the effect that church tradition should be regarded as more or less infallible.

I don't see this claim in this article you are critiquing, but I do elsewhere, as shown above. No, I don't have absolute proof, but even The Pixie does not demand that.
Speaking of The Pixie, I'll say again what I stated up-front when I linked to Noesis, I am not a member of the Mega Society, but based on my membership in a similar (but less exclusive) group I was invited to submit articles.
I commend you, Doug, for being brave enough to deal with substance. I hope my defense is relatively free of the sniping that prevails everywhere.

[Adam]

No, I do not claim that. The characteristics to which I referred were characteristics of Matthew and Luke which lead us to infer the probable existence of Q. Since we cannot know anything about Q except by inferences from what we see in Matthew and Luke, Q has no independent characteristics from which we can infer anything.

But you just posted #189 in which you acknowledge I argue that the Gospel of Thomas shows that Q in also found in Mark. That means that we can compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas to infer what was in Q (or a group of documents labelled Q in total).

You say so. That does not make it so.

Granted.
But it does put a stake in the heart of the argument that the eyewitness Matthew could not have written Matthew because he would not have copied someone else's account of his own conversion. (Not that I believe that Matthew wrote more than Q-Twelve-Source, but Q-Twelve-Source would have already included his own conversion story if he did get involved in writing more.)

I don't need to refute what has not been established. Nothing other than church tradition establishes first-century authorship for the gospels, and I have zero reason to place any confidence at all in church tradition.

But Doug! You just critiqued one of my articles that showed from internal criticism that gospels were being written as early as 44 AD! Here's a quote from the first paragraph:
'Just before the death of Herod Agrippa I in 44 A.D., the Apostle Peter arrives at the home of John Mark. The underlying text had focused on Peter to this point. Since we hear of Peter only once again, we can assume that this source ends here.'
And elsewhere I claim that Q and the Johannine Discourses were written even before that.

It is a fact that he said so. There is no contradiction between "He said he did" and "He did not." And he does not say that any of the sources he consulted was an eyewitness to anything. He does not say that he read any document produced by an eyewitness. He does not claim to have had any conversations with any eyewitnesses.

No contradiction other than that he lied. You're getting very extreme about the Principle of Contradiction. If for everything in history, "Julius lived" we can assert "Julius did not live", then we can sum up ancient history as follows: "unproven "

Luke attests to the existence of eyewitnesses. He does not attest to having met any of them or to having read anything they wrote. He does not say who they were, he does not say where they lived, and he does not say when they lived. If they all died before he was born and not a one of them had left any writing at all, that would be entirely consistent with every word he wrote.

Here again the ultra-orthodox and the atheists lie together, neither can be comfortable admitting that the eyewitnesses Luke spoke of (1:2) handed down anything in writing, even though concensus scholarship acknowledges that there are written sources.

I won't try to defend those who say categorically there is none. However, it's still a fact that none of the gospel authors states, explicitly and unambiguously, that he is presenting eyewitness testimony. That is not some pigheaded atheist dogma. It is affirmed by a substantial fraction of Christian scholars -- probably the majority of them, but I don't know that for a definite fact. If so many Christians can accept that the gospels contain no eyewitness testimony, then it must be at least a very defensible inference from what is actually in the texts.

Good! I hereby absolve Doug Shaver from any imputation of Fundie Atheism. (I'm not being sarcastic. Doug, you're OK.)

A point not argued doesn't need to be proven. I'm not arguing for the nonexistence of eyewitness testimony in the gospels. I'm arguing for nonexistence of a cogent argument for thinking there is some.

Translated into Doug's epistemology stated here and in his #189, "I'm arguing that the Principle of Contradiction cannot establish that there are eyewitness testimonies in the gospels." Thus stated, neither my arguments in my articles elsewhere nor my postings in TWeb since 2005 are cogent enough.
But then who's cogent anyway?
I refer you also to my Post #114 reply to you that you should look at again. And #108.

[Tassman]

Pot meet kettle... Actually, I’ve presented a lot of evidence so far, most of which you have utterly ignored like my reference to 1 John in my last post, Philippians ch 2, the points where Paul speaks of an earthly Jesus and so on. You dodge evidence like it wasn’t there. You appeal to anonymous scholarship like your life depended on it. You repeat falsified assertions like you just don’t know what else to do. You commit logical fallacies galore. But you do provide a certain entertainment value. That much I'll give you.

