Gospel truth – or a grand conspiracy?

[Easyrider]

If the Gospels and Epistle writers were not being truthful in their depictions of Jesus Christ as a miracle worker, the Jewish Messiah, the Son of God, the resurrected Savior, and so on, then I think someone needs to provide a compelling motive, backed up by some sort of credible evidence, as to why some nine or so different New Testament authors shared such a common vision? What was their motive for a non-Biblical Jesus, considering their lives were on the line either way, and since such a pack of (alleged) lies should be easily refuted by others who knew a “different” Jesus? Why the “grand conspiracy” if Jesus is not who they claimed?

So, two things are asked for here: (1) A credible motive for a non-Biblical Jesus that takes into account the authors putting their lives on the line for an alleged lie (or whatever), and (2) Some kind of credible evidence to support that theory.

[Easyrider]

Lotan, you're welcome to your views on Bernie. It's hard for me to imagine the Apostles going into different lands and preaching a different religion and set of "truths" and not meeting some kind of hostility. Missionaries have experienced that for centuries, so I really doubt the original Apostles weren't persecuted or even killed by those who held dear to different religious beliefs. But if you want to believe that, that's fine.

a lot of people say that gJohn is a 'layered' document so maybe one layer is hostile to gnosticism and another friendly layer counteracts it. Either way, you conveniently ignore the hard fact (from two different sources, no less) that...

"The earliest copies of the Gospel of John are also from Gnostic sources..."

Not ignored. Would your assertion include the John Rylands fragment, which has been dated from about 93 A.D. to about 117 A.D.? The Gospel of John was written in Asia Minor, and this fragment / work found its way to Egypt, indicating the spread of Christianity and the fact that even additional time must have passed between the original writing and subsequent fragments appearing that far away. It's not enough to claim a gnostic location for the discovery of fragments or a manuscript. I think you must also show that a traditional G of John manuscript was not in their possession. Heck, even some Satanists read the Bible occasionally, and if one were found in a community of earlier known Satanists, that certainly doesn't mean they wrote it or layered it.

I said it was "not essentially different". You can argue that if you like. There are archaeological remains of both pagan and Christian communal dining rooms.

So what are you suggesting apart from that?

Excuse me? Was Paul a missionary to "traditional Christian circles"? Sounds like a colossal waste of time instructing the learned. If Paul had knowledge of Jesus' life and especially of his teachings he would have used them. Everyone knows that.

Are you saying that Paul didn't have access to Jesus' life accounts and teachings? That certainly sounds strange as he made several trips to Jerusalem and met with the church there along with the Apostles (Acts 9:27). And if Paul preached the Gospel of Christ as stated in his epistles, why should you make up a story that he likely never taught about Jesus' pre-resurrection life? If seems to me that when people preach the Gospel, bits and pieces of Jesus' life and teachings invariably find their way into the presentations.

Hebrews is hardly alone in this regard. The scholarly consensus is that almost half of the letters attributed to Paul are pseudonymous, to say nothing of the pastoral epistles. Examples of interpolations (as well as other forms of redaction) in the gospels are legion.

Sounds more like a liberal scholarly concensus you present there, Lotan. Virtually every Study Bible I have, including the NIV Study Bible, the MacArthur Study Bible, the Full Life Study Bible, the Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, and the Life Application Study Bible - all edited and comprised of teams of New and Old Testament scholars - cite the traditional New Testament Biblical authors as the most likely originators of these works.

[Easyrider]

Lotan, you're welcome to your views on Bernie. It's hard for me to imagine the Apostles going into different lands and preaching a different religion and set of "truths" and not meeting some kind of hostility. Missionaries have experienced that for centuries, so I really doubt the original Apostles weren't persecuted or even killed by those who held dear to different religious beliefs. But if you want to believe different, that's fine.

a lot of people say that gJohn is a 'layered' document so maybe one layer is hostile to gnosticism and another friendly layer counteracts it. Either way, you conveniently ignore the hard fact (from two different sources, no less) that...

"The earliest copies of the Gospel of John are also from Gnostic sources..."

