Were there no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events?

Argue for and against Christianity

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Goose
Guru
Posts: 1707
Joined: Wed Oct 02, 2013 6:49 pm
Location: The Great White North
Has thanked: 79 times
Been thanked: 68 times

Were there no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events?

Post #1

Post by Goose »

Miles wrote: Fri Oct 14, 2022 8:58 pmAnd the gospels aren't even that. There were no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospels events. Written works didn't arrive until quite a bit after the events described.

"The New Testament Gospels] were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus’ death, … not by people who were eyewitnesses, but by people living later. … Where did these people get their information from? … After the days of Jesus, people started telling stories about him in order to convert others to the faith. … When … Christians recognized the need for apostolic authorities, they attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of apostles (Mark, the secretary of Peter; and Luke the traveling companion of Paul). … Because our surviving Greek manuscripts provide such a wide variety of (different) titles for the Gospels, textual scholars have long realized that their familiar names (e.g., “The Gospel According to Matthew”) do not go back to a single “original” title, but were added later by scribes."*

* Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of a New Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 248-249; B. Ehrman, Lost Christianities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 235; B. Ehrman and W. Craig, “Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?: A Debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman” (March 28, 2006).
Questions for debate:

Is the claim by Miles, that there were no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events, true?

Why is it true?
Last edited by Goose on Mon Oct 17, 2022 6:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Things atheists say:

"Is it the case [that torturing and killing babies for fun is immoral]? Prove it." - Bust Nak

"For the record...I think the Gospels are intentional fiction and Jesus wasn't a real guy." – Difflugia

"Julius Caesar and Jesus both didn't exist." - brunumb

"...most atheists have no arguments or evidence to disprove God." – unknown soldier (a.k.a. the banned member Jagella)

TRANSPONDER
Savant
Posts: 7960
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:05 am
Has thanked: 932 times
Been thanked: 3487 times

Re: Were there no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events?

Post #131

Post by TRANSPONDER »

We_Are_VENOM wrote: Sat Nov 26, 2022 5:38 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Thu Nov 24, 2022 10:35 pm Ok you want to make an issue of it, and aside that smearing and misrepresenting doesn';t have to be Personal but is just as bad when directed at arguments
Then that says a lot about the arguments, doesn't it?
, you fall into your own trap by referencing Paul's vision. Now I am never going to claim that Paul was not telling the truth that he thought he had seen or experienced Jesus
Not so fast. Paul never claimed that he thought he had seen or experienced Jesus. Paul claimed that he actually SEEN Jesus.

You are claiming that he thought it, not him.
, but that does not mean that it was true.
Yeah but it doesn't mean that it isn't true, either.
It could be all his imaginatuon
Maybe you rejecting the idea that Paul actually saw the risen Jesus; maybe that is all in your imagination, and Paul actually saw the risen Jesus.

See what happens when we play those kind of games?
, just as I suspect that the sightings of the resurrected Jesus was all their own imaginations, especially the 500 all at once.
Why would Paul, who was an admitted skeptic and persecutor of Christians, suddenly imagine that Jesus had resurrected? Same question for James?

Makes no sense.

Plus, even if it all was in their imaginations (which I don't for one second believe), that wouldn't explain the empty tomb, does it?

Of course, you can deny the validity of the empty tomb narrative, but if you do that, you may as well deny the entire account as a whole.

Which you probably have no problem doing..but hey, do what you gotta do. :approve:
No, on the evidence it is not unreasonable that Hannibal took war elephants into battle.
Well, a super-skeptic of Hannibal may find it unreasonable, just as a super-skeptic of Christianity finds certain elements of Christianity unreasonable.

What is/isn't reasonable is subjective, unless there are laws of logic being violated.

Because guess what, Christians don't find the resurrection to be unreasonable.
But if the records said that the God Moloch of Carthage led the charge and defeated the Romans, I doubt you'd beleive that.
True, but I believe that the God of the Bible will lead the charge and defeat Satan.