Empty assertions or points already dealt with - several times. You may think you have falsified my arguments but you haven’t. And, all typically rounded off with personal insult! You’re losing the argument. I can tell by the increase in sarcasm and ridicule.

The accusation stands. Have you even read the link on appeals to anonymous authority yet? Obviously not. Here let me help you. This is what it says…

They give an example…


Remind you of anyone? Get it yet? Or do I need to spell it out even further?

Typically you prefer making accusations of logical fallacies in lieu of making an actual point!

Firstly, I don’t refer to “anonymous authority” but “majority scholarship”. Secondly, I mentioned and quoted several of these scholars by name including in the very post you are responding to.

Hardly anonymous” any more than the “anonymous artifacts” (whatever that means) you threw at me re evidencing an historical Julius Caesar.

Not “biographical”? You’re parroting Adam because you don’t know what else to do now. It doesn’t need to be stated in a “biographical” type genre in order to reflect the author’s claim that Jesus lived with them. Deep down I know you know this. The reason I know you know this is you avoided my question earlier: Even if it were “poetic imagery,” as you call it, poetry can still reflect the author’s observation of actual history. Do you deny this?

It could, as in Homer’s Iliad, but it is not the case in this instance for all the reasons Adam and I have provided - over and over and over again. The Prologue is commonly accepted as poetic imagery depicting the Johaninne concept of the pre-existent Jesus, which is being introduced for the first time. It is the introduction to the Jesus story – i.e. setting the scene - not the Jesus story itself

Yes “biographical” was Adam’s word, but perfectly in keeping with what I have been consistently arguing. Do you really think that the mystical Prologue has the ring of biography to it? Of course it doesn’t.

Pagels and her Jesus Seminar buddies do not represent the majority view of NT scholarship. Further, you didn’t quote her with a reference anyway so we have no idea the context of what she actually said. Her opinion on how difficult it is to ascertain authentic material, without some understanding of the methodology she uses to arrive at this conclusion and a baseline by which to measure, is meaningless. Your opinion on the “virtually impossible” task of reconciling discrepancies is noted. I disagree it is “virtually impossible.” Difficult, yes, but not impossible. Lastly, if you think “flat contradictions and inconsistencies” are indicative of non historicity I would challenge you to respond here.

“Jesus Seminar buddies”!!! Shame on you! Do I detect a Genetic Fallacy! AND incorrect as well! Professor Elaine Pagels is not a member of the Jesus Seminar – although she shares many of its views.

The Jesus Seminar and Westar its sponsor comprise some 200 of the top biblical scholars around today – but it seems you dismiss them wholesale for adopting the Critical/Historical method and not peddling the devotional line of the Apologist scholars.

Further, your opinion of her opinion is nothing more than – well - your opinion. And what do you know?

Here's what is laughable (or sad actually). The unwavering faith you place in what is in most cases late second hand hearsay from biased and anonymous Romans that try to deify Caesar and speak of the supernatural in relation to him. THAT is laughable considering the grounds upon which you reject Christian texts!

I challenge you to provide one text that purports to be an eyewitness of Julius Caesar. Then prove, with internal and external evidence, the identity of that author with greater certainty than the author of John. This should be fun to watch. Ready, set, go…

Why don’t you just drop this nonsense of comparing historical accounts of a supernatural god/man with a known and well documented historical figure like Caesar? The two cannot compare.

I can do no better than repost Doug Shaver’s excellent response to this absurd question which summarizes exactly my position re this red herring:

“Yes, I could, if I had a good reason to spend the time it would take to find and analyze all the evidence relevant to the question of who actually wrote that document. In the meantime, I notice there seems to be no debate within the scholarly community as to whom that author was, and I assume that there is a good reason for that practically unanimous consensus. But if I were to undertake my own investigation, I would have no trouble concluding, if the evidence seemed to warrant such a conclusion, that the consensus was in error. Anyway, within the NT scholarly community, there is nothing like that sort of consensus about the authorship of any gospel.”

Except where it IS mentioned. Jesus is BORN in the flesh, in the line of David (Romans 1:1-14). I’m pretty sure that predates the crucifixion doesn’t it? It is not a theological reference either. Jesus on the night he was betrayed had a meal and said some words (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). This is not merely a theological reference either. If Jesus is spoken of in the context of the crucifixion then his EARTHLY life IS mentioned! Or do seriously think Paul was talking about a spiritual and heavenly crucifixion? Seriously, dude, do you even stop and think about this stuff for more than 3 seconds?