Not ignored. Would your assertion include the John Rylands fragment, which has been dated from about 93 A.D. to about 117 A.D.? The Gospel of John was written in Asia Minor, and this fragment / work found its way to Egypt, indicating the spread of Christianity and the fact that even additional time must have passed between the original writing and subsequent fragments appearing that far away. It's not enough to claim a gnostic location for the discovery of fragments or a manuscript. I think you must also show that a traditional G of John manuscript was not in their possession. Heck, even some Satanists read the Bible occasionally, and if one were found in a community of earlier known Satanists, that certainly doesn't mean they wrote it or layered it.

I said it was "not essentially different". You can argue that if you like. There are archaeological remains of both pagan and Christian communal dining rooms.

So what are you suggesting apart from that?

Excuse me? Was Paul a missionary to "traditional Christian circles"? Sounds like a colossal waste of time instructing the learned. If Paul had knowledge of Jesus' life and especially of his teachings he would have used them. Everyone knows that.

Are you saying that Paul didn't have access to Jesus' life accounts and teachings? That certainly sounds strange as he made several trips to Jerusalem and met with the church there along with the Apostles (Acts 9:27). And if Paul preached the Gospel of Christ as stated in his epistles, why should you make up a story that he likely never taught about Jesus' pre-resurrection life? If seems to me that when people preach the Gospel, bits and pieces of Jesus' life and teachings invariably find their way into the presentations.

Hebrews is hardly alone in this regard. The scholarly consensus is that almost half of the letters attributed to Paul are pseudonymous, to say nothing of the pastoral epistles. Examples of interpolations (as well as other forms of redaction) in the gospels are legion.

Sounds more like a liberal scholarly concensus you present there, Lotan. Virtually every Study Bible I have, including the NIV Study Bible, the MacArthur Study Bible, the Full Life Study Bible, the Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, and the Life Application Study Bible - all edited and comprised of teams of New and Old Testament scholars - cite the traditional New Testament Biblical authors as the most likely originators of these works. You're also welcome to review a number of scholarly opinions on the dating of the New Testament below:

http://www.errantskeptics.org/Dating_the_NT.htm

Cheers....

[Cathar1950]

Easyrider it is not necessary to repeat an entire post especially when you follow it with little or nothing. Most of us are capable of looking.

Easyrider wrote:

Sounds more like a liberal scholarly concensus you present there, Lotan. Virtually every Study Bible I have, including the NIV Study Bible, the MacArthur Study Bible, the Full Life Study Bible, the Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, and the Life Application Study Bible - all edited and comprised of teams of New and Old Testament scholars - cite the traditional New Testament Biblical authors as the most likely originators of these works.

What do you call a "liberal" scholar, someone that disagrees with you?
It is the consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars.

The books you name above were written by "apologists" for American bible-believing, entrepreneuring, evangelicals. I would question their obvious bias and reasoning.

[Easyrider]

Easyrider it is not necessary to repeat an entire post especially when you follow it with little or nothing. Most of us are capable of looking.

Easyrider wrote:

Sounds more like a liberal scholarly concensus you present there, Lotan. Virtually every Study Bible I have, including the NIV Study Bible, the MacArthur Study Bible, the Full Life Study Bible, the Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, and the Life Application Study Bible - all edited and comprised of teams of New and Old Testament scholars - cite the traditional New Testament Biblical authors as the most likely originators of these works.

What do you call a "liberal" scholar, someone that disagrees with you?
It is the consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars.

The books you name above were written by "apologists" for American bible-believing, entrepreneuring, evangelicals. I would question their obvious bias and reasoning.

<chuckle>

I see...scholars are always on your side, and anyone else is an apologist.

Fortunately, that's not how it plays out in real life.

[Lotan]

It's hard for me to imagine the Apostles going into different lands and preaching a different religion and set of "truths" and not meeting some kind of hostility.

That's OK. It's hard for me to imagine the Apostles...
Your premise fails because there is no historical basis for the claim that the apostles "put their lives on the line" for anything. We don't even know who most of them were! All you have are legends, like the Merry Men, or the Knights of the Round Table. And besides the Gospels and Apostles epistles aren't contemporary with Jesus' generation anyway.

Would your assertion include the John Rylands fragment, which has been dated from about 93 A.D. to about 117 A.D.?

Sure. Didn't you read Gospel of John article that I directed you to?