I doubt you'd believe that.
Nor would I. That's what I mean by evaluating old records and in fact tending to be skeptical of supernatural claims.
Funny, because I find the idea of abiogenesis and evolution to be said naturalistic claims that I do not believe in and are skeptical of.
Now it's interesting that A4G and I loked at ctitical thinking and I posted a vid on it where it specifically said that black and white thinking is a typical sympton of dogmatic and ilogical thinking.
John 3:16 is more black and white than a zebra.

I can care less what skeptics think about Biblical matters.
"Well, Biblically speaking, after being presented with the Gospel, either you accept Christ (believe) or you don't (disbelieve).....John 3:16, actually.

It is black/white...no gray area.
" you posted. I have always evaluated John on its' merits. At one time I thought it was the most eyewitness of the gospels, and it stil might be, but I now doubt it, on evidence. That being the raising of Lazarus not appearing in any of the gospels and it being inexplicable that they don't even hint at it - unless they never heard of it.
Similar = plagiarism.

Differences = contradictions.

Never fails.
That heavily implies that John made it up.
No. It heavily implies that John mentioned an event that the others did not.
That takes down a lot of other circumstantially descriptive stuff and I now think that he was a better scriptwriter than I had thought, and of course it explains a great many puzzles, including why his palsied man is in Jerusalem, not Galilee, and why he has Jesus setting off alone to Jerusalem for tabernacles, when the synoptics have him leaving with the disciples at Passover.

This is not 'believe or not' but evaluation, which is what we do with any other book and we should do so with the Bible, too.

And evolution. If you reject it, it is rejecting evidence on Faith. Black and white,flawed, faithbased thinking. I would love to see your arguments based on assessing the evidence to conclude that they did Not support evolution.
Ok. The Bible/Gospels/Christianity just ain't for you. It is for the folks who seek eternal life through Jesus Christ...and not everyone wants that.

So hey.
I was wondering whether I should answer this point by point, but why should I when they are so poor? They are not arguments, but denial and backchat.

Paul claimed that Jesus had appeared to him (so the translation goes). That's a bit different from seeing Jesus, as it were in the flesh. And that this appearance was after all the others, including 500 together, that can't be the resurrection night. On the evidence a lack of backup for the gospel appearances (which isn't in Mark) and a reason why visions is a feasible alternative to a solid -body resurrection.

So, denial aside (and I can see me saying that a few more times) there is NO valid reason to think the gospel - version resurrection happened; i.e, you cannot sell it to doubters as even having any good evidential support. Nor your playing games instead of making arguments. I won't waste time on that.

But I will mention your strawman smearing 'deny the whole'. I already said not a discussion ago that the empty tomb is at least original story agreed by all four and so is the crucifixion. I don't reject all as you accuse me of doing. I evaluate on evidence; you accept what you like on Faith, and reject anything you don't like (e.g evolution) on faith and damn' the evidence. You make that very clear.

I can ignore your avoidance of the point I made about Hannibal - which YOU brought up, and your denial of the hard evidence for evolution. Others will know what to make of that, and denial and evasions gets you nowhere.

But I will mention your misrepresentation about the evaluation of Bibletext. Noting word for word text in the synoptics does imply a common use of text (plagiarism, if you like) and it is denialist at least not to concede that it is a valid point. It is totally denialist to pretend that contradictions are mere differences that can be ignored. Yes, The synoptics not having a brief mention of the raising of Lazarus is - to any reasonable person - an unaccountable contradiction, which you in fact make clear by just saying: 'They don't have it' as though that explained it. It doesn't.

And your final comment is only worthy of comment as the evidence - rejecting walk - away parting shot of the doorstep evangelist. You have made no arguments, just excuses, exhibited your faithbased denial, not to mention strawmanning my arguments, and you do my case more good than yours.

I do hope you won't be claiming later on that you 'answered and explained everything' later on; you have done neither.

And finally, as always, this is not Personal. It is directed at the argument methods - which Faith has done to you and is probably not your true nature.

User avatar
We_Are_VENOM
Banned
Banned
Posts: 1632
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2020 2:33 am
Has thanked: 76 times
Been thanked: 58 times

Re: Were there no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events?