I see. So “being born” qualifies as history in your opinion? The point of the passage is not to recount history but to make the theological point that Jesus as Messiah is in the line of David.

Similarly with the Last Supper! Its purpose is not to recount history but to make the theological point that it is representative of the body and blood of the new covenant.

And this is what you claim to be Paul’s historical account of Jesus’ life on earth. Who are your trying to kid?

The fact is that not one single instance in any of Paul's writings claims where he claims to have met or seen an earthly Jesus and he gives virtually no account of to Jesus' life on earth. ALL accounts about Jesus could only have come from other believers i.e. hearsay, or his own imagination.

Paul falsifies two notions you've been erroneously trying to peddle in this thread. 1. If someone is reporting theology they are not concerned with reporting history. 2. High Christology is necessarily indicative of late composition. When are you going to address how Philippians ch 2 falsifies the argument that high Christology is indicative of later composition? How much longer will you continue to dodge this?

1. Dealt with above!

2. When are you going to take account of my much repeated fact from the likes of Professors Metzger and Ehrman that all the Christian communities based their Christology on oral transmission initially, which in turn evolved into many varied Christian communities each with their own Jesus traditions – ranging from the Christian Gnostics, Jewish Christians and Proto-Orthodox Christians whose tradition eventually prevailed.

You continually function under the false assumption that from the beginning there was only one Jesus story ‘cut from whole cloth’ and that to quote from one tradition in order to rebut that of another is sound scholarship. It isn’t.

You're trying to use logic, not your strong suite remember? Things are known Tassman. Things like 1) some people in the ancient world around the time of Christ are recorded to have lived to around 100 and 2) The diet of the followers of Jesus included fish and 3) People that have a high intake of fish tend to live longer lives. These things all go to support the proposition that the author of John could have lived long enough to compose an account even if he was around age 100. Your non-argument amounts to “we don’t know.” I’ve already shown why the reasoning in your appeal to life expectancy is fallacious. Your rebuttal to this? Just state your argument again.

Once again, we have no knowledge of how long the author of John lived. We do have knowledge that the average life-expectancy in that era was 35 years. You can quote modern dieticians’ extolling the life-enhancing virtues of fish all you like but we don’t know that John ate a lot of fish or, even if he did, not fall victim to disease or accident. Get it through your head that we just don’t know.

Your whole argument is a mess of assumptions and presuppositions about authorship including the unsupported assumption that John was the work of a single author and was an eyewitness account. Evidence is that this wasn’t the case.

Assuming your arguments are representative of the scholars you think represent the majority then I’ve been doing my job this whole thread. Or haven’t you been paying attention? After all this time you still have not falsified the argument. Further, I provided more evidence in my last post from 1 John that supports John 1:14. You again utterly ignored it.

“Most modern commentators assume that I John was written after the fourth gospel. The terminus ad quem for I John is provided by Polycarp, who presupposes I John 4:2 in Phil 7:1, and by Papias, who used texts from I John according to Eusebius in HE 3.39.17. This places the letter sometime in the first quarter of the second century.” Raymond E Brown.

Thus by this time we have the fully developed doctrine of the pre-existent Christ, which is becoming increasingly accepted, just as we get it in 1:14. No one denies that this is the doctrine of ‘pre-existence’ being presented but this is not the same as being an eyewitness report of Jesus.

FALSE! Philippians ch 2 remember?
”Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!“

But never mind. Just keep your fingers in your ears, keep your eyes closed, contiune to hum, and continue to ignore the evidence post after post. Maybe if you do long enough the evidence will eventually disappear...

The underlying meaning of the kenotic passage is highly controversial, but don’t let that worry you. Just grab the meaning you like and go with it.

Biblical scholars do not think this passage means to say that Christ "emptied emptied himself of divine attributes" or anything like that. The words “of His deity” simply are not in the passage. The Kenotic Theory is based on an assumption regarding what “emptied” means and references, not upon what the Bible actually says and is erroneously used to refer to the pre-existence of Jesus Christ.