"But the earliest known usage of John is among Gnostic circles. These include the Naassene Fragment quoted by Hippolytus Ref. 5.7.2-9 (c. 120-140), the Valentinian texts cited in Clement of Alexandria's Excerpta ex Theodotou (c. 140-160), a Valentinian Exposition to the Prologue of the Gospel of John quoted in Irenaeus' Adv. Haer. 1.8.5-6 (c. 140-160), and the commentary of Heracleon on John (c. 150-180, quoted in Origen's own commentary). The oldest fragment of the New Testament, known as p52 or the John Rylands fragment, attests to canonical John and is dated paleographically c. 120-130 CE."

I also though that you might enjoy this...

"It is remarkably anti-Jewish; and it is filled with patently impossible and contradictory dialogue and claims, almost all in a voluble Greek style. It is semi-Gnostic while at the same time being an anti-Gnostic work. This is typical of Christianity’s 2nd century struggles to thwart Gnosticism while at the same time burning itself with the fire it used to fight the Gnostic fire."

It's pretty hard to find any articles about the Gospel of John where that word Gnostic doesn't just pop right out at you!

So what are you suggesting apart from that?

I'm suggesting that the 'Lord's Supper' wasn't significantly different from 'Apollo's Supper' (pick your favorite Pagan deity) and unless you believe that Apollo initiated a communal meal in his honor there is no reason to believe that Jesus did too.

Are you saying that Paul didn't have access to Jesus' life accounts and teachings?

I'm saying that if he did he sure did a good job of keeping it to himself. Pretty stange behavior for a missionary.

If seems to me that when people preach the Gospel, bits and pieces of Jesus' life and teachings invariably find their way into the presentations.

How odd then, that they didn't find their way into Paul's presentations. No miracles, no parables, no sermons, none of the details of Jesus' life familiar to us from the gospels find their way into Paul's presentations. No John the Baptist, no Nicodemus, no Judas, no Mary (pick one), find their way into Paul's presentations. No trial, no Caiaphas, no Sanhedrin, no Pilate, no Calvary find their way into Paul's presentations. Are you getting the picture?

Sounds more like a liberal scholarly concensus you present there, Lotan. Virtually every Study Bible I have, including the NIV Study Bible, the MacArthur Study Bible, the Full Life Study Bible, the Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, and the Life Application Study Bible - all edited and comprised of teams of New and Old Testament scholars - cite the traditional New Testament Biblical authors as the most likely originators of these works.

I had a KJV study Bible until recently (it was stolen) that had the apologetics built right in. So what?
Here is a picture of current scholarly opinion on the authenticity of the 'Pauline' epistles...

"Fundamentalists, who cannot accept anything else, assert that all the thirteen epistles attributed to him by the New Testament are genuinely his. And then there are scholars of a more skeptical bent that accept only four of the thirteen epistles are being actually written by the historical Paul. Most scholars stand somewhere in between."

Notice that doesn't say "most liberal scholars" or "most conservative" scholars" or "most left-handed scholars".

Here's a handy chart...

Romans
I Corinthians
II Corinthians
Galatians Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.
Ephesians Generally accepted as a non-Pauline work;i.e. not written by Paul. Reasons for this include:
• Absence of normal Pauline greetings at the end of the epistle
• No discussion of eschatology in the letter
• Style is sluggish and ponderous, unlike Paul’s volatile style
• Anachronistic references to the existence of heretical sects
• Use of key technical phrases differs from the genuine Pauline epistles.
Philippians Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.
Collosians Controversial. Authenticity disputed. The majority of scholars say that it is very probably not Pauline due to the difference in vocabulary, style and general slant. Some scholars still believe in the possibility that Collosians could be an authentic Pauline document. .
I Thessalonians Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.
II Thessalonians Generally believed to be non-Pauline due to:
• Tone of the letter. I Thessalonians shows a feeling of close fellowship between Paul and the readers, yet the second epistle has a formal tone.
• A contradiction between the two Thessalonian epistles about the manner of Christ’s second coming (I Thessalonians 4:11-53 and II Thessalonian 2:1-12)
• A large bulk of the second epistle seems to be a direct copy of the first.
I Timothy
II Timothy
Titus The “pastoral” epistles are generally accepted as non-authentic. All internal evidence points to a date of composition of early second century AD:
• The existence of a highly organized church which simply did not exist in Paul’s time (I Timothy 3:15)
• The presupposition of the existence of definite creeds (I timothy 4:6; II Timothy 1:13) and the gospels (I Timothy 6:3,13) which appeared some decades after the death of Paul.
• Paul insistence that he is not lying when he claims apostleship (I Timothy 2:7) is itself highly suspicious as Timothy would have been most familiar with Paul’s authority.
• The theology of the pastorals are significantly different from the genuine Pauline epistles. The former call for acceptance of dogma is the way to salvation while the latter have always emphasized salvation by grace through faith.
Philemon Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.