Post #132

Post by We_Are_VENOM »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Sat Nov 26, 2022 7:45 am I was wondering whether I should answer this point by point, but why should I when they are so poor? They are not arguments, but denial and backchat.
:lol:
Paul claimed that Jesus had appeared to him (so the translation goes). That's a bit different from seeing Jesus, as it were in the flesh.
Either way...an appearance is an appearance.
And that this appearance was after all the others, including 500 together, that can't be the resurrection night.
Who said it was?
On the evidence a lack of backup for the gospel appearances (which isn't in Mark)
"He has risen, and you will see him at X place" implies "The reason you don't see his deceased body here is because it was raised, and you will see this raised body at X place".

Common sense.

And all other Gospels attest to the resurrection and post-mortem appearances.
and a reason why visions is a feasible alternative to a solid -body resurrection.
If they saw visions, Jesus' body would still have been in the tomb, wouldn't it.

Again, visions do not account for the empty tomb so therefore it is not a feasible alternative.
So, denial aside (and I can see me saying that a few more times) there is NO valid reason to think the gospel - version resurrection happened; i.e, you cannot sell it to doubters as even having any good evidential support. Nor your playing games instead of making arguments. I won't waste time on that.
Doubters don't want to believe because they wish not to believe.
But I will mention your strawman smearing 'deny the whole'. I already said not a discussion ago that the empty tomb is at least original story agreed by all four and so is the crucifixion. I don't reject all as you accuse me of doing. I evaluate on evidence; you accept what you like on Faith, and reject anything you don't like (e.g evolution) on faith and damn' the evidence. You make that very clear.
I still have no explanation as to how you explain alleged visions in light of the empty tomb...you know, the empty tomb that you admit to being historical.
I can ignore your avoidance of the point I made about Hannibal - which YOU brought up, and your denial of the hard evidence for evolution. Others will know what to make of that, and denial and evasions gets you nowhere.
You can ignore it, just know that it will rear its ugly head as much as I see fit.
But I will mention your misrepresentation about the evaluation of Bibletext. Noting word for word text in the synoptics does imply a common use of text (plagiarism, if you like) and it is denialist at least not to concede that it is a valid point. It is totally denialist to pretend that contradictions are mere differences that can be ignored. Yes, The synoptics not having a brief mention of the raising of Lazarus is - to any reasonable person - an unaccountable contradiction, which you in fact make clear by just saying: 'They don't have it' as though that explained it. It doesn't.
Hmmm. Syllogism test...

1. Gospel A, B, and C doesn't record X event.

2. Gospel D records X event.

3. Gospel D records X event, while Gospels A, B,C doesn't record X event.

4. Therefore, X event did not occur.

Non sequitur.

Test; failed.

What we have here is your typical argument from silence. That is the line of fallacious reasoning that you continue you use from one thread to the other, and don't seem to understand just how fallacious it actually is.

What a pity.
And your final comment is only worthy of comment as the evidence - rejecting walk - away parting shot of the doorstep evangelist. You have made no arguments, just excuses, exhibited your faithbased denial, not to mention strawmanning my arguments, and you do my case more good than yours.

I do hope you won't be claiming later on that you 'answered and explained everything' later on; you have done neither.

And finally, as always, this is not Personal. It is directed at the argument methods - which Faith has done to you and is probably not your true nature.
You know, TRANSPONDER, I am just having fun with you now. You seem like a cool dude.

We (my family) should have invited you and your family over for Thanksgiving dinner and I could have intellectually owned you on this subject with a full belly.

But instead, I will entertain these silly attempts to discredit the Gospels until I tire.

Not quite there yet.
Venni Vetti Vecci!!

TRANSPONDER
Savant
Posts: 7960
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2021 8:05 am
Has thanked: 932 times
Been thanked: 3487 times

Re: Were there no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events?

Post #133

Post by TRANSPONDER »

We_Are_VENOM wrote: Sat Nov 26, 2022 10:29 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Sat Nov 26, 2022 7:45 am I was wondering whether I should answer this point by point, but why should I when they are so poor? They are not arguments, but denial and backchat.
:lol:
Paul claimed that Jesus had appeared to him (so the translation goes). That's a bit different from seeing Jesus, as it were in the flesh.
Either way...an appearance is an appearance.
And that this appearance was after all the others, including 500 together, that can't be the resurrection night.
Who said it was?
On the evidence a lack of backup for the gospel appearances (which isn't in Mark)
"He has risen, and you will see him at X place" implies "The reason you don't see his deceased body here is because it was raised, and you will see this raised body at X place".