“It should be said at the outset that the verb must be understood metaphorically, not metaphysically. It says nothing about Christ stripping himself of his divine attributes as has sometimes been suggested.” All this according to the United Bible Societies’ Handbook!

Oh dear! Unless of course John is an eyewitness account. But Oh dear! once again, you ignore the fact that your assertion that “Conversely, secular texts do not have anything like the same level of deliberate alterations to promote particular viewpoints” has been refuted. Again, you just ignore the evidence and arguments and instead just ramble on about forgetting to insert the word “contemporary.”

What evidence! What arguments! Are you saying that there IS contemporary evidence of the Jesus story? OK, present it and you will become rich and famous.

So what? Philo also never mentioned Gamaliel either.

So, should he have mentioned Gamaliel, a mere teacher of doctrine? Why?

Did Gamaliel turn Jerusalem upside down, heal the sick and raise the dead so that his fame spread as far as Syria? Did he have a triumphal entry, commit sacrilege in the temple have a sensational trail culminating in crucifixion whereby there was an eclipse, and earthquake with the temple curtain being rent in twain and the dead rising from their graves and wandering around the relatively small town of Jerusalem? No?

It seems that it was it the sensational events of the Jesus story that his exact contemporary Philo missed – and everyone else too. Strange that!

Oh, so in the case of Caesar it doesn’t matter about the theological assertions and god-man claims because, well, there are some artifacts and stuff. Okay, got it.

Yes, silly old “Artifacts and stuff”!

The point you missed is that Caesar’s story does not depend on the supernatural elements in it whereas the Jesus story is totally dependent on it. The supernatural resurrection is what it’s all about.

Historical methodology argues to the best explanation of the available evidence. The best explanation is the one which beats all others in both scope and explanatory power. If the best explanation were a supernatural one, on what grounds would you reject it?

This is one of apologist WL Craig’s more inane notions: There is an empty tomb and there are no obvious natural explanations as to why or how so, wait for it, Jesus must have resurrected. Of course!

It’s a god-of-the-gaps argument, e.g. we know that Hannibal crossed the Alps with his elephants but we don’t know how. Oh well, obviously he and his elephants floated over them via supernatural means. What’s that…..you think there WAS a natural explanation but that we just don’t know what it was? Precisely!

Once again: The critical/historical method assumes that any possible natural explanation is more likely than attributing them to supernatural forces.

[Doug Shaver]

I was not saying that everyone is impossibly unreasonable, but rather that those on the far Right (Evangelicals and conservative Catholics) and those on the far Left (atheists) both have biasses which diminish their openness to a more moderate viewpoint.

Anyone who thinks that the way to discover the truth is to find an unbiased authority has set himself on a fool's errand. Moderates, or mainstream scholars, or whatever you want to call them, have plenty of biases of their own. Most people either don't notice those biases or don't care about them because most people have those same biases themselves.

The challenge for any layman trying to learn something from the scholarly literature is not to find unbiased scholars, because they do not exist. What the layman has to do is identify the bias as best he can and then ignore it, because any author's bias is irrelevant to an evaluation of his argument. Nothing matters except whether the author has presented all the facts relevant to his conclusion and whether he has made a cogent argument from those facts to his conclusion. If his facts are in order and his logic is good, then he should be taken seriously regardless of his biases. If he is short on facts or logic, then we need pay no attention to him, bias or no bias.

Whoa! Even my first sentence doesn't get any allowance to indicate what I intend to say and eventually produce evidence for?

The purpose of my post was to argue that you have failed to produce evidence sufficient to support your thesis about when and by whom the gospels originally were written. If you mean to present a counterargument, then any statement about what you intended to say is irrelevant. So is any assurance, anywhere in your article, that evidence would be forthcoming. I did not find that evidence, and it is simply beside the point that the article included a promise that I would find it.

And you know so much about historiography of ancient documents that nothing less than violation of the Principle of Contradiction allows a word to be written?

I said nothing like that. I have learned just enough about historiography to know that nothing about it constitutes an exemption from the canons of logic, in which I include the logic of probability. I ask for no claim about anything that happened in the past to be proven beyond any possible doubt. What I ask for is a fact-based reason to think it more likely that it happened than that it didn't happen. "Nobody can prove it didn't happen" is not that sort of reason.

I doubt that you know that the current scholarly consensus denies Peter made some contribution to the original Mark.

