Yeah, how ‘bout I amend it to “educated guesses” at least with the dating of the Gospels? I’m not sure when a great deal of Q scholarship starts to come on, but I think much of McCabe’s work and contemporaries seemed to be going in that direction, if a few hadn’t already. Most of my books on this are still in boxes, and I haven’t looked at them in a long time including Q. I took a quick look at Wiki which said the first two decades of the 20th century there had been more than a dozen reconstructions of Q but died out, and had been neglected for decades. It said it all started to change back in the 1960’s after new translations were discovered.
I know the feeling all too well. I’m also amazed how much time people have in their day to devote to SD. I’m glad for it, even though it leaves me out of a lot of the discussion. Hell, I’m just putting my shoes on, while others are already lapping me.
The last I saw, he was saying he’d reconverted back to atheism again. His explanation about his conversion back to catholocism was kind of weird anyway. he was calling himself a “Catholic Naturalist” or some such thing, and saying he still didn’t believe in miracles. Then a few months later he posted somewhere that he had deconverted back to being an atheist. That’s the last I know. He stopped blogging a couple of years ago and hasn’t posted on FRDB for a long time, so I’ve kind of lost track of him.
I realize that, and I have also heard that it is unlikly that Peter wrote what was in the NT. but written by some one else. The first spreading of the words were only by mouth then later written down because most people couldn’t read or write!
According to John chapter 10 verses 32 through 35 Jesus is quoted as saying that their fathers were called gods,(and according to the psalmist )all men were gods,so in that context Jesus was not making claim to be God any more than any other human! he just claimed to be doing the work of the father, so in the sense of the psalmist, he was just doing what he was born to do.
You are correct, Meatros. There are pro and con arguments for the traditional authorship of the gospels. That’s just one of the reasons why Dio insistence that the authors were neither Apostles nor anyone who personally knew them is an inaccurate representation of current scholarship. The strongest counter-example is the Gospel of Luke – which, as you correctly pointed out, is commonly attributed to Paul’s travelling companion Luke, even by liberal scholars.
Personally, I think that the arguments against the traditional authorship of Matthew and John are kinda weak for various reasons. To cite one example, even if Matthew had borrowed from Mark’s material, this does not preclude him being part of Christ’s inner circle; after all, even modern scholars typically reference each other’s material, and since they had a common mission, it’s entirely plausible that Matthew would have done so with Mark’s knowledge and permission. Even if Matthew and John were not actually written by Matthew and John though, it’s stretches credulity to insist that the authors cannot possibly be anyone who had known the Apostles though, as Diogenes flatly asserts. Not even liberal scholars would make such a brash claim.
That’s hardly a good argument against the authorship of Peter’s epistles, though. While the first spreading of the word was indeed by word of mouth, that doesn’t preclude anyone from actually writing these words down at some point. It is also entirely possible that Peter, if he were incapable of writing the epistle by himself, had help from either Mark or Silvanus.
Again, I don’t want to get into a long debate about who actually wrote the Petrine Epistles, as that would merit another thread in itself. For now, I’d just like to point out that this particular argument is a rather poor one to make against the traditional authorship of these letters.
There are pro-arguments by those arguing from a faith position, but there is no actual evidence, and none of those traditions are accepted as genuine by critical scholars.
It’s not at all plausible that Matthew would copy material word for word from a non-witness if he was a witness himself. Matthew also uses Q, another secondary source, and uses the Greek LXX. Matthew also has a lot of clearly fictional material (the nativity, the zombie attack on Jerusalem), and in one case confuses a reading of the OT in such a way that he has Jesus riding into Jerusalem on two animals at once. That is plainly not something a witness would have done.
Furthermore, it is not incumbent on anyone to disprove traditional authorship (though I can certainly do that), but on anyone who wants to assert their authenticity toprove it. What is your evidence that the Gospel of Matthew WAS written by a disciple of Jesus?
