How can we determine which parts of Scripture are true?

[Zelduck]

This is really a question for Christians, but since it doesn't assume the validity of the Bible, I think it belongs here rather than in the Theology, Doctrine, and Dogma section.

There have been multiple canons of Scripture. Books have been accepted and rejected for various reasons throughout Christian history. Books have lied about their authorship. Passages have been added and removed. Books were written in different times and different places by different authors and for different reasons.

So how can I have confidence in any particular verse, chapter, or book, that what I am reading is the inspired work of the Holy Spirit, and not the work of a man, no matter how pious?

What method ought I use to reliably determine what is and is not the Word of God? Has someone already done this for me, and if so, how can I tell if they didn't make a mistake?

[Korah]

By way of demonstrating that I have neither “run out of gas�, nor “run out of bounds�, I thought it might be illuminating to examine and dissect the “evidence� for Korah’s second eye-witness, “Andrew�.

Thank you for now restricting yourself to proper DC&R boundaries. Your continued thorough research indeed shows you are not "out of gas". Thank you.

Here’s how Korah identifies his second eye-witness:

Not necessarily disclosing the author, but largely related to this section of John is the name “Andrew� at John 1:40, 41, 44; 6:8; 12:22(2). The name “Philip� occurs even more frequently in about the same places and in John 14:8, 9, but I long ago settled on Andrew as a more probable author, particularly when I found out that the Muratorian Canon (usually dated to 170 AD) states that Andrew started out the process of writing John. As a further note I would add that the first occurrence of each name at John 12:22 is shown by Teeple as from the source, so should not be used to claim that the name “Andrew� is not associated exclusively with the Signs Source, even though it falls outside the sections more conclusively identified as Signs Source. Andrew is the second identifiable eyewitness.

Proof 1: the name “Andrew� is found at John 1:40, 41, 44; 6:8; 12:22(2).

"Proof" is a term introduced by you. I never contended that I "prove" any of my seven eyewitnesses. I acknowledge that other views are possible, just contend that mine is the most probable.

Rebuttal: Simply because a name is found in a text does not prove that the individual mentioned is an eye-witness to the events depicted. Furthermore, there is nothing contained in the specific verses listed that might indicate that they depict events that could only be derived from an eye-witness.
Secondly, even if it were proven that the frequency with which a name occurs is a possible means of identifying a likely eye-witness, then (as Korah admits), as “Philip� is mentioned far more frequently (on 12 occasions) than Andrew, he (Philip) is the more likely candidate.

Philip is never mentioned in the Muratorian Canon. If you want to regard Philip as the eyewitness, my Thesis would not be materially affected.

Proof 2: “but I long ago settled on Andrew as a more probable author, particularly when I found out that the Muratorian Canon states that Andrew started out the process of writing John�

Rebuttal: Simply settling on Andrew as being “more probable� can, in no way be construed as a reasoned argument or proof. As for the Muratorian Canon, while it states that Andrew was the individual responsible for prompted John to start writing, the actual author was John, with all the apostles acting as an editorial committee. There is nothing to indicate that John specifically wrote down Andrew’s eye-witness recollections or that Andrew was a more active editor than the other apostles.

“(13) In the same night it was revealed (14) to Andrew, [one] of the apostles (15 -16) that John should write all things down in his own name while all of them should review it.�*

*Extract from the Muratorian Canon; translational expansions are contained in square brackets []; line numbers are enclosed in brackets ().

Only two men are mentioned by the Muratorian Canon, John and Andrew. These are the only two of the twelve apostles that my Thesis names as participating in the writing of John. Like anything else, it's general support. Further, it says that others were involved, just as my thesis states. These kinds of things are not subject to syllogistic "proof", as you well know.

Proof 3: “the first occurrence of each name at John 12:22 is shown by Teeple as from the source, so should not be used to claim that the name “Andrew� is not associated exclusively with the Signs Source, even though it falls outside the sections more conclusively identified as Signs Source.�

Rebuttal: One of the means Teeple employed to identify “S� [source] was by the use of the article with personal names. In the case of Jn 12:22 the first occurrence of Andrew has the article (arthrous), the second does not (anarthrous). According to Teeple, this would indicate that the first part of the verse was from “S�, and the second from the Editor “E�. (anarthrous personal names being seen as a characteristic of the Editor). However the first occurrence of Philip in Jn 12:22 is also arthrous; the second occurrence of Philip is also anarthrous. So there is no reason, on this basis, to differentiate between Andrew and Philip, much less to point to either as an eye-witness.
The concluding part of this proof I find to be incomprehensible. I have no idea what Korah is trying to say.

I don't think I was trying to "prove" anything else by what baffles Student. This paragraph was an apologia for the name "Andrew" (and "Philip") occurring outside my prescribed bounds for the Signs Source. I didn't think it necessary at this point to define "arthrous" and "anarthrous" nouns (as I did later with the sixth eyewitness), just to acknowledge that there was a problem for me that I contended was suitably explained away.

In conclusion, having evaluated Korah’s proofs, I find nothing that substantiates the claim that Andrew was an eye-witness responsible for writing part of the gospel(s).