Common sense.

And all other Gospels attest to the resurrection and post-mortem appearances.
and a reason why visions is a feasible alternative to a solid -body resurrection.
If they saw visions, Jesus' body would still have been in the tomb, wouldn't it.

Again, visions do not account for the empty tomb so therefore it is not a feasible alternative.
So, denial aside (and I can see me saying that a few more times) there is NO valid reason to think the gospel - version resurrection happened; i.e, you cannot sell it to doubters as even having any good evidential support. Nor your playing games instead of making arguments. I won't waste time on that.
Doubters don't want to believe because they wish not to believe.
But I will mention your strawman smearing 'deny the whole'. I already said not a discussion ago that the empty tomb is at least original story agreed by all four and so is the crucifixion. I don't reject all as you accuse me of doing. I evaluate on evidence; you accept what you like on Faith, and reject anything you don't like (e.g evolution) on faith and damn' the evidence. You make that very clear.
I still have no explanation as to how you explain alleged visions in light of the empty tomb...you know, the empty tomb that you admit to being historical.
I can ignore your avoidance of the point I made about Hannibal - which YOU brought up, and your denial of the hard evidence for evolution. Others will know what to make of that, and denial and evasions gets you nowhere.
You can ignore it, just know that it will rear its ugly head as much as I see fit.
But I will mention your misrepresentation about the evaluation of Bibletext. Noting word for word text in the synoptics does imply a common use of text (plagiarism, if you like) and it is denialist at least not to concede that it is a valid point. It is totally denialist to pretend that contradictions are mere differences that can be ignored. Yes, The synoptics not having a brief mention of the raising of Lazarus is - to any reasonable person - an unaccountable contradiction, which you in fact make clear by just saying: 'They don't have it' as though that explained it. It doesn't.
Hmmm. Syllogism test...

1. Gospel A, B, and C doesn't record X event.

2. Gospel D records X event.

3. Gospel D records X event, while Gospels A, B,C doesn't record X event.

4. Therefore, X event did not occur.

Non sequitur.

Test; failed.

What we have here is your typical argument from silence. That is the line of fallacious reasoning that you continue you use from one thread to the other, and don't seem to understand just how fallacious it actually is.

What a pity.
And your final comment is only worthy of comment as the evidence - rejecting walk - away parting shot of the doorstep evangelist. You have made no arguments, just excuses, exhibited your faithbased denial, not to mention strawmanning my arguments, and you do my case more good than yours.

I do hope you won't be claiming later on that you 'answered and explained everything' later on; you have done neither.

And finally, as always, this is not Personal. It is directed at the argument methods - which Faith has done to you and is probably not your true nature.
You know, TRANSPONDER, I am just having fun with you now. You seem like a cool dude.

We (my family) should have invited you and your family over for Thanksgiving dinner and I could have intellectually owned you on this subject with a full belly.

But instead, I will entertain these silly attempts to discredit the Gospels until I tire.

Not quite there yet.
You think it's fun to waste my time with nonsense? I suspected that we had reached apologetics of the Third Kind - when all arguments are beat, just wind the atheist up. I don't mind, it hurts you, not me.

Nevertheless you are still trying to score a few cheap points...let's see... 'an appearance is an appearance'. Merely an equivocation fallacy. An appearance in the head is not the same thing as an appearance in the flesh.

And I said - just to cover that point - that Paul's list of 'appearances' can't be used to validate (as it often is) the gospel resurrections. I don't need your permission to make the point.

I have already scotched the 'all the gospels attest to the resurrection' claim. Of course they do, that is why they were written.

Fail. It is the most circular of circular arguments.
" 3 Gospel D records X event, while Gospels A, B,C doesn't record X event.

. 4 Therefore, X event did not occur.

Non sequitur.

Test; failed.

What we have here is your typical argument from silence."

