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?

[Zzyzx]

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Thanks for the information,

It might be prudent to seriously consider the content of said information

but I remind you that you have not dealt with Posts #308 and 316, excerpts from my scholarly article.

Scholarly article? Surely you jest. An article may be deemed scholarly by scholars " not by the author. Citing one's own work as proof of their argument is amateurish rather than scholarly.

Does Ignosticism forbid dealing with any substance not fully defined into your system?

The Ignostic position, as I have explained many times to those ignorant thereof, is "We cannot intelligently discuss proposed supernatural entities until they have been defined, identified and described" [and shown to be something more than product of imagination].

I am not bound by the Ignostic position (as "tending toward Ignosticism" would indicate to an astute person) so if you ever come up with substance (beyond personal opinion and conjecture) I am willing to evaluate its merits.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 336 by Zzyzx]
If you think the Consensus shields you from having to discuss the evidence for eyewitnesses, you surely can't say it precludes discussion of the Synoptic Problem.

One would think Dennis Ninehams dictates from the 1950s would not still preclude considering whether there might be eyewitnesses to Jesus after all, but maybe Richard Bauckhams 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses was too mild-mannered and unfocused to take effect. (It was soundly critiqued by David Catchpole in 2008.) In any case it did not open doors to my more radical position that seven eyewitnesses actually themselves wrote about Jesus. Let me turn instead to an opposite case, one in which there is no agreement and perhaps the conviction among many that the matter cannot be solved. Im talking about the Synoptic Problem, certainly a matter related to the OP of whether we can determine whether the Scriptures are true. Specifically, is Luke a gospel derived from one or both of the other two?

The Synoptic Problem may require a new solution much like I have been developing for the past year. However, the explanation can start with the prevailing view, the Two-Source Hypothesis. In it the Gospel of Mark plus Q are thought of as the original texts. The former is best amended to the Triple Tradition (excluding parts of Mark like most of chapters 6 to 8 that are not in Luke) and the Double Tradition (whatever is not in Mark that is in both the other Synoptics). Conservative scholarship would attribute these to origination from the apostles Peter and Matthew. However, it is now known that GMark includes much that is best understood as coming from Q (for those who believe in a Q). The upshot is that the two sources can be attributed to the same men, but the more verbally exact comparable pericopes can traced to Peter probably at 44 AD (see Acts 12:12) adding Q2 and Petrine portions of GMark on to the earlier Aramaic portions (Q1 and Twelve-Source) that had already been compiled by Matthew (who did not write any of the later portions of GMatthew). In total these come back to the Triple Tradition and the Double Tradition, but with a different composition and origin. Our extant GMark was not known to or used towards GLuke.

Whether as two different documents or as one combined mixed Aramaic and Greek text, this Proto-Gospel was used as the basis for a translation into Greek that led to GLuke in a Proto-Luke form. This happened before the creation of texts leading to the other two Synoptics that included the extra material shared by GMatthew and GMark. The major addition was the L material unique to GLuke, but some small portions were inserted back into the Proto-Gospel (or simply copied more exactly in the first place) where we see the longest stretches of exactness between GMatthew and GLuke: see especially Luke 3:7-9, 16-17; and 7:22-23, all about John the Baptist. (Apparently whatever method used was burdensome and subsequent exactness is less close.) To this point the term the gospel had never been used, which tells us that GLuke is the best candidate for the earliest gospel.
Meanwhile the dual-language Proto-Gospel text(s) had the Aramaic portion independently translated into Greek and the M material was added to from Proto-Matthew. The Pauline term the gospel now starts to appear.

There is too much difference between GMatthew and GMark for Proto-Matthew to have gone for use by one and then copied by the other. Yet there is so much similarity that they must share this intermediate phase (Proto-Matthew) that each subsequently used. This Proto-Matthew was abridged towards GMark and rearranged towards GMatthew.

Along the way the various source texts were still available for use or for copying into other variant gospels. Apparently an (in-progress?) Proto-Matthew got back to where L could be added. We can know this occurred because we have many citations from lost gospels that seem most often like this L material. A case in point is the Gospel of Marcion that seemed so much like Luke that opponents called it a mutilated Luke. It turns out that this is not correct. Marcion included much that is in the other three gospels, on the one hand, and his critics charged him with omitting verses that were never in Luke at all, but in the other three gospels. It is thus impossible (as radicals say) that Marcion wrote a pre-cursor text to GLuke. Yet the text he used was early, preceding the addition of the Infancy Narrative. Marcions gospel was parallel to GLuke, neither before it nor after it. Likewise it was parallel to the other gospels mentioned in the 2nd Century, the Memoirs of the Apostles and the Gospel of the Hebrews. We cannot know whether citations are to our gospels or to collections preceding or subsequent to them, but there is so much evidence of non-extant early texts that we can dismiss the other contenders for solutions to the Synoptic Problem, both the Griesbach Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goulder (Goodacre) Hypothesis. Occams Razor just does not apply to such complicated histories of early development and citations. Neither one allows for the evidence (no the gospel) that Luke was first.
(Reflections on two other scholars have contributed to my greater aggressiveness here: Steve Mason and Stephan Huller.)

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 337:

...
However, the explanation can start with the prevailing view, the Two-Source Hypothesis. In it the Gospel of Mark plus Q are thought of as the original texts.