Technically, you're correct. It's just an impression I've gotten from having read a whole bunch of scholarly work about the subject, from both ends as well as the middle of the ideological spectrum. If you know of any published polling data that would tell us the actual percentage of NT scholars who believe Peter had some involvement with the writing of Mark's gospel, feel free to post it.

Apart from your acceptance of the reliability of church tradition . . . .

Wherever did you get the notion that I accept the reliability of church tradition? You quote me as follows in the your very next post:

Originally posted byDoug Shaver
. . . . Nothing other than church tradition establishes first-century authorship for the gospels, and I have zero reason to place any confidence at all in church tradition.

Since I charitably assume that you are not in effect calling me a bald-faced liar, you clearly have misunderstood something. You apparently think that I understand church tradition to say, "The gospels say so much about Peter because Peter was the most important apostle (the first pope, after all)." I would suggest that it is less a matter of tradition than common intuition that any narrative about any group will likely devote most of its attention to the group's most important members. But I don't think for a minute that the early church evaluated or analyzed the gospels on the basis of any prior knowledge the church had about any of the gospels' personae. Church tradition thought Peter was important for no reason but that he was given a starring role in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles and because the gospels gave him some prominence relative to the rest of the disciples.

you have no reason to deny that the many occurrences of the name "Peter" in the gospels could give some indication as to who was the source for this information.

I do not deny "could give." I deny "probably gives."

If I thought there was good season to think the author of Mark's gospel was someone personally acquainted with Jesus' disciples, then I would think it glaringly obvious that he very likely got most of his information from Peter. But I would not reach that conclusion on account of any tally of the number of times Peter's name appears. I instead would reason thus. Among all the early Christian writers who mention Peter at all, nearly every one agrees that Peter was in some sense Numero Uno among the 12 disciples. That being so, it is just to be expected that Mark's author would use Peter as his primary source, assuming that he had a choice in the matter. Of course for all we know, Peter might have told him, "Look, I'd love nothing better than to reminisce with you about the Lord, but I am just way too busy to do any interviews. But believe me, any of the other disciples can tell you just as much as I can, so I suggest you go talk to them." And the author world have done just that. No matter which of the disciples he'd talked with, or if he had talked with several (which he ought to have done in any case), he would have gotten pretty much the same story, at least with regard to Peter's importance relative to the other disciples.

But as I said, this all depends on supposing that the author actually was an acquaintance of the disciples. Without a good season for that supposition, any speculation about which disciples he might have gotten his information from is just beside the point.

I don't ignore this evidence, but you do.

I do not ignore it. I disagree your assertion that it constitutes evidence of authorship.

Suppose I'm walking along a sidewalk carrying a small mirror. I walk under a ladder just as a black cat crosses the sidewalk in front of me, and I carelessly drop the mirror, causing it to break. Then a bystander says to me, "Boy, are you in for some seriously bad luck." I reply, "No, I don't think so." In saying that, I am not ignoring the ladder, the mirror, or the cat. I am simply disagreeing with the bystander about what I should expect to happen on account of my interactions with them.

but the differences are too great to be careless word-use in Greek and there is too much similarity to stem from common oral tradition.

I have no opinion on how much similarity would be consistent with an origin in oral tradition, but I regard the point as moot because I do not believe there was any oral tradition. As for differences, I would not attribute them to carelessness. I would attribute them to the authors' differences in writing style and the differences among the reasons for which they wrote their narratives.

The most likely underlying language is Aramaic

Yeah, if there was one, it probably was Aramaic. I have yet to see a good reason to think there was one.

Do you contend for yet another small source underlying the Synoptics?

I contend that any hypothesis going into greater detail than "Matthew and Luke seem to have borrowed material from Q, and maybe so did John and Mark," is likely extracting more facts from the evidence than the evidence can support. I would not be the least bit surprised if each of the four used some material that the others were either unaware of or chose to disregard. In Luke's case, I venture to guess that it's practically certain he used sources that the others did not use. But I think any attempt to identity those sources is going to rest almost entirely on nothing but guesswork.

but a hypothesis that can accommodate the facts on both sides is better than a hypothesis that is apparently refuted by the position most opposed to it.

A good hypothesis will accommodate all the facts, period, without any concern about whose side they're on.