There is no such thing as “liberal scholarship.” There is good scholarship and bad scholarship. Objective, critical scholarship shows us that we have no evidence to support the 2nd Century authorship traditions of the canonicals and a great deal against them.
I think you also need to remember who has the burden of proof here. If you want to assign authorship to a specific person, you are the one who needs to prove it. None of these books name their own authors, nor do any ofthe authors claim to have been witnesses.
(The author of) Luke does claim to have been a witness to many of the events described in Acts. We can therefore infer that he was not a companion or witness of Jesus or he probably would have mentioned it.
No, they are not. The authorship of Luke’s gospel, for example, is accepted by both conservative scholars and those who do not claim to be Christian. As others have pointed out, you keep making claims and expecting them to stick by virtue of repeated, adamant assertion. Bluster occasionally has its place, but it is a poor substitute for substantive discussion.
As for your insistence that there is “no actual evidence,” once again, you are grossly exaggerating the actual case. The earliest Christian documents that we have – admittedly not first century works, but still early by the standards of ancient history – consistently attribute them to the traditional authors. You also have internal evidence, such as the way John’s gospel steadfastly avoids mentioning John by name, instead making a cryptic reference to “the disciple that Jesus loved.” You have the fact that, as others have pointed out, anyone who wanted to falsely attribute the gospels to someone would have been unlikely to select either Mark, Luke, or Matthew. And so forth.
“But that’s not good enough for me!” you doubtlessly insist, or you might say, “Well, I have arguments AGAINST their authorship.” Fine. I’m honestly not interested in debating who actually wrote these books – certainly not in this thread. When you flatly assert that there is ZERO evidence for the traditional authorship of these books, you are going far beyond what actual scholarship says on this matter.
Also, I’d like to remind you that you have yet to provide any actual evidence that the authors did not even know the Apostles personally. In other words, it’s not enough for you to prove that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not pen the books in question. For your claim to withstand scrutiny, you must defend your insistent assertion that the authors did not have any contact with the Apostles in question – again, a claim that goes far, far beyond what even skeptical scholars have to say on this matter.
That is correct. Both conservatives and liberals acknowledge that Luke was not a direct eyewitness to the life of Jesus. Frankly, this does not bother me; after all, no historian or legal expert would claim that only eyewitness accounts can be accepted as valid testimony. He was, however, a travelling companion of Paul, and he was most likely familiar with other leaders in the church, as well as people like Mary who could likewise have testified to the accounts of Jesus’ life.
Does this guarantee that everything he wrote was accurate? Admittedly not; at least, no moreso than any other historical account would. Rather, the point is simply that while he was not an eyewitness to those particular events, this does not automatically make his account unreliable. Heck, if we were to reject all ancient documents that do not amount to eyewitness testimony, we’d have to discard virtually everything written by Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, or just about any other ancient historical source.
Nonsense. At best, one could say that duplicating Mark’s work was not necessary. It does not mean that someone might not be inclined to reuse Mark’s work, especially if it was done with Mark’s consent.
As I have repeatedly said, I am not arguing for the traditional authorship – not in this discussion. Rather, I am attacking your claim that the authorship of these books is undeniably NON-traditional. (And again, to be more specific, I am addressing your grandiose claim that the authors were, in fact, strangers to the Apostles. I can’t help but notice that you have not been defending that extravagant claim.)
Again, you are the one who claims that these authors did not even know the Apostles, speaking as though such a claim were indisputable. Instead of defending your claim though, you are attempting to foist the burden of proof onto me – in effect, stating “Well then, why don’t YOU prove that they were written by the traditional authors? Huh?” Sorry fella, but things don’t work that way.
Ah, yes. Typical Diogenes thinking.
A valid point – IF I had been attempting to definitively assign authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As I’ve repeatedly reminded you though, I have done no such thing. Rather, I’m asking you to defend your claim – and to use your own words, you need to remember who has the burden of proof here.