If you're evaluating a "proof", maybe your categorical "nothing" is not too ridiculous, but I did provide much that warrants consideration. Academic scholars tend to recognize a Signs Source, and no one has proven it is too late to be from an eyewitness. Form Criticism is in shambles. It is time for a new paradigm that does not accept its presupposition that no eyewitnesses wrote. I was always suspicious of Form Criticism, so I had decades of head start investigating out-of-fashion scholars who were unjustly ignored. I accepted their research, but not their presuppositions.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

It seems I may have made my two questions to historia too difficult. While we are waiting for a response I am going to continue.

"To those who believe that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write
error-free text, it matters not one iota whether some of the Gospel content
was derived from an earlier document. The Holy Spirit has guaranteed that
the books chosen to be in Bible are all inerrant -- at least in their
autograph copies: the copies hand-written by their authors."
http://www.religioustolerance.org/gosp_q.htm

For most of Christian history the Bible was considered God inspired and inerrant... end of story. In fact no questioning or analysis of it was allowed, and one did so at their immediate physical peril. For centuries the Catholic church made it a capital crime for laymen to learn Latin and to read the Bible. The Bible, and ALL forms of knowledge, was the province of what the Catholic church declared it to be. But then came the Protestant Reformation and times changed. In the early 17th century the Bible was translated into English for all to read. Not too surprisingly, scholarly criticism of the Bible began as well. It was noted, for example, that the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, firmly attributed to Moses himself as the author by Jewish and Christian tradition, could not possibly have been written by Moses. Spinoza noted that "It is clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses." Spinoza was nearly murdered for that statement, but modern Biblical analysis is uniformly on his side. Detailed analysis of the books of the OT clearly show that they were worked over by many hands, rewritten and revised over the course of centuries. And that presents a problem for fundamentalists who maintain that the Bible is filled with accurate prophesies. Because it is MUCH easier to make accurate prophesies if the prophesy's are made AFTER the event has already occurred.

So scholarly Biblical analysis often tends to runs afoul of religious dogma. One of the problems for Christians is a fondness for declaring that"Jesus said:" and then citing a passage taken from one of the Gospels. The problem is, JESUS WROTE NOTHING HIMSELF. The "words of Jesus," cited as if they are the very Words of God Himself, were actually written by mostly anonymous individuals decades after Jesus was executed. Individuals who may well never even have met the living Jesus. Then circa 1900 some German theologians had a brainstorm which they believed would serve to eliminate this obvious objection to the genuine nature of the the words so traditionally attributed to Jesus himself, and which would in fact significantly bolster the Gospels as authoritative sources for Christian beliefs and Christian claims. That solution became known as the "Quelle" (German for "source"), or "Q" for short. Perhaps, they speculated, there had once existed a document that had been written from very early times, perhaps even while while Jesus was still alive, which had carefully preserved the exact words of the Lord Himself, and which had served as a common source for the authors of the Gospels.

Because another obvious problem existed in Christian mythology. And that is known as "The Synoptic Problem."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_G ... ic_problem

Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke are not merely similar, they are in large part word-for-word the same. Writing in the second century, Christian historians Papias and Polycarp, as well as Eusebius in the fourth century, indicated that the apostle Matthew undertook to write a Gospel while in Rome, during the period when Peter and Paul were traditionally believed to have been establishing a church in Rome. This was taken to be the period 60-64, prior to the great fire. The author of Gospel Mark was said to have been a disciple of of Peter who served as Peter's interpreter, and who wrote down the things that Peter had told him after Peter had died. Accordingly therefore, the fledgling Catholic church in the fourth century placed Gospel Matthew first in the canon of the NT, and Gospel Mark second, an order based on the belief that Matthew was written prior to Mark.

But once again, detailed Biblical scholarship ran afoul of Christian tradition. The first problem occurs with the observation that Papias, Polycarp and Eusebius all also indicated that the apostle Matthew wrote his Gospel IN THE COMMON LANGUAGE OF THE JEWS. That would be Aramaic, a very cumbersome and difficult language. Canonical Gospel Matthew is written in very clear and pure Koine Greek, and shows no evidence of being a translation from so cumbersome a language as Aramaic. In fact a second observation is to be made. Gospel Matthew IS in large part the Gospel Mark, which was also written in pure Koine Greek, word for word. This is difficult to explain if Gospel Matthew was written before Gospel Mark existed. It's also observed that Gospel Luke contains large portions of Gospel Mark, as well as lesser portions derived from Gospel Matthew. The obvious solution is that Gospel Mark was in fact written first, that the author of Gospel Matthew used Gospel Mark as the main body of his own Gospel, and that the author of Gospel Luke had and used both Gospels Mark and Luke when writing his Gospel. And accordingly, it is widely acknowledged by historians today that Gospel Mark was the first to have been written, Gospel Matthew was written next, and Gospel Luke written third. This analysis presents several problems for Christian dogma however. It indicates that the first and primary Gospel was actually Mark and not Matthew. Gospel Mark was written by an individual who was clearly not a personal witness to Jesus. It indicates that Gospel Matthew, written by the apostle Matthew himself according to Christian dogma, and therefore a direct eyewitness to the events surrounding the life of Jesus, based most of his Gospel on material derived from a non eye witness. And clearly the pure Koine Greek Gospel According To Matthew contained in all modern copies of the NT cannot be the Aramaic Gospel that Papias, Polycarp and Eusebius reported that the apostle Matthew wrote. It IS known that there did once exist an Aramaic Gospel known as the Gospel of the Hebrews, but it disappeared from history in about the fourth century. Only some few fragments of it remain.

