Comment Thread for The Resurrection of Jesus - Apologiaphoenix vs Gary

[tabibito]

Name tags?? We don't need no stinking NAME TAGS!

(Blazing Saddles, if you don't recognize it)

I love that well-worn Christian assumption! The four gospels had name tags on them all along. No one ever referred to these books by the name on the name tag until Irenaeus, approximately 100 years after they were written, but dammit, there were name tags on them all along, ever since ol' Matthew, John Mark, Doc. Luke, and John wrote them!

And you know there were name tags on the scrolls...how???

Quote: "What we find is consistent attribution to the writers we know as Matthew, Luke, John and Mark. I would also like to point out that textual criticism has shown these authors to be the true authors of the gospels."

I smell a fundamentalist among us!

Can anyone confirm the following from a reliable source?

It was common practice for scrolls to be kept in sleeves. Documents didn't carry the name of the author, but the sleeves did.

[Gary]

Every one of the gospels gives the same day. The day before Passover. Where did this story come from?

Wrong, Tabby.

The Synoptics say that Jesus died on Passover. The Gospel of John says that Jesus died the day before Passover, the Day of Preparation.

[One Bad Pig]

The internet.

Fooling people to this day into thinking they know what they're talking about.

Never has so much wrong information been so easily available.

[Gary]

Any inconvenient fact gets hand waved away.


JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) is a reasonably reputable publication I believe. I'm not aware of any accusations against it of ideological bias.

Only one writer - and yes, these particular matters can be reasonably regarded as embellishment. But the gospel account doesn't make any mention of an eclipse even at that - the details of elementary astronomy were sufficiently well known at the time to preclude any possibility of a reference to an eclipse.

Are you really try to convince us that JAMA is asserting that the Crucifixion and Resurrection stories are historically accurate stories??? Please.

A significant percentage of the members of the American Medical Association and every other medical society in the United States is Jewish. There is no way on the Jewish God's green earth that the AMA is endorsing the Christian resurrection claim. You are making yourself look very foolish.

[Gary]

Never has so much wrong information been so easily available.

[tabibito]

Wrong, Tabby.

The Synoptics say that Jesus died on Passover. The Gospel of John says that Jesus died the day before Passover, the Day of Preparation.

Reading comprehension fail on your part. It is a simple error in understanding arising from the fact that the Jewish change of day occurred at sunset - so what you read as "the same day" in the texts is in fact "on the day before".

I have personally investigated these details within the Biblical record. Never do I rely on external sources in doing so - if the record does not stand on its own merits, I'll accept the existence of an error as established. My faith is not vested in the Bible, so it is no odds to me whether its records are accurate or not.

[One Bad Pig]

Are you really try to convince us that JAMA is asserting that the Crucifixion and Resurrection stories are historically accurate stories??? Please.

Any time Gary starts out with "Are you...?" the answer is most likely "no." JAMA is saying that the crucifixion stories are medically accurate.

A significant percentage of the members of the American Medical Association and every other medical society in the United States is Jewish. There is no way on the Jewish God's green earth that the AMA is endorsing the Christian resurrection claim. You are making yourself look very foolish.

The only one making himself look very foolish in this thread is you.

[tabibito]

Are you really try to convince us that JAMA is asserting that the Crucifixion and Resurrection stories are historically accurate stories??? Please.

A significant percentage of the members of the American Medical Association and every other medical society in the United States is Jewish. There is no way on the Jewish God's green earth that the AMA is endorsing the Christian resurrection claim. You are making yourself look very foolish.

No part of the article addresses the resurrection. The article states that the details of the crucifixion (in so far as Jesus being flogged and dying on the cross are concerned) are historically accurate. In contradiction of your claim that none of those details is historically reliable.

[Gary]

Reading comprehension fail on your part. It is a simple error in understanding arising from the fact that the Jewish change of day occurred at sunset - so what you read as "the same day" in the texts is in fact "on the day before".

I have personally investigated these details within the Biblical record. Never do I rely on external sources in doing so - if the record does not stand on its own merits, I'll accept the existence of an error as established. My faith is not vested in the Bible, so it is no odds to me whether its records are accurate or not.

I hate to break the news to you, Tabster, but the world's Jews say that your "investigation" and conclusion regarding this Jewish date discrepancy is a lot of mashugena (that's Yiddish for B...loney):

Rabbi Tovia Singer
Outreach Judaism
Source address: https://outreachjudaism.org/resurrection-evidence/

[Gary]

No part of the article addresses the resurrection. The article states that the details of the crucifixion (in so far as Jesus being flogged and dying on the cross are concerned) are historically accurate. In contradiction of your claim that none of those details is historically reliable.

You are delusional, Tabby. Jews, who again make up a significant percentage of the AMA believe that most of the Christian story about Jesus is concocted, superstitious nonsense. The AMA is NOT endorsing the historicity of the Crucifixion, only describing the medical consequences IF such an execution had occurred.