Crossan makes pretty much the same assessment in In Search of Paul : How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom and he also does not qualify the consensus as being composed of 'liberals' or 'conservatives'.

It's not surprising that Bible editors would attribute the NT books to their 'traditional' authors, but in the "real world" of Bible scholarship that is not the situation. For example...

"The majority scholarly view about the personal "pastoral" letters (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) is that they were written not by Paul but in the second century."

[Easyrider]

It's hard for me to imagine the Apostles going into different lands and preaching a different religion and set of "truths" and not meeting some kind of hostility.

That's OK. It's hard for me to imagine the Apostles...
Your premise fails because there is no historical basis for the claim that the apostles "put their lives on the line" for anything. We don't even know who most of them were! All you have are legends, like the Merry Men, or the Knights of the Round Table. And besides the Gospels and Apostles epistles aren't contemporary with Jesus' generation anyway.

Would your assertion include the John Rylands fragment, which has been dated from about 93 A.D. to about 117 A.D.?

Sure. Didn't you read Gospel of John article that I directed you to?

"But the earliest known usage of John is among Gnostic circles. These include the Naassene Fragment quoted by Hippolytus Ref. 5.7.2-9 (c. 120-140), the Valentinian texts cited in Clement of Alexandria's Excerpta ex Theodotou (c. 140-160), a Valentinian Exposition to the Prologue of the Gospel of John quoted in Irenaeus' Adv. Haer. 1.8.5-6 (c. 140-160), and the commentary of Heracleon on John (c. 150-180, quoted in Origen's own commentary). The oldest fragment of the New Testament, known as p52 or the John Rylands fragment, attests to canonical John and is dated paleographically c. 120-130 CE."

I also though that you might enjoy this...

"It is remarkably anti-Jewish; and it is filled with patently impossible and contradictory dialogue and claims, almost all in a voluble Greek style. It is semi-Gnostic while at the same time being an anti-Gnostic work. This is typical of Christianity’s 2nd century struggles to thwart Gnosticism while at the same time burning itself with the fire it used to fight the Gnostic fire."

It's pretty hard to find any articles about the Gospel of John where that word Gnostic doesn't just pop right out at you!

So what are you suggesting apart from that?

I'm suggesting that the 'Lord's Supper' wasn't significantly different from 'Apollo's Supper' (pick your favorite Pagan deity) and unless you believe that Apollo initiated a communal meal in his honor there is no reason to believe that Jesus did too.

Are you saying that Paul didn't have access to Jesus' life accounts and teachings?

I'm saying that if he did he sure did a good job of keeping it to himself. Pretty stange behavior for a missionary.

If seems to me that when people preach the Gospel, bits and pieces of Jesus' life and teachings invariably find their way into the presentations.

How odd then, that they didn't find their way into Paul's presentations. No miracles, no parables, no sermons, none of the details of Jesus' life familiar to us from the gospels find their way into Paul's presentations. No John the Baptist, no Nicodemus, no Judas, no Mary (pick one), find their way into Paul's presentations. No trial, no Caiaphas, no Sanhedrin, no Pilate, no Calvary find their way into Paul's presentations. Are you getting the picture?

Sounds more like a liberal scholarly concensus you present there, Lotan. Virtually every Study Bible I have, including the NIV Study Bible, the MacArthur Study Bible, the Full Life Study Bible, the Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible, and the Life Application Study Bible - all edited and comprised of teams of New and Old Testament scholars - cite the traditional New Testament Biblical authors as the most likely originators of these works.

I had a KJV study Bible until recently (it was stolen) that had the apologetics built right in. So what?
Here is a picture of current scholarly opinion on the authenticity of the 'Pauline' epistles...

"Fundamentalists, who cannot accept anything else, assert that all the thirteen epistles attributed to him by the New Testament are genuinely his. And then there are scholars of a more skeptical bent that accept only four of the thirteen epistles are being actually written by the historical Paul. Most scholars stand somewhere in between."

Notice that doesn't say "most liberal scholars" or "most conservative" scholars" or "most left-handed scholars".

Here's a handy chart...