Then of course there is the problem that ALL of the Gospels, so replete with long passage of verbatim quotes of the direct "Words of Christ," were actually written long after Jesus was dead. And the fact that the authors of Gospels Matthew and Luke relied so heavily on other sources diminishes them is independent accounts.

Most of these problems can be neatly resolved by the simple assumption that there necessarily existed a very early document that contained many verbatim sayings of Jesus, written at or near to the time when they were actually said. This serves to strengthen the dogmatic Christian position of the faithful that the passages in the Gospels which directly quote Jesus faithfully represent his actual words. And it would mean that the three individuals, Matthew, Mark and Luke relied not on each other for their Gospels, but independently used an even earlier "source," the Quelle. There is one small fly in this soup of assumption however; there is not the slightest bit of evidence to support it. There is absolutely no mention of such a source existing historically, and no evidence that it ever existed. No such copies exist today, and no good explanation serving to explain how such an important work, containing direct quotes from Jesus himself, managed to fall into an obscurity so complete that no one even bothered to make copies of it or even mention that it ever existed in the first place.

The bottom line here is that the so called "Q" document is pure MAKE BELIEVE. It's a theoretical devise manufactured in a blatantly self serving ideological attempt by Christian theologians to support their traditional dogmatic assumptions. The whole process by which the very notion of a "Q" document originated represents a wholly transparent example of Christian mythology at work. Develop an assumption, garner support from other Christians that it must be true, declare it to be true, and move on.

Declaring the existence of the Quelle to be a valid and well established fact of history, is no different then claiming the resurrection of Jesus from the dead to be a valid and well established fact of history. THERE IS NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT EITHER. Believing in them is an act of faith, not established fact. Referring to either of them on this forum requires providing physical evidence to support such a claim. Acting as if either is simply an accepted fact is nothing more than attempting to use that which has yet to be proved, as proof.

[historia]

[Replying to historia]

Which is a poor argument, since, with possible rare exceptions (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas), all of those apochryphal gospels post-date Luke. And so when Luke says that "many" had already written accounts at the time he was writing, he must be referring to other, no longer extant, sources.

By some counts there were as many as 50 non-canonical Gospels in circulation by the early third century. And this doesn't include the various "Acts of" and "Epistles of." Many of these works still exist today, wholly or in fragments, and many are known only through references to them contained in other works. When each of them was first written is simply a matter of conjecture. But the comment in Gospel Luke that other accounts were being written absolutely coincides with the historical evidence.

Biblical scholars generally date the non-canonical gospels to the second century or later because most of those texts show signs of dependence on the canonical gospels -- including Luke itself! So clearly these later works cannot be among the many accounts that Luke refers to having already been written in his own day.

All historical judgments are based on incomplete information, and are therefore a "matter of conjecture." Unless you can give us good reasons to overturn the scholarly consensus here, your argument remains, quite frankly, nothing more than empty rhetoric, and I see no reason to give it serious consideration.

Is it your opinion that the one time existence of the Q document is a thoroughly established historical fact, which is and should be, accepted as established historical fact by the majority of modern secular historians?

I think calling Q a "thoroughly established historical fact" is problematic. That statement is simply too confident for my taste.

The two document hypothesis is certainly accepted by the majority of modern biblical scholars today, and I personally think it accounts for the data better than any other competing hypothesis. But Q remains a hypothetical document.

We can't deal in absolutes when evaluating the past, especially the ancient past where our sources are so scarce. All historical judgments are a matter of what most likely or probably happened. And, to that end, I think Q most likely existed.

Accordingly, is it also your opinion, as an expert historian yourself, that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is also a well established historical fact, which is, AND SHOULD BE, accepted as established historical fact by the majority of modern secular historians?

Again, the historical method only allows us to say what most likely or probably happened in the past. Since miracles are, by definition, improbable, if not in fact impossible, the resurrection of Jesus is, again by definition, beyond the pale of history. The historian qua historian simply cannot say that such an event most likely happened. So it is, without question, not an "established historical fact."

And I am not an expert historian myself. I am just someone who takes the study of Christian history seriously.

[historia]

So scholarly Biblical analysis often tends to runs afoul of religious dogma.

This analysis presents several problems for Christian dogma however. It indicates that the first and primary Gospel was actually Mark and not Matthew. Gospel Mark was written by an individual who was clearly not a personal witness to Jesus.

Then circa 1900 some German theologians had a brainstorm which they believed would serve to eliminate this obvious objection to the genuine nature of the the words so traditionally attributed to Jesus himself, and which would in fact significantly bolster the Gospels as authoritative sources for Christian beliefs and Christian claims. That solution became known as the "Quelle" (German for "source"), or "Q" for short. Perhaps, they speculated, there had once existed a document that had been written from very early times, perhaps even while while Jesus was still alive, which had carefully preserved the exact words of the Lord Himself, and which had served as a common source for the authors of the Gospels.