In another thread in GD recently, our friend Abele derer kept stating that old claims are themselves evidence, and you seem to be doing the same here. The fact that Christian leaders, many decades after the books were written, attributed them to certain suspected authors, is the claim which would then need evidence as support. The claim is not itself evidence.
“Conservatives vs. Liberals” is a US political dichotomy, but it doesn’t make sense to use it with Biblical scholarship. I can understand calling some “conservative,” meaning that they come into the discussion with presuppositions that they’re trying to bolster. But the alternative to that is not “liberal,” it’s better termed “critical” or “open-minded.”
So you should have said “Both conservative and open-minded scholars acknowledge that…”
I don’t know man, I’ve refrained from commenting as I only know a handful of the material, but I find it hard to believe that Matthew was an apostle and copied Mark’s work. Yes, it’s possible for that to happen, but at least according to here, the majority of scholars are against such a notion.
Ridderbos (on the page cited) makes a statement about this matter which I find rather compelling:
What is the pro-Matthew the apostle as the writer argument, IYO? I realize that your point in this thread is directed at the burden of proof and what is perceived as Dio’s near certainty, but it seems to me that these things should have a legitimate discussion, especially when rank amateurs (such as myself) are reading.
So, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume the quote I posted above is the first argument against a pro-Matthew writing. How would you respond to it? I’m not in a real good position to debate this issue, since I’m no where near an expert, but I am interested in it.
Accepted in what sense? Accepted that the author may have known Paul? Debatable, but perhaps? Accepted in any otherd eatils of the tradition (including the name “Luke” - not so much.
The Patristic attributions are not evidence but merely assertions and do not hold up to scrutiny. In my link upthread I went into a lot of detail as to why.
these are laughably weak arguments and do not overcome the problem that the traditions are not actually based on anything of any substance. You’re trying to argue that I can’t prove the negative, but you have yet to argue the positive. The internal evidence is overwhelmingly against these traditions. for a plethora of reasons. You mentioned John, which has the blaring aposynagogos anachronism, lomg speeches which are clearly literary compositions, not from memory, a Philonic, Alexandrian influenced Christology (which means it’s late developing, not primitive) and which never claims in its main body (I’m aware of the appendex claiming that it was written by the BD, but that was added later) to be a first hand account or that the author was a witness. Literary/linguistic analysis also indicates layered authorship - not a single piece written at one time, but something expanded and amended by multiple authors over time.
The internal evidence against the traditionally ascribed authorships of Matthew and Mark is even more overwhelming. Thos traditions are simply no longer accepted as credible outside of religiously based scholarship.
That’s a statement of fact. I’m aware of every bit of the traditional bases for those attributions, and none of them rise to level of genuine, scientific evidence. They are 2nd century assertions made by people who were in no position to know and were going by hearsay or by Papias, who described books written by Matthew and a secretary of Mark’s, but what he described does not match the canonicals, and the internal evidence also mitigates strongly against those claims. he does not quote from them either, so he gives no hard connection to the canonicals. It was people like Irenaeus deciding later on that “this must be what Papias was talking about,” but if the books Papias described ever existed (which is not a given. Eusebius called Papias “a man of low intellect” and accused him of making errors), they were not Canonical Matthew and Mark (though he conceivably could have been making reference to a proto-Q). If you want to assert that real evidence exists, let’s see it.
I went into detail on this in my piece I linked upthread. The summary of my case (aside from the fact that none of them claim to have known Jesus or known apostles) is the late dating, Matthew and Luke’s dependency on other secondary sources, and a host of factual errors, anachronisms and demonstrable literary constructions from the OT and other obvious fictions which would not be expected from a primary or even secondary source. If you really want me to, I can go into detail for each book, butt it will be a long post.
I prefer the term “critical,” since it’s more accurate, has a specific academic meaning and doesn’t sound snarky, but I also think it should be mentioned that believers are not necessarily incapable of good, objective critical scholarship, and some of the very best and most respected critical Biblical scholars have been believers (Bruce Metzger and Raymond Brown, for instance).