Romans
I Corinthians
II Corinthians
Galatians Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.
Ephesians Generally accepted as a non-Pauline work;i.e. not written by Paul. Reasons for this include:
• Absence of normal Pauline greetings at the end of the epistle
• No discussion of eschatology in the letter
• Style is sluggish and ponderous, unlike Paul’s volatile style
• Anachronistic references to the existence of heretical sects
• Use of key technical phrases differs from the genuine Pauline epistles.
Philippians Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.
Collosians Controversial. Authenticity disputed. The majority of scholars say that it is very probably not Pauline due to the difference in vocabulary, style and general slant. Some scholars still believe in the possibility that Collosians could be an authentic Pauline document. .
I Thessalonians Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.
II Thessalonians Generally believed to be non-Pauline due to:
• Tone of the letter. I Thessalonians shows a feeling of close fellowship between Paul and the readers, yet the second epistle has a formal tone.
• A contradiction between the two Thessalonian epistles about the manner of Christ’s second coming (I Thessalonians 4:11-53 and II Thessalonian 2:1-12)
• A large bulk of the second epistle seems to be a direct copy of the first.
I Timothy
II Timothy
Titus The “pastoral” epistles are generally accepted as non-authentic. All internal evidence points to a date of composition of early second century AD:
• The existence of a highly organized church which simply did not exist in Paul’s time (I Timothy 3:15)
• The presupposition of the existence of definite creeds (I timothy 4:6; II Timothy 1:13) and the gospels (I Timothy 6:3,13) which appeared some decades after the death of Paul.
• Paul insistence that he is not lying when he claims apostleship (I Timothy 2:7) is itself highly suspicious as Timothy would have been most familiar with Paul’s authority.
• The theology of the pastorals are significantly different from the genuine Pauline epistles. The former call for acceptance of dogma is the way to salvation while the latter have always emphasized salvation by grace through faith.
Philemon Generally accepted by scholars to have been genuinely written by Paul.

Crossan makes pretty much the same assessment in In Search of Paul : How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom and he also does not qualify the consensus as being composed of 'liberals' or 'conservatives'.

It's not surprising that Bible editors would attribute the NT books to their 'traditional' authors, but in the "real world" of Bible scholarship that is not the situation. For example...

"The majority scholarly view about the personal "pastoral" letters (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) is that they were written not by Paul but in the second century."

No doubt you will select what you want to believe and quote the scholars you want to, and I select the ones I think are the most credible.

Do you have some evidence on the Rylands fragments that they are "gnostic"? I would like to see that.

Your man Crossan was one of the a priori anti-supernaturalist liberal Jesus Seminar "scholars" who cast colored beads in the voting in favor of his cut and paste theology. He even suggested wild dogs ate the body of Christ (based on what evidence?). Mainstream scholarship has hardly taken that crowd seriously. For the most part, I'll take Dr. Norman Geisler, Dr. Gary Habermas, and those like them over your "real world" pundits anytime. Do you support Spong's theology also?

In addition, we do not need to rely totally on John's Gospel depictions of the deity of Christ since we find other evidences of Christ's divinity in the other Gospels, in Paul's Epistles, in Peter's Epistles, and in John's and the Book of Revelation as well.

But I do thank you for your views. Cheers....

[Lotan]

No doubt you will select what you want to believe and quote the scholars you want to, and I select the ones I think are the most credible.

But it’s not that simple is it? The scholar whose work you have cited as evidence that the NT authors were putting their lives on the line has himself said...

"…it cannot now be determined how all of the apostles died."

Why don't you believe him?

The traditions on which the foundation of your argument is based are unverifiable, untrustworthy, and contradictory.

Do you have some evidence on the Rylands fragments that they are "gnostic"? I would like to see that.

I don't think that we can say too much about a little scrap like that, except that it's date is by no means certain. If you think that it constitutes evidence relevant to a discussion of gnosticism in the gospel of John you'll have to explain why.
In any event Gnostics certainly found John's gospel valuable...

"Of particular interest to Gnostic interpreters were the stories of Genesis, the Gospel of John, and the epistles of Paul. They used the biblical texts for their own purposes. Indeed, Gnostics such as Heracleon and Ptolemaeus were the first commentators on the Fourth Gospel."

Your man Crossan was one of the a priori anti-supernaturalist liberal Jesus Seminar "scholars" who cast colored beads in the voting in favor of his cut and paste theology. He even suggested wild dogs ate the body of Christ (based on what evidence?).