Most of these problems can be neatly resolved by the simple assumption that there necessarily existed a very early document that contained many verbatim sayings of Jesus, written at or near to the time when they were actually said. This serves to strengthen the dogmatic Christian position of the faithful that the passages in the Gospels which directly quote Jesus faithfully represent his actual words.

The bottom line here is that the so called "Q" document is pure MAKE BELIEVE. It's a theoretical devise manufactured in a blatantly self serving ideological attempt by Christian theologians to support their traditional dogmatic assumptions.

I have to confess that I find this narrative of yours quite amusing.

On the one hand, you recognize that over the past two centuries biblical scholars have reached conclusions that run counter to traditional ideas concerning the dating and authorship of some biblical texts. You take this as a good thing.

But then, for some odd reason, when these same exact scholars proposed the two source hypothesis to explain the double tradition in Matthew and Luke, you paint that as a grand Christian conspiracy to "support traditional dogmatic assumptions." What traditional dogmatic assumptions? The same 'assumptions' that lead these same scholars to propose the Documentary hypothesis and Markan priority?

The 'good guys' in your story all of a sudden become the 'bad guys' for no discernible reason. They start out as noble 'scholars' creating problems for 'Christian dogma', but then the next moment they are 'theologians' apparently concocting solutions to the very problems they created.

Listen, conservative Christians -- that is, those who are actually interested in "supporting traditional dogmatic assumptions" -- want nothing to do with Q. Rather, they invariably defend Matthean priority and argue that Luke copied from Matthew -- the latter being, you know, the same argument you are defending.

There is one small fly in this soup of assumption however; there is not the slightest bit of evidence to support it.

Except, of course, all of the evidence that shows that Luke wrote independently of Matthew, which necessarily leads us to the conclusion that the double-tradition must have come from another written source. You can keep ignoring this fact while asserting (one wants to say 'dogmatically') that "there is no evidence," or you can engage in a discussion of that evidence.

There is absolutely no mention of such a source existing historically, and no evidence that it ever existed. No such copies exist today, and no good explanation serving to explain how such an important work, containing direct quotes from Jesus himself, managed to fall into an obscurity so complete that no one even bothered to make copies of it or even mention that it ever existed in the first place.

Lots of early Christian texts "fell into obscurity." This clearly happened to several of Paul's letters, for example, as he mentions them in his extant letters. Why did Christians "allow" a letter from so great an apostle to "fall into obscurity"? We'll never know.

It also nearly happened to Mark. Once Luke and (particularly) Matthew incorporated most of Mark's gospel into their own, Christians stopped copying Mark as frequently, as evidenced by the relative lack of copies in the early manuscript tradition. It could have easily been lost to time.

In fact, most of the works that we know about from the ancient world are only preserved (by reference or quotation) in later texts. As this was a common fate for lots of texts (Christian and non), I see no reason to insist that the same could not have happened to Q.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to historia]

Biblical scholars generally date the non-canonical gospels to the second century or later because most of those texts show signs of dependence on the canonical gospels -- including Luke itself! So clearly these later works cannot be among the many accounts that Luke refers to having already been written in his own day.

All historical judgments are based on incomplete information, and are therefore a "matter of conjecture." Unless you can give us good reasons to overturn the scholarly consensus here, your argument remains, quite frankly, nothing more than empty rhetoric, and I see no reason to give it serious consideration.

We don't even have examples of many of the "Gospel According to" so and so documents that once existed, only references to them in other works. So there is no good way to determine when they were written. Declaring them to all have been uniformly written post Luke with a wave of your hand is a considerable, well, leap of faith on your part smacking of preconception and dogmatism. As you yourself pointed out in Post 261:

The complete text of Thomas only exists today in a manuscript written in Coptic sometime in the 4th Century. A careful examination of the text has led scholars to hypothesize that it is actually a translation of an earlier Greek text (of which other fragments survive) probably written in the 2nd Century. Many scholars further hypothesize, again based on a careful examination of the text, that this second century text incorporated still earlier material that dates to the middle of the first century.

So here we have an example of biblical scholars concluding that this gospel was "derived from original earlier sources." It is also regularly used as a source in historical Jesus research, and thus is thought to contain some "true and accurate versions of the story of Jesus, complete with accurate verbatim quotations from Jesus himself."

And clearly Thomas is not a canonical gospel. So your assertion that biblical scholars are only willing to extend these argument to the "documents Christians have declared to be genuine" is refuted.