Until this Q source is found, any conclusions based on it should remain firmly in the realm of the hypothetical. Such a "prevailing view" then is merely an argumentum ad populum by wayum of hypotheticalationums.

All I hafta do now is declare a hypothetical Joey Document that says "Naw, y'all got it all wrong", and I've hypothetically refuted any hypothesis one may present.

Aint it funny how "That source ain't convincing" can be "overcome" by, "Naw, I got me another'n, but I can't show it to ya".

[Korah]

[Replying to post 338 by JoeyKnothead]
No, I denied that there ever was a Q that was simply the conventional overlap between Matthew and Luke. The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas in 1946 made that obsolete, and just recently Dennis R. MacDonald has conclusively shown that GMark included Q text, including some narrative. For my purposes I expand Q to include almost everything in GMark's overlap with GLuke, then divide that between the originally Aramaic portion and the originally Greek portion, from Matthew and Peter respectively, the latter identified by verses with verbal exactitudes. This includes all the Triple Tradition and Double Tradition as the Greek Proto-Gospel first used towards GLuke (first as Proto-Luke).

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 339:

My italicals...

No, I denied that there ever was a Q that was simply the conventional overlap between Matthew and Luke. The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas in 1946 made that obsolete, and just recently Dennis R. MacDonald has conclusively shown that GMark included Q text, including some narrative. For my purposes I expand Q to include almost everything in GMark's overlap with GLuke, then divide that...

Any number multiplied by zero is zero. I can't help it, that number's a good boy, he means well, he just couldn't help it.

You're still seeking to introduce an unevidenced, hypothetical document into your argument.

As I said before, all I need now to dismiss your argument is to declare the Joey Document says "Nah-ah".


Unless, of course, you can submit this Q text for analysis.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 340 by JoeyKnothead]
Don't expect me to be the defender of Q. It never existed as an independent document. Mark is not independent of it. GMark was never seen by the other gospel writers. My own Evolving Proto-Gospel Hypotheses holds that an Aramaic Q1 and Twelve-Source (both probably by the apostle Matthew) and a Greek Q2 and Greek parts of GMark (both probably by Peter and Mark) were a Proto-Gospel (in 19th Century terms an Ur-Marcus) used in making the three Synoptic gospels.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 341:

Don't expect me to be the defender of Q.

Then quit trying to refer to it. (said as a non-mod, in the "it's kinda goofy to refer to a document you won't defend" way)

My own Evolving Proto-Gospel Hypotheses holds that an Aramaic Q1 and Twelve-Source (both probably by the apostle Matthew) and a Greek Q2 and Greek parts of GMark (both probably by Peter and Mark) were a Proto-Gospel (in 19th Century terms an Ur-Marcus) used in making the three Synoptic gospels.

Please provide the Aramaic Q1, the Greek Q2, and other such writings you consider to be part of these various gospels for analysis.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 342 by JoeyKnothead]
The earlier, Aramaic Q1 can be identified as the less verbally exact verses Luke 4:1-12, 6:20-23, 27-35, 39-40, 43-49, 10: 4-11, 16; 11:33-35, 39-44, 46-52; 12:8-12, 22-24, 33-34, 49-59; 13:18-21, 24-30; 14:16-24, 26-27, 34-35; 15:4-10; 16:16-18; 17:3-6, 23-25, 28-37; and 22:28-30. References as by Papias to the Logia by Matthew may be to this (though I would add on the Twelve Source to match to the meaning of the word "Logia").

In Greek in collaboration with Mark, Q2, presumably from Peter (who is named at Luke 12:41): Lk. 3:7-9, 16-17; 6:36-38, 41-42; 7:18-23, 9:57-62; 10:2, 12-15, 19-26, 29-32; 11:1-4, 23-26; 12:2-7, 26-31, 39-46; 13:34-35; 16:13. This may have been written in 44 AD when Mark and Peter were together (Acts 12:12).
(above from my thread Gospel Eyewitnesses at)
http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/
Posts 4 & 5

[Zzyzx]

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[Replying to post 343 by Korah]

Joey asked specifically for the documents to be provided for analysis: "Please provide the Aramaic Q1, the Greek Q2, and other such writings you consider to be part of these various gospels for analysis."

He did NOT ask for speculation about non-existent or non-available documents that cannot be shown to be anything other than imaginary or hypothetical.

A truthful response to his request would include acknowledgment that the documents do not exist and that they are suggested or assumed by some scholars and theologians " and not accepted by other scholars and theologians.

Your personal speculation is of absolutely no merit in debate.

I ask directly: Do the Q documents exist or do they not?

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 343:

The earlier, Aramaic Q1 can be identified as the less verbally exact verses Luke...

..,

In Greek in collaboration with Mark, Q2, presumably from Peter...

We still ain't no closer to the creek than when we stepped off the porch.

I'm set to presume you have no means of confirming the validity of your argument, beyond how proud ya are to make it. I respect that one can infer things, however, I contend that without the referenced Q material, we're still stuck with speculation.

Referring to one's own swearing up and down in support of one's own swearing up and down is like me declaring I'm real smart, 'cause I just there said it. It's a circular sort of argument.

C'mon man, present these Q documents for analysis.

Heck, you got a comic book laying around? Present that. Just please, present something we can compare to, beyond your own declarations.