Don't forget 'birds of prey'! Yeah, the 'wild dogs' thing is speculative, but IIRC it was based on accounts of other crucifixions. I made a comment about Crossan on this thread not too long ago...

I know Crossan stretches a bit so I always wear my skeptic hat when I read his stuff. Actually, I always wear my skeptic hat when I read anybody's stuff. He still makes some good arguments though.

As for the Jesus Seminar, I have expressed my opinion earlier as well...

The members of the Jesus Seminar include some of the finest minds in historical Jesus research. That said, it's not without problems either, particularly with regard to methodology and a tendency toward 'groupthink'. Their findings are a kind of argument from authority/consensus and while they shouldn't be taken as fact, they do provide food for thought.

I think it's important to have some balance. Your lament that these scholars take an "a priori anti-supernaturalist liberal" view is a familiar apologetic theme, but it's not all that meaningful. If you really have a problem with "a priori" reasoning try jumping out of an airplane without a parachute! And labelling a scholar 'liberal' only means that they are willing entertain a wider variety of possibilities than a 'conservative' who by definition favors traditional views and is resistant to change (read: 'biased').
Oh, and BTW, I was citing Crossan's assessment of the consensus opinion of scholars in the field in which he has worked for fifty years, not his opinion of Jesus' fate.

For the most part, I'll take Dr. Norman Geisler, Dr. Gary Habermas, and those like them over your "real world" pundits anytime.

Take them. Please!
Let's see...

Norman Geisler?
~Christian apologist and president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.
~Dr. Norman L. Geisler is a scholar, moderate Calvinist theologian, contributor to the field of Christian apologetics, and the author or coauthor of some sixty books defending the Christian faith.
~Norman L. Geisler is author or coauthor of some sixty books, including The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics…
~Norman Geisler is a Christian scholar, Christian apologist…

I think I'm beginning to see a pattern here!

What about Gary Habermas?
~Dr. Gary R. Habermas is Distinguished Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University.
~Gary Habermas is an American Christian apologist, theologian, and philosopher of religion.
~...I gained a new respect for Gary Habermas's apologetic prowess...

Looks like another one! And Liberty University too! Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn, Sun Myung Moon, it's enough to make my head spin!

An apologist is...

"a person who argues to defend or justify some policy or institution"

In other words they are not interested in any scholarly search for knowledge because they think they already know everything, and they will happily 'spin' the evidence to arrive at their preconceived conclusions. So please don't complain anymore if someone says that you are relying on the arguments of apologists because according to them, and yourself, you are.

Just for fun, you may enjoy reading these...
The Geisler-Till Debate
Norman Geisler pretends to "debate" Farrell Till

Do you support Spong's theology also?

I don't support anyone's theology. I'm an atheist.

In addition, we do not need to rely totally on John's Gospel depictions of the deity of Christ since we find other evidences of Christ's divinity in the other Gospels, in Paul's Epistles, in Peter's Epistles, and in John's and the Book of Revelation as well.

This 'gnosticism' thing really has you bugged I guess. It doesn't have much to do with the debate topic that I can see, unless you are making some sort of circular argument for the NT being evidence for itself. With the exception of the genuine Pauline letters none of the books of the NT can be traced back to Jesus' generation, nor can apostolic authorship be definitely attributed to them.

[Easyrider]

The scholar whose work you have cited as evidence that the NT authors were putting their lives on the line has himself said..."…it cannot now be determined how all of the apostles died."

The key word there is “ALL”, which gives a different ring to things than from your viewpoint.

The traditions on which the foundation of your argument is based are unverifiable, untrustworthy, and contradictory.

Of course that’s your opinion. Certainly the Book of Acts records the persecution and martyrdom of a number of Christ’s disciples, so you’re the one who’s in denial of it.

Do you have some evidence on the Rylands fragments that they are "gnostic"? I would like to see that.

I don't think that we can say too much about a little (Rylands) scrap like that, except that it's date is by no means certain. If you think that it constitutes evidence relevant to a discussion of gnosticism in the gospel of John you'll have to explain why.