Thomas was excluded from the canon in the fourth century on the basis that it contained material concerning Jesus which deviated from the known qualities of Jesus. It didn't fit in with the Jesus that the newly founded Catholic church was in the process of creating. As a result The Gospel According to Thomas was deemed a false heresy and banned, like so many other of the works that were not included into the canon. The Gospel According to Thomas was one of those works whose existence for centuries was largely known only trough external references to it. And then a complete copy of gospel Thomas was found in 1945. Your reference to it as a "Coptic text" is a not so subtle inference that it may have been altered to suit the beliefs of the copiers. But that very claim could well be leveled at ALL of the books of the canonical NT as well could it not? None of the documents that exist were written by the hand of the individual they are attributed to, but are later copies. The oldest existent copies of the canonical Gospels themselves only date back as far as around the beginning of the third century. Some scholars have pointed out that references to a gospel written by Thomas indicate that such a work could have existed by 50, making it earlier then ANY of the canonical Gospels. My point here was that the reference in Luke to other works that were in the process of being written concerning the life of Jesus is validated by the evidence. It's generally known as the Apocrypha.

I do notice that you have a distinct willingness to dismiss physically existing evidence (the Apocrypha) which serves to discredit your chosen conclusion, but a noticeably strong willingness to fully embrace "evidence" which exists only as a hypothetical. Would it be less than fair on my part to consider this to be a distinct bias on your part, rather then a strict discipline of only wishing to arrive at the truth?

I think calling Q a "thoroughly established historical fact" is problematic. That statement is simply too confident for my taste.

The two document hypothesis is certainly accepted by the majority of modern biblical scholars today, and I personally think it accounts for the data better than any other competing hypothesis. But Q remains a hypothetical document.

I agree entirely. It is not historical in any sense of the word. It was a hypothetical created to serve a purely doctrinaire purpose. The question of the existence of the "Q" is a purely religious question, because it is and always was a purely religious device to achieve a purely religious end. Until or unless it can be established through physical evidence to have actually existed, it really has nothing whatsoever to do with historical fact.

We can't deal in absolutes when evaluating the past, especially the ancient past where our sources are so scarce. All historical judgments are a matter of what most likely or probably happened. And, to that end, I think Q most likely existed.

And this goes straight to your personal religious bias, doesn't it! And where personal religious bias is concerned, factual history is relegated to little or no importance. Preconceived bias is not the province of a true historian.

Again, the historical method only allows us to say what most likely or probably happened in the past. Since miracles are, by definition, improbable, if not in fact impossible, the resurrection of Jesus is, again by definition, beyond the pale of history. The historian qua historian simply cannot say that such an event most likely happened. So it is, without question, not an "established historical fact."

Miracles are so improbable that not one, NOT ONE, can be confirmed through physical evidence to have ever occurred. Which is why no examples of confirmed miracles exist in the historical record. Imagining by what means, and for what purpose, they COULD have occurred is the very definition of wishful thinking and make believe. Nor is it necessary to look to the past to determine to an extraordinarily high level of confidence that corpses are physically incapable of returning to life and flying away.

And I am not an expert historian myself. I am just someone who takes the study of Christian history seriously.

We will all keep this in mind.

The bottom line here is that the so called "Q" document is pure MAKE BELIEVE. It's a theoretical devise manufactured in a blatantly self serving ideological attempt by Christian theologians to support their traditional dogmatic assumptions.

I have to confess that I find this narrative of yours quite amusing.

How amusing do you suppose I find encountering someone living in the 21st century who genuinely believes in a flying reanimated corpse? Actually I suppose amusing is not really the correct word.

On the one hand, you recognize that over the past two centuries biblical scholars have reached conclusions that run counter to traditional ideas concerning the dating and authorship of some biblical texts. You take this as a good thing.

I believe that anytime people begin to question what it is they think they believe, that is a good thing. To truly question an entrenched belief however one has to stand outside of the belief and genuinely challenge the fundamental foundational assumptions of what that belief entails. Bias going in inexorably leads to the same biased result on conclusion.

But then, for some odd reason, when these same exact scholars proposed the two source hypothesis to explain the double tradition in Matthew and Luke, you paint that as a grand Christian conspiracy to "support traditional dogmatic assumptions." What traditional dogmatic assumptions? The same 'assumptions' that lead these same scholars to propose the Documentary hypothesis and Markan priority?

The "Markan Priority" is an unavoidable conclusion based on the recognition that, of the three synoptic Gospels, only Gospel Mark is fully independent of other documents. The immediate and unavoidable conclusion is that the author of Mark was unaware of the other two Gospels, which would certainly be the case is the other two Gospels HAD YET TO BE WRITTEN! Gospel Matthew relies heavily on Gospel Mark. The immediate and unavoidable conclusion is that the author of Gospel Matthew not only was aware of Gospel Mark, but had a copy at hand as he was writing his own Gospel. We are then left with the unavoidable conclusion that the author of Gospel Luke was not only aware of Gospels Mark and Matthew, but had copies of both at hand as he was writing his own Gospel. This very clearly defines the chronological order in which the three synoptic Gospels were written. No contrivances or hypotheticals of any sort are required to reach this conclusion. The only real problem with this conclusion is purely the result of a conflict of a religious doctrinaire nature. The sort of religious doctrinare problem that often ends up with a contrived hypothetical solution.

The 'good guys' in your story all of a sudden become the 'bad guys' for no discernible reason. They start out as noble 'scholars' creating problems for 'Christian dogma', but then the next moment they are 'theologians' apparently concocting solutions to the very problems they created.

