Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
That sounds like a conspiracy theory Interbane.
It's called bias, not conspiracy. When the beliefs examined are sacred cows, you will have bias. It's a given. Are you honestly saying the bias is not sweeping? I'd question your understanding of human nature.
The thing is that even sceptical scholars like Bart Ehrman are forced to accept there was an early belief in the resurrection and a high Christology, and have to try to rationalize it away.
So how did historians determine the authorship of Tacitus' works and other ancient authors who didn't autograph their writings?
You have to adopt a double standard to accept one and reject the far better attested gospels. So who's biased?
You can't explain the rise of Christianity, Interbane. Sacred cows? Were they real or invented? Did they just invent a resurrection story and endure meaningless hostility for what they knew they fabricated?
Why didn't their enemies just produce the dead body of their sacred cow? Easy!
It was Pilate and the Jewish religious leaders who were in control not the few Christians.
Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
Liberal scholars of course don't accept this, but for anyone who looks objectively at the arguments for dating of Luke or Acts there are very good external and internal arguments for pre A.D. 70 dating.
If this is your argument to support a chain of custody, I don't think you understand what that entails.
What I'm saying is that the arguments are better for earlier dating than the liberals accept, even though they keep getting pushed earlier than they would like,by the discoveries of new data.
They want to say there is some charismatic preacher who died and that years later these gospels were written by mysterious unknown people,with fictional inventions of the supernatural in them.
But fiction will not be accepted close to the events by people who know the facts of history.
Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
The question here is how did historians determine the authorship of Tacitus' histories or other ancient books where the authors did not include their names within the books?
Show me clearly how you know John wrote the book of John, and how his writings were unaltered after they left his possession.
But do me a favor and don't reference other people's conclusions. I don't care about their conclusions. I care about the reasoning they used to arrive at their conclusions.
You have two possibilities here. The apostle John was an eyewitness who wrote John as the gospel itself indicates.
Or some unknown person wrote this pretending to be John and an eyewitness.
The real question is how the phony John would get the Christians to accept his account as authentic and from the pen of the apostle John.
And he according to the critics would be inventing a completely fictitious account of the miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus.
The problem is that from Paul's writings belief in the resurrection is early and even before John's gospel.
They didn't just accept everything as authentic and that's why the later gnostic 'gospels' are not accepted. There were criteria for acceptance.
All the attestation that exists is to the authorship of John including from gnostics who were not in league with the orthodox.
Did I see John writing it? No I didn't, but I didn't see Tacitus written either.
There has to be reasonable standards for evidence. John was exiled to the Isle of Patmos by Nero. Paul was beheaded by Nero.
You can join the mythicists and say Jesus didn't exist and wasn't crucified by Pilate, but it's quite clear from Isaiah53, Psalm 22, Daniel,(including the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple), Psalm 2 and other messianic prophecies that these things were prophesied hundreds of years beforehand.
My reasons are many for why I think author was John. Jesus himself predicted his gospel would be preached in all the world before his second coming.
As far as unaltered text is concerned you would have to look at the manuscript textual evidence. Of course there are copyists errors but no reason to think there are dramatic changes based on comparative textual criticism. Ehrman is extreme here,and Dan Wallace more balanced on the whole subject of textual variants.
It won't convince you Interbane. I honestly don't know what would.