Well, Dr. Bruce Metzger is on record as saying the Rylands fragment of the Gospel of John is the oldest (fragment) of the New Testament that there is on record, and cites Adolph Deissmann’s assessment of it dating to as far back as 98-117 A.D. The key here is that you say the oldest fragments (manuscripts?) are all from Gnostic circles and here we have quite possibly the oldest fragment, and there’s no evidence there’s anything Gnostic about it, or that it’s from “Gnostic circles.” Sort of blows your whole argument if you ask me.

The members of the Jesus Seminar include some of the finest minds in historical Jesus research. That said, it's not without problems either, particularly with regard to methodology and a tendency toward 'groupthink'. Their findings are a kind of argument from authority/consensus and while they shouldn't be taken as fact, they do provide food for thought.
I think it's important to have some balance. Your lament that these scholars take an "a priori anti-supernaturalist liberal" view is a familiar apologetic theme, but it's not all that meaningful.

I think it’s meaningful. It’s obvious they got their scissors out and cut out anything of Jesus that was supernatural. And they did that without providing a compelling argument as to why they took that extremely questionable approach.

Norman Geisler?

I think I'm beginning to see a pattern here!

What about Gary Habermas?

Looks like another one! And Liberty University too! Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn, Sun Myung Moon, it's enough to make my head spin!

In other words they are not interested in any scholarly search for knowledge because they think they already know everything, and they will happily 'spin' the evidence to arrive at their preconceived conclusions. So please don't complain anymore if someone says that you are relying on the arguments of apologists because according to them, and yourself, you are.

That’s silly. Anyone who has read the works of those two scholars in depth knows that they provide the evidences for their conclusions or points of view. Unlike the apostate (heretical?) liberal Bishop Spong, who invents his own Greek words to try to discredit the New Testament.

Take care, Lotan!

[youngborean]

I think it is a fair time to point out that the Jesus seminar scholars do have a certain bias, in that they all believe (like you have stated in the past Lotan) that Gospel of Thomas is relevant to the "real Jesus" and of a early date, this was the mandate of their research and the subject of their book. There are plenty of excellent scholars who argue a later date who are not apologists in any way. I think calling out scholars as good or bad may not really help this dialogue. But dealing with scholarly biases may help the discussion along. Throwing out any scholar because of a bias for thier position shouldn't outweigh the evidence. That being said, because the gnostics used John doesn't verify all accounts of a pro-gnostic Historical Jesus. Each piece of evidence needs to support the position on both sides, the reality is that there is always contrary "evidence" and biases take over.

[Lotan]

The key word there is “ALL”, which gives a different ring to things than from your viewpoint.

So how many can be determined? Here's yet another opinion of McBirnie's book...

"This claim that all the Apostles died for their faith is pure horse(edit). It is based on a book by William McBirnie entitled The Search for the Twelve Apostles. The book itself admits time and time again that these claims of martyrdom are contradictory, one Apostle may have several different stories as to how and where they died, and these claims are based on nothing but pure myth and speculation. One quick example: Simon the Zealot died in England via crucifixion AND he also died in Persia by being sawed in two!!!"

So, it's not just my opinion that these stories are contradictory, it's McBirnie's too!

And what's this...?

"In "The Search for the Twelve Apostles", Dr. William McBirnie
admits that traditions were somewhat inconsistent and contradictory."

Farrell Till is clearly less impressed with McBirnie's 'evidence' than even McBirnie himself...
...referring to "Andrew"...
"McBirnie said of these conflicting traditions, "Now it would seem, at first
glance, that these three traditions are contradictory. But perhaps they are
mutually complementary. After all, Andrew had to minister *somewhere* in
the world, and if he did not die in Jerusalem it is very possible that he
went to Asia Minor to be with his old friend John. Or if for a while he
went beyond Asia Minor to Scythia, that too is reasonable..." (p. 81).
McBirnie rambled on, stringing together more possibilities and
"could-have-beens," but the end result was an attempt to argue that we
can't let ourselves be distracted by inconsistencies in the traditions
about Andrew. Most of the traditions say that he was crucified, and so why
not accept that?"

On another occasion, Till had this to say about the traditions regarding "Matthew"...

"...of all the traditions about the deaths of the apostles, Matthew's
are so varied and contradictory that even staunch Bible believers admit that
there is no way to determine which legend is true."

So, your expert witness doesn't know how "ALL" the apostles met their end (assuming that they "ALL" existed in the first place), nor can he say with any certainty how ANY died, with the obvious exception of James. Since McBirnie has disqualified himself, I think we should at least consider the opinion of a real historian...