A contrived half measure is still nothing more than a contrived half measure.

Listen, conservative Christians -- that is, those who are actually interested in "supporting traditional dogmatic assumptions" -- want nothing to do with Q. Rather, they invariably defend Matthean priority and argue that Luke copied from Matthew -- the latter being, you know, the same argument you are defending.

This is true. Conservative Christians declare the NT to be the inspired "Word of God," and beyond the need of further investigation. Conservative Christians also believe that the Earth once stopped rotating on it's axis for about a 24 hour period, and that the Earth is no more then five thousand years old. Amazingly, some of these people have actually learned to operate the marvelous electronic devises provided by the very science that establishes unmistakably that their child-like ancient beliefs have nothing whatsoever to do with how the universe really operates.

Except, of course, all of the evidence that shows that Luke wrote independently of Matthew, which necessarily leads us to the conclusion that the double-tradition must have come from another written source. You can keep ignoring this fact while asserting (one wants to say 'dogmatically') that "there is no evidence," or you can engage in a discussion of that evidence.

Please establish conclusively that the author of Gospel Luke could not possibly have had access of Gospels Mark and Matthew.

Lots of early Christian texts "fell into obscurity." This clearly happened to several of Paul's letters, for example, as he mentions them in his extant letters. Why did Christians "allow" a letter from so great an apostle to "fall into obscurity"? We'll never know.

Many early Christian texts didn't simply "fall into obscurity," They were deemed heretical by the fledgling Catholic church and destroyed.

It also nearly happened to Mark. Once Luke and (particularly) Matthew incorporated most of Mark's gospel into their own, Christians stopped copying Mark as frequently, as evidenced by the relative lack of copies in the early manuscript tradition. It could have easily been lost to time.

This is largely the result of Marcion, who supported only the Gospel of Luke as authoritative. Marcionism was so widely popular in the second century that Marcionism nearly became mainstream Christianity by default. The Catholic church eventually declared Marcion and Marcionism a heresy, and would spend a good deal of effort viciously stamping it out.

In fact, most of the works that we know about from the ancient world are only preserved (by reference or quotation) in later texts. As this was a common fate for lots of texts (Christian and non), I see no reason to insist that the same could not have happened to Q.

I already pointed out that many of the early gospels, acts and epistles written by early Christians are known only through references to them contained in other sources. The hypothetical "Q" document IS REFERRED TO IN NO OTHER SOURCE.

[historia]

Please establish conclusively that the author of Gospel Luke could not possibly have had access of Gospels Mark and Matthew.

Your request here is confused on two points.

First, as I mentioned above, history (the discipline) concerns itself with what most likely or probably happened in the past. Any number of things are possible, and so asking me to "establish conclusively" that some historical event is not possible is to misunderstand the nature of historical reasoning.

Second, no one here is arguing that Luke didn't have access to Mark, that's a red herring.

Now, if your request here is for me to provide evidence and arguments in support of the two document hypothesis, I'd be happy to do that. But only on the condition that you also have to provide evidence and arguments in support of your contention that Luke borrowed from Matthew. The burden of proof lies on both sides of this argument. The question here is which hypothesis best explains the available data. That would actually be a proper historical debate. Are you up for it?

Before we get to that, however, we have to first dispel a couple of a priori arguments you have advanced in this thread, namely that (1) the Q hypothesis is solely the result of "religious bias," and (2) that hypothetical documents are not "historical facts."

These are baseless claims. Allow me to deal with each in successive posts.

[historia]

To the first claim:

Biblical scholars generally date the non-canonical gospels to the second century or later because most of those texts show signs of dependence on the canonical gospels -- including Luke itself! So clearly these later works cannot be among the many accounts that Luke refers to having already been written in his own day.

We don't even have examples of many of the "Gospel According to" so and so documents that once existed, only references to them in other works. So there is no good way to determine when they were written.

Exactly right. So your argument that Luke must have been referring to these apocryphal gospels when he said many accounts had already been written is nothing more than an argument from ignorance.

Is it possible that one of these lost gospels could have pre-dated Luke? Sure, lots of things are possible. Is it also possible that one of these gospels is also the Q document? Yes, again, lots of things are possible. This is why arguments from ignorance are fallacious. They cannot establish what is probable, and that's the only claim that matters in history.

Declaring them to all have been uniformly written post Luke with a wave of your hand is a considerable, well, leap of faith on your part smacking of preconception and dogmatism. As you yourself pointed out in Post 261:

Indeed, I did point that out in Post 261. And, if you go back and re-read my posts carefully, you'll see that I've been careful to qualify each of my statements here, saying that "most" (not all) of the texts show signs of dependence on the canonical gospels, and that "with rare exceptions" (not all) they post-date Luke. So your characterization of my position here as indicating "all" have been "uniformly" written post Luke is simply mistaken.

I don't see any such qualifications in your arguments, however. From the beginning you've simply declared that what Luke is referring to here is "the Apochyrpha," apparently in whole. I've given you the benefit of the doubt here in assuming you mean only certain texts among the (Christian) Apochrypha, but which ones and (even more importantly) why, you've not stated.