Sorry, your syllogism is wrong:

syllogism test

X is a claim

X therefore validates X

Therefore, X is proven.

what is valid is:

3. Gospel D records X Very Important event, while Gospels A, B, C don't record X Very important event.

Gospels A, Band C should have seen whatever Gospel D saw.

4. Therefore, Gospel D casts serious doubt on Gospels A<B,and C which are actually a single original source.

It follows, Test valid. Your argument isn't.
What we have here is your typical argument from silence.
We do, but I never know why theist apologists insist that argument from silence is invalid; it isn't. Not when it comes to important things and when the parameters are known. The disciples were all there when Lazarus was raised, there is no valid reason why they didn't see it and so valid reason why, if they saw it, they wouldn't write about it.

I'm sure you can construct a failed syllogism of your argument...hang on, you just did, didn't you?

If they saw visions, Jesus' body would still have been in the tomb, wouldn't it.

You wrote: "Again, visions do not account for the empty tomb so therefore it is not a feasible alternative."

Now, this is a valid point - I knew you could do it O:) Yes, in proposing a 'spiritual' resurrection, it means the body was still in the tomb. So the 'empty tomb' (I have debunked - or rather, John has - the angelic explanation) I am left with the empty tomb, agreed by all four (the only thing they do agree on - other than the claim they are writing the resurrection stories to prove it in the first place). No, I could make up stuff, as apologists do to get over problems, but I won't. I'll go with what there is, as I do.

Aside from Matthew recounting that the Jews said the disciples took the body away, we have the empty tomb and significantly the women going there. Well, the crucifixion account already has the women at the crucifixion so they didn't have to make them up. What they did have to make up was a couple of eyewitnesses. Someone who would have had a reason to go and look. In fact John gives the game away as he has no good reason why they went there at all (please don't embarrass yourself by saying 'John says they did, so they did'). Matthew (who isn't the sharpest knife in the box) says they just went to look at it, first thing, mind you when they had all Sabbath (it was well within the permitted walking distance) to do that.

Luke is a bit smarter, he has them preparing 'spices' all through Sabbath, when it wasn't permitted. And he hadn't read John (as some apologists claim) otherwise he'd know that Jesus was knee -deep in 'spices' already. Mind, Mark says the same, so it may be original. Though why Matthew would omit that I have no idea.

But just as we wonder whether that might actually be true, we find that they suddenly realise they can't get in. Now, I recall that I went though this before (empty tomb thread) but here it is again; It suddenly hitting them that the tomb was closed. But it's ok, it's open anyway;- smacks of plot construction. I recall that you tried to excuse this by appeal to them being distraught. If they were straught enough to prepare spices and plan to go to the tomb, they were undtraught enough to consider how to get in.

No, I reckon that the tomb, though on the face of it, the most consistently agreed by all four, is actually dubious and a made up bit of 'evidence' to turn a spiritual resurrection into a solid body one by having an empty tomb.

To which an angel explaining everything was placed there very handy, and if that wasn't good enough, let'shave a bunch of totally different appearances, all not fitting the ones Paul describes, which were the 'spiritual ones, that is, in their own heads.

What more do you have? Nothing much. You may continue with these arguments, or bow out or whatever you like, and you may tell yourself that you "Owned me". :D I would bet the price of a business class ticket to America for Thanksgiving that nobody else thinks so.

User avatar
oldbadger
Guru
Posts: 1805
Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2012 11:11 am
Has thanked: 310 times
Been thanked: 223 times

Re: Were there no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events?

Post #134

Post by oldbadger »

Goose wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 11:53 am Questions for debate:

Is the claim by Miles, that there were no eye-witnesses who wrote about gospel events, true?

Why is it true?
Not true.

But any reader with any basic detection skills can see that G-John is a gospel which has scattered (probably) genuine anecdotes in to a completely fabricated account. And sadly that seems to be the gospel that much of Christianity...... Luke and Matthew were not witnesses, they even had to copy from the G-Mark account, and some of their stuff is just total drivel, imo.

............ whereas G-Mark is probably the based upon the memoirs of Cephas who undoubtedly very unhappy about the way that Christianity was moving. And its author was probably witness to some scenes.

Post Reply