"In the time of Tertullian and Clemens of Alexandria [late 2nd - early 3rd centuries] the glory of martyrdom was confined to St Peter, St Paul and St James.
It was gradually bestowed on the rest of the apostles by the more recent Greeks, who prudently selected for the theatre of their preaching and sufferings some remote country beyond the limits of the Roman empire."
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. ii., pp. 191, 192. Ed. 1821).

I'll even admit the possibility that Peter (maybe Paul) got caught in the middle of Nero's renovations, but early Christians were hardly in the kind of danger that you are suggesting, especially in the post-temple, diaspora communities.

Certainly the Book of Acts records the persecution and martyrdom of a number of Christ’s disciples, so you’re the one who’s in denial of it.

Certainly the apologetic nature of the Book of Acts disqualifies it as an objective source of historical information. If you're just going to use the NT to prove itself then your argument is shaped like this -> .

Well, Dr. Bruce Metzger is on record as saying the Rylands fragment of the Gospel of John is the oldest (fragment) of the New Testament that there is on record, and cites Adolph Deissmann’s assessment of it dating to as far back as 98-117 A.D.

F.F. Bruce says 130, so what? From Wikipedia...

"...the dating of the papyrus is by no means the subject of consensus among critical scholars. The style of the script is strongly Hadrian, which would suggest a date somewhere between 125 and 160 CE. But the difficulty of fixing the date of a fragment based solely on paleographic evidence allows for a range of dates that extends from before 100 CE to well into the second half of the 2nd century."

The key here is that you say the oldest fragments (manuscripts?) are all from Gnostic circles and here we have quite possibly the oldest fragment, and there’s no evidence there’s anything Gnostic about it, or that it’s from “Gnostic circles.” Sort of blows your whole argument if you ask me.

Umm, besides yourself, no one has said that "the oldest fragments (manuscripts?) are all from Gnostic circles". Here's what the ECW article actually says...

"But the earliest known usage of John..."

"Usage", get it? As in other authors used portions of gJohn in their own writings. If you had read the article you would have seen that it goes on to tell who these other authors were and where they used it...

"...is among Gnostic circles. These include the Naassene Fragment quoted by Hippolytus Ref. 5.7.2-9 (c. 120-140), the Valentinian texts cited in Clement of Alexandria's Excerpta ex Theodotou (c. 140-160), a Valentinian Exposition to the Prologue of the Gospel of John quoted in Irenaeus' Adv. Haer. 1.8.5-6 (c. 140-160), and the commentary of Heracleon on John (c. 150-180, quoted in Origen's own commentary). The oldest fragment of the New Testament, known as p52 or the John Rylands fragment, attests to canonical John and is dated paleographically c. 120-130 CE."

So the article is quite clear if you don't try to twist it. That there is evidence of gnosticism in gJohn is hardly a secret. Since it's off-topic, and it kind of bores me anyway, I'll post the link to the evidence for that claim and leave it at that. Maybe you could email the author and deate the subject with her...
Proto-Gnostic Elements in the Gospel According to John

My original point, that there was plenty of raw material from which the NT authors could have (and did!) drawn to create their picture of an 'historical' Jesus, still stands.

I think it’s meaningful. It’s obvious they got their scissors out and cut out anything of Jesus that was supernatural. And they did that without providing a compelling argument as to why they took that extremely questionable approach.

"Extremely questionable"? Do you think that only people who believe in Jesus Christ are allowed to be Bible scholars?
In any case, I'm not here to defend or critique the Jesus Seminar scholars. Historians don't take the supernatural claims of any other writings seriously, so I see no reason why the Bible should be an exception. Provide proof that the supernatural even exists and then I will admit that the JS approach is "extremely questionable. Besides, this is off-topic. My assertion that Crossan, after a life devoted to the study of the NT, is capable of providing an accurate assessment of the consensus opinion of his colleagues remains unrefuted.

That’s silly.

Which, that they are apologists or that you rely on their arguments?

Anyone who has read the works of those two scholars in depth knows that they provide the evidences for their conclusions or points of view. Unlike the apostate (heretical?) liberal Bishop Spong, who invents his own Greek words to try to discredit the New Testament.

I don’t know how Spong entered this discussion. I thought we were discussing whether or not the NT authors were "putting their lives on the line". Why do you keep changing the subject?