I do notice that you have a distinct willingness to dismiss physically existing evidence (the Apocrypha) which serves to discredit your chosen conclusion, but a noticeably strong willingness to fully embrace "evidence" which exists only as a hypothetical. Would it be less than fair on my part to consider this to be a distinct bias on your part, rather then a strict discipline of only wishing to arrive at the truth?

And now we get to the charge of bias. Again, I am not "dismissing" the Apocrypha. Where we have evidence that an apocryphal text might pre-date Luke, such as Thomas, I've been willing to (at least tentatively) accept that claim (although scholars who propose this generally argue that only parts of Thomas go back to the mid-first century, not the whole text, and many scholars think Thomas is a thoroughly second-century work.)

Likewise, where scholars have pointed out evidence that a non-canonical gospel post-dates Luke (i.e., most of them), I share that same conclusion. And, in so far as most scholars have concluded that the evidence in Matthew and Luke indicates they independently used a common source in writing their gospels, I agree as well.

That's a rather consistent, reasonable, and evidence-based position to hold, if I do say so myself. Yet, for some reason you are simply unwilling to accept that at face value, and instead insist that this position can only come from bias and religious convictions. Thus:

I think calling Q a "thoroughly established historical fact" is problematic. That statement is simply too confident for my taste.

The two document hypothesis is certainly accepted by the majority of modern biblical scholars today, and I personally think it accounts for the data better than any other competing hypothesis. But Q remains a hypothetical document.

I agree entirely. It is not historical in any sense of the word. It was a hypothetical created to serve a purely doctrinaire purpose. The question of the existence of the "Q" is a purely religious question, because it is and always was a purely religious device to achieve a purely religious end.

Yes, we know. You've made this claim repeatedly in this thread. What you have yet to do, however, is provide any evidence to support these assertions. I'll ask you for a second time now: Have you actually read the scholarly literature on Q? Can you tell us, then, which authors and works establish your claim that this is a "purely religious device to achieve a purely religious end"? If you are unwilling or unable to cite specific works to establish this claim, the rest of us have no reason to accept these assertions as anything other than empty rhetoric.

We can't deal in absolutes when evaluating the past, especially the ancient past where our sources are so scarce. All historical judgments are a matter of what most likely or probably happened. And, to that end, I think Q most likely existed.

And this goes straight to your personal religious bias, doesn't it! And where personal religious bias is concerned, factual history is relegated to little or no importance. Preconceived bias is not the province of a true historian.

That's funny, I don't recall discussing with you what, if any, personal religious commitments I hold. So why are you so convinced that I have such biases? Everyone has biases, of course, religious or otherwise -- even the 'true' historian -- so this would establish nothing, even if it were true.

But this is the problem with your argument in a nutshell. You are imagining ulterior motives without any evidence to support such claims. It's presumptuous on your part, and ultimately a bad argument. It's high time you put it to rest.

[historia]

To the second point:

Until or unless [the Q document] can be established through physical evidence to have actually existed, it really has nothing whatsoever to do with historical fact.

This is simply unfounded. Let's look at a different example to illustrate why.

I'm sure you're familiar (at least at a Wikipedia-level) with the works of Josephus, specifically his Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews. Although Josephus was an eyewitness to some of the events he described (particularly in War), we know that he simply could not have been an eye-witness to every person and event he describes in these works, if for no other reason than many of them pre-date his birth. Likewise, it would be impossible to imagine that he personally interviewed eyewitnesses for these events as well, as they would likewise be dead.

So where did Josephus get this information? Like many ancient authors, he doesn't explicitly cite his sources, he just relays the history matter-of-factly. I think you would have to agree that the only logical conclusion is that he got this information from written sources. And yet, we don't have copies of these sources. They are not cited or quoted by other ancient historians, as Josephus is often (although not always) the sole source of information we have on large numbers of the people and events he describes.

And so we are left -- gasp! -- to posit hypothetical sources. In fact, scholars of Josephus propose several hypothetical sources behind his works. Does that mean this has "nothing whatsoever to do with historical fact," simply because we no longer have physical copies of these earlier sources? Is all this being driven by "religious bias" or some "propensity" for hypothetical sources?

Of course not. Historians of the ancient world often propose (no longer extant) sources behind the existing works that survived for no other reason than that the evidence and logic require it. To be fair, then, we must give the two source hypothesis and Q the same benefit of the doubt, and judge it by it's strengths and weaknesses (and specifically in relation to competing theories), without dismissing it out-of-hand as you have done throughout this thread.

Are you willing to do that?

[historia]

These remaining comments are becoming increasingly less relevant to the main points here, but in so far as they remain objections to the probability of Q they are worth dispelling:

And then a complete copy of gospel Thomas was found in 1945. Your reference to it as a "Coptic text" is a not so subtle inference that it may have been altered to suit the beliefs of the copiers. But that very claim could well be leveled at ALL of the books of the canonical NT as well could it not?

Apparently that was such a subtle inference that even I missed it. The fact that the Gospel of Thomas was translated into Coptic would not indicate that it has been "altered to suit the beliefs of the copiers." I'm not sure why you would assume I intended that.

