Are you hanging your idea on the fact that living to be 80 was impossible back then? :dubious:
Men living even unto 100 were not unheard of:
The confusion generally comes from Jews for Jesus, who call themselves Messianic Jews but are in fact Baptist missionaries making false claims. I don’t know the numbers, but I suspect more people have encountered Jews for Jesus than “true” Messianic Jews that you cited.
The disciples were mainly teachers, or tellers about Jesus. They were not writers. They repeated the stories and Jesus’ words very often, which ingrained the stories in their minds (and the minds of others). Eventually someone wrote them down. It is also likely that there existed, at the time, letters written (such as Paul wrote) which eventually became part of what is recorded in the New Testament. It would be safe to assume that some of their letters or other writings from the 1st century were lost or discarded due to the passage of time.
Similarly, parts of the Old Testament began as stories, songs and words verbally repeated and handed down from generation to generation, until scribes recorded them.
Which in no way addresses the factual basis of contents therein, not for the former nor the latter.
“Ingrained” might be a bit strong. Like any oral tradition, the stories change over time, both in details and in theological meaning. Note the incompatible differences between the Gospels; that’s what happens when stories are recorded by different groups in different places, decades after the original (purported) events. It’s a folk tradition, like any other.
I have never met anyone who was a part of Jews for Jesus but met two Messianic Jews (not affiliated with Jews for Jesus) whose Christian faith was new-testament based, the same as mine. I also know of other Messianic Jews, I have not personally met, who were not affiliated with Jews for Jesus. Messianic Jews could have been members of Baptist churches but would still meet the definition of Messianic Jews.
One thing we know nowadays is that repeated recollections of events does not correlate with the accuracy of the recollections. In fact, it’s the opposite - the more you retell a tale, the more your memory of it gets corrupted by your mind’s re-interpretation of the events.
So I agree with the timeline you’ve laid out here - a small community of followers passed down stories about their leader decades earlier, until someone finally decided that he wasn’t really going to be back while everyone was still alive (like he repeatedly said he would), so they better write them down. The problem is that we know that this is a really terrible way to convey with any accuracy what really happened.
Which is why they’re unreliable.
Not to overstate the obvious, but this isn’t our first time at the rodeo and six pages in to this thread and we’re still no closer to having evidence for the resurrection … What say you, A Odom?
How would you know, A Odom? How would you be able to tell if these were Messianic Jews, or Jews for Jesus, or just a couple of nut cases?
I assume you are well aware that Jews reject the idea that Jesus was the Messiah.
My experience is that people convert when they find a group of people that they want to join. It’s a social and emotional decision, mostly, and they only go through as much mental gymnastics as is necessary to: 1) make themselves OK with the conversion and 2) make the group OK with accepting them. Sometime there’s an additional: 3) explain things to a group they’re leaving.
I’ve studied with several Christian groups and evidence and proof have never been part of the study. Learning the stories and being able to use them to juggle concepts has been part. So has deriding other beliefs, also done with stories, rather than evidence. Explaining what evidence actually is (as in, you can’t just declare that everything in the Bible is true) will get you confusion, incredulity, and maybe anger.
So, no, I don’t see conversions as proof of anything other than that people sometimes change groups and that people are more comfortable with stories than with evidence.
No, I’m suggesting that age in years means pretty much nothing in the bible. Giving birth at 90? Seriously? That’s almost as incredible as a virgin giving birth. I believe, by the way, for the inclusion of things like virgin births and walking on water and rising from the dead was to MAKE SURE we would view this as mythology and not mistake it for actual history.
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Or, they were simply made up, like science fiction. Your patriarch lived to be 100? Mine lived to 200!
Geez, you are cutting that a bit close. In some of the genealogy in Genesis, the patriarchs were not having sons until they were over 150 y/o. Noah did not start his cruise ship until he was over 500, and still lived more than three more centuries after the wet thing. Adam himself was recorded to have lived more than halfway into his tenth century as well. How they coped with being terrifically bored in those long tenures has not been addressed.
Have any skeletons been dug up and shown to be as old as 200 years in age, let alone a thousand?
Is it really that difficult to delete all the “[1][2][3][4][5]” footnote links when quoting Wikipedia? Unless, of course, one is posting from a phone or tablet, when it’s such a PITA it’s not worth doing. 
Looks to me like he accepts that the ancients could have what we would call “a good run,” but draws a line somewhere between four score and ten and ludicrous.
Phantoms don’t have skeletons.
Except of course John’s age is not given in the Bible. Apparently you were unaware of that. John’s age comes from calculations by Biblical scholars.
Then Easter should be on a Monday.
otherwise known as “pulled out of their collective asses”.
Well, assuming John was human, and given that human lifespans were shorter in those days as opposed to longer, it would seem that John’s followers are more likely to have pieced together John’s account as opposed to John himself writing it.