[Gary]

History deals with probability, Gary, not certainty. You're again exposing how little you know. I'd put Hengel up against Ehrman any day of the week. Both are/were good scholars (Hengel has since died). Maybe you should read Hengel's book. Being a NT scholar doesn't mean you have deep knowledge in every part of the NT. Ehrman is a manuscript specialist, and his work in that area has been fairly good. His popular work, on life of Jesus and Christology, has not. My problem with Bart Ehrman is he a) reads a lot of the text in a fundamentalist way and b) acts as though he's representative of all of critical scholarship, when he isn't. Ehrman is respected, sure. So are John Meier, Craig Evans, and James D.G. Dunn, who hold different views.

As for the authorship, I think John Mark wrote Mark and Luke wrote Luke-Acts. I'm fairly convinced Matthew didn't write Matthew and I'm agnostic as to John. I've seen good arguments both ways for John, but neither side has really convinced me. Bauckham's treatment of it in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses as well as The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple seems somewhat contrived, but some of the other work done on John (for example, Raymond Brown's) leads me to believe there is a significant amount of eyewitness testimony involved.

I really don't care what most Christians think. I care about what scholars think and can support.

https://adversusapologetica.wordpres...f-the-gospels/

[Gary]

Dear Christians: Did you ever wonder why the Gospels are anonymous? Seriously: God sends mankind his all important "Good News" but leaves it to four anonymous dudes to deliver the message to us??? Come on. Do you really believe the apologists' lame excuse that the authors of these four ancient texts were simply being modest or that they were following the current fad of writing anonymously? Below is a much more plausible explanation for the anonymity of these texts:

Source: https://adversusapologetica.wordpres...f-the-gospels/

[Gary]

Any time Gary starts out with "Are you...?" the answer is most likely "no." JAMA is saying that the crucifixion stories are medically accurate.

The only one making himself look very foolish in this thread is you.

You are right, Pig. JAMA is saying that if the details of Jesus crucifixion are historical, the scourging would explain his death occurring much sooner than if he had simply been crucified.

[Gary]

History deals with probability, Gary, not certainty. You're again exposing how little you know. I'd put Hengel up against Ehrman any day of the week. Both are/were good scholars (Hengel has since died). Maybe you should read Hengel's book. Being a NT scholar doesn't mean you have deep knowledge in every part of the NT. Ehrman is a manuscript specialist, and his work in that area has been fairly good. His popular work, on life of Jesus and Christology, has not. My problem with Bart Ehrman is he a) reads a lot of the text in a fundamentalist way and b) acts as though he's representative of all of critical scholarship, when he isn't. Ehrman is respected, sure. So are John Meier, Craig Evans, and James D.G. Dunn, who hold different views.

As for the authorship, I think John Mark wrote Mark and Luke wrote Luke-Acts. I'm fairly convinced Matthew didn't write Matthew and I'm agnostic as to John. I've seen good arguments both ways for John, but neither side has really convinced me. Bauckham's treatment of it in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses as well as The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple seems somewhat contrived, but some of the other work done on John (for example, Raymond Brown's) leads me to believe there is a significant amount of eyewitness testimony involved.

I really don't care what most Christians think. I care about what scholars think and can support.

https://adversusapologetica.wordpres...f-the-gospels/

[psstein]

Using Randel Helms as an example of a scholar is almost enough to do away with that quotation on its own. He teaches English.

That's absolutely not true. Quite a number of scholars will attribute Mark to John Mark and Luke-Acts to Luke, even non-Christian scholars like Maurice Casey. Unlike you (and apparently Ferguson), I've read what Brown has to say beyond that remark. Brown concludes that John Mark seems such a problematic character that it seems odd to attribute authorship to him. Also, the claim of Mark being confused about geography is more than dealt with in Studies on the Gospel of Mark, which includes an essay discussing the "problems" of geography and Jewish practice. To briefly sum them up, it's an absurd case of presentism to expect ancient men (who have never traveled outside of 50 miles of their birthplace, in most cases) to know geography of other areas. Mark's remarks about Jewish practice make sense as well; Mark is not interested in accurately portraying it, but instead uses it as a polemical piece.

With regard to Luke-Acts, it's a bit trickier, but it does make sense in the context of Greco-Roman historiography. Generally, Greco-Roman historians would rarely repeat stories. Also, you have to keep in mind what Luke's project actually is. Acts in particular is not simply an objective history of the early church. It's designed to show the church as one and united, despite the clear fact of Peter and Paul having disagreements. There's also the matter of the "we" passages, which seem extremely odd based on their placement.

This is called scholarship and why you need to read the whole book, rather than just taking out of place snippets on a blog post.