Lots of early Christian texts "fell into obscurity." This clearly happened to several of Paul's letters, for example, as he mentions them in his extant letters. Why did Christians "allow" a letter from so great an apostle to "fall into obscurity"? We'll never know.

Many early Christian texts didn't simply "fall into obscurity," They were deemed heretical by the fledgling Catholic church and destroyed.

Some of these texts were deemed heretical, to be sure. But many were not. And so the point remains: many (proto-) orthodox texts, including several letters of Paul, fell into obscurity. There is no reason Q could not as well.

It also nearly happened to Mark. Once Luke and (particularly) Matthew incorporated most of Mark's gospel into their own, Christians stopped copying Mark as frequently, as evidenced by the relative lack of copies in the early manuscript tradition. It could have easily been lost to time.

This is largely the result of Marcion, who supported only the Gospel of Luke as authoritative. Marcionism was so widely popular in the second century that Marcionism nearly became mainstream Christianity by default. The Catholic church eventually declared Marcion and Marcionism a heresy, and would spend a good deal of effort viciously stamping it out.

If that were true, then we would expect that Matthew and John would also be underrepresented in the early manuscript tradition. And yet those two gospels are the best attested gospels among our earliest manuscripts, with two to three times as many papyri compared to Luke.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to historia]

From Post #243
And so Christian theologians came up with a solution; a hypothetical document, or perhaps several documents, which were written down very early. Some, perhaps, according to the hypothesis, written while Jesus was still alive. The fact that there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE to support this hypothesis is considered less important to theologians, then the useful assumption that they COULD have existed, and they they would therefore have represented early source material for the Gospels which were written decades later. All very neat and tidy. And a clear example of pure wish fulfillment at work.

From Post #250
Surely this is an exaggeration.

NO! No exaggeration at all. As I have thoroughly established the existence of the "Q" document is completely hypothetical. No such document exists today, no such document has ever been KNOWN to exist, and no such document can be shown to have ever existed historically. It's existence was imagined out of thin air around about 1900 to satisfy an entirely doctrinaire religious dispute within the Christian system of belief. Korah has been promoting a theory of his that the Gospels contain at least seven examples of direct eyewitness accounts of Jesus. Korah attempted to use the existence of the Quelle document to justify his claims, as if the existence of the Quelle was a matter of well known and universally accepted historical fact. AND NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. What Korah was attempting to do was to use a hypothetical document in an effort to establish proof of something that is also entirely theoretical. And this IS how Christianity works. This is how Christianity HAS ALWAYS WORKED! Assumptions built on elaborately constructed assumptions, which are in turn built on even more elaborately constructed assumptions. The problem with this vast latticework construction of assumption is that none of it is fixed to any actual foundation in fact or evidence. It's all smoke and mirrors and make believe. At the end of the day it's still nothing more then an elaborate facade of assumptions and unfounded assertions designed, ultimately, to establish that a corpse came back to life and flew away. And yet HERE ARE THE UNDENIABLE FACTS: ABSOLUTELY NO ONE RECORDED ANY SUCH ASTOUNDING EVENT AT THE TIME IT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE OCCURRED. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the most significant event in human history, according to Christians, provoked not the slightest ripple of comment from anyone at the time it was supposed to have occurred. It would be a quarter of a century, circa 55, before Paul would first mention the story of the resurrected Jesus in 1 Corinthians. And even Paul was not a personal witness to what he claims occurred. Is it reasonable to expect that someone, at least, would have mentioned an actual resurrected dead man at the time it was supposed to have occurred? What of the hordes of dead people that came up out of their graves and wandered the streets of Jerusalem as a result of Jesus "giving up the ghost" on the cross, according to Matthew 27:52-53? One would certainly think that this would have provoked some notice. The first chapter of Acts tells us exactly how the story of the risen Jesus began to be spread. Six weeks after the execution of Jesus, his followers returned to Jerusalem and began to spread the story that he had been resurrected from the dead. It was true, they declared, because they had seen him. And where was the resurrected dead man NOW? He had subsequently flown off, up into the clouds. It was true they declared because they had seen it happen. This unbelievable story didn't even play all that well 2,000 years ago, at least not initially. The story was almost universally dismissed as a hoax by the very people in the best position to have known what actually occurred. The Jewish population of Jerusalem! The Jews believe " until this day," that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the followers of Jesus. And now, after two thousand years of empty claims concerning the impending return of a man who lived and died two thousand years ago, at what point should it not reasonably become clear to a 21st century audience that ancient make believe piled on top of an evermore elaborately constructed framework of ancient make believe and tall tales, is still nothing but a huge pile of ancient make believe and tall tales?

If you choose to believe that the corpse of Jesus came back from the dead and subsequently flew away, that is your right. But you cannot use your unsubstantiated belief as proof that your belief is valid. The same is true for the Quelle document. The existence of such a document is purely hypothetical; it was imagined into existence and then declared to be a necessary truth for the purpose of satisfying Christian doctrine. You can offer up the Quelle as theory, but unless you can offer up an example of the Quelle itself, you CAN NOT offer it up as established fact. And NO, I'm not exaggerating.