Here again you are blinded by your unthinking acceptance of Christian orthodoxy, that the Simon mentioned in Luke 24:34 has to be Peter, even though the name Peter does not occur after 24:12

I said nothing about whom I thought Luke was referring to. My argument is that it is irrelevant to the issue of authorship. My question was a request for you to demonstrate the relevance. All you did was repeat your assertion that it is relevant.

No, I make no assumptions.

Baloney. Everyone makes assumptions, and I don't claim to be any kind of exception. Reasonable people can differ in some of their assumptions, and they can have honest debates about whose assumptions are most adequately justified.
But if you think you can argue even so much as "I think therefore I am "without assuming anything at all, then you need some remedial classes in basic philosophy.

I do not presuppose that he was a deliberate liar.

Neither do I. A liar intends to deceive his readers. I don't think the author of Acts intended to deceive anyone.

[Doug Shaver]

That means that we can compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas to infer what was in Q (or a group of documents labelled Q in total).

I'm not saying otherwise. All I'm saying is that that does not give us any information about who wrote Q. If everything we think we know about Q is inferred from the material in Thomas and the synoptics, then all of our Q-based knowledge must be contained in Thomas and the synoptics.

But it does put a stake in the heart of the argument that the eyewitness Matthew could not have written Matthew because he would not have copied someone else's account of his own conversion.

I don't recall ever making that argument myself, so it's hardly relevant to my point. The notion that any writer would rely on anyone else for his own autobiographical material does seem mighty counterintuitive to me, but I don't suppose I would regard it as a killer argument if I had no other reason to question traditional authorship. Obviously I think I have plenty of reason to doubt it, and so it really doesn't make a bit of difference to me how likely it is that when Matthew wanted to tell his readers about his own conversion, he just repeated what somebody else wrote about it.

Nothing other than church tradition establishes first-century authorship for the gospels, and I have zero reason to place any confidence at all in church tradition.

You just critiqued one of my articles that showed frominternalcriticism that gospels were being written as early as 44 AD!

My critique found your arguments unpersuasive. What you allege to be evidence for your conclusion is not actually evidence for your conclusion.

Here's a quote

No matter how often you repeat it, A is not evidence for B just because you say it is. You have to demonstrate that there is a probable, or at the very least a possible, inconsistency in affirming A while denying B.

And elsewhere I claim that Q and the Johannine Discourses were written even before that.

Yes, you claim it. And the fact that you claim it is evidence that you believe it. It is not evidence of anything other than that.

There is no contradiction between "He said he did" and "He did not."

No contradiction other than that he lied.

No, to say he lied would contradict neither statement. It would be quite obviously consistent with both. But so would several alternatives. To deny that a given utterance was true is not tantamount to claiming that the utterer was lying, particularly when the utterance is part of a written narrative of unknown authorship. There are many hypotheses consistent with both "He said he did" and "He did not."

You're getting very extreme about the Principle of Contradiction.

I see nothing extreme about asking "Why?" when someone tells me I should believe something, or about critiquing their responses for logical cogency.

we can sum up ancient history as follows: "unproven "

Actually, there is a substantial portion of ancient history that is not proven even though practically everybody thinks it is. There is a reason why nobody is making a fuss over that portion, and it has nothing to do with the quality of any evidence or the cogency of any arguments.

Here again the ultra-orthodox and the atheists lie together, neither can be comfortable admitting that the eyewitnesses Luke spoke of (1:2) handed down anything in writing

My comfort is irrelevant. It remains a fact that Luke himself does not say outright that he had any documents that were written by eyewitnesses or even that he knew such documents existed. There could be some independent evidence that he did know, in which case we'd just have to guess as best we could why he saw no need to say so himself. But you have not produced any such evidence.

concensus scholarship acknowledges that there are written sources.

Almost nobody doubts that Luke had at least two written sources, Mark and Q. What many doubt is that whoever wrote either Mark or Q was an eyewitness to anything.

Translated into Doug's epistemology stated here and in his #189, "I'm arguing that the Principle of Contradiction cannot establish that there are eyewitness testimonies in the gospels."

You can make up whatever labels you like to stick on my principles. I have examined your arguments and judged them to be lacking in factual evidence. My judgment is of course subject to dispute. You could have presented some counterarguments showing that you do in fact have factual evidence on your side. But you have not. All you have done instead is simply repeat your arguments, treating plain speculation and unwarranted assumptions as if they were facts.