Posted on 11/07/2015 9:04:37 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
I was mistaken on that I believe it was Miller that tried to argue the evolution of blood clotting- got my ‘anti-God evolutionists’ m ixed up
There are scholars who date the Gospels well before 70 A.D., so your assertion that the Gospels were written at 90 A.D. or after is disputable.
You have been misinformed. We have none of the original manuscripts, but we have remnants of copies of Matthew found in Egypt that date to 80 AD at the latest, and some claim that there are some that date to the 50's AD. Also, John specifically claimed he was writing as an eyewitness, John 21:24-25.
Higher Criticism was developed by liberal "scholars", many of whom deny miracles, prophecy and the resurrection from the outset, and their "scholarship" is a product of those premises.
He can claim that if he likes, but that doesn't make it true.
The earliest writings are the Epistles, many of which are pseudepigraphic. The Gospels come from around 90 AD.
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/ITB/html/earliestScriptures.htm
http://www.bible.ca/ef/topical-the-earliest-new-testament-manuscripts.htm
They are NOT comtemporaneous manuscripts, thus not eyewitness reports. They have been subject to telling and retelling before being written down, with the propensity for distortion that that entails.
Furthermore, since there are literally thousands of copies, all handwritten, there are numerous transcription errors over the years, as well as copies with material either added or deleted. While we may never be able to reproduce the original text, comparison and contrast will get us just about as close as we can get.
It’s amazing how much the version we have has been altered even from the earliest versions we have, which are not originals and therefore probably contained alterations themselves.
Aside from the smug superiority and massive egos of hard core athiests I don’t understand their attacks on Christianity.
Why would they care if ‘we’ are wrong? If we die and ‘we’ are wrong, then we’re dead. If ‘they’ are wrong we face God and hopefully, get in to heaven. What is to lose and why would they care?
And you can declare him a liar, but that does not make him one.
Do we have anything other than his declaration to show that he was the disciple John and an eyewitness?
If you were writing AS John, you would make this claim. it would strengthen your claim to be him.
at best! there would only be 4 original manuscripts, so it is unlikely we will ever find those. A copy of the original would still be an eyewitness account.
it is remarkable how accurate our current Greek manuscripts are compared to those from antiquity.. We have over 5300 Greek manuscripts of the NT, more than any other ancient text, the closest being Homer's Illiad, of which we have less than 700, with earliest dating to 500 AD.
Since you have given this a great deal of thought, why would you deny Matthew an John were written by anyone else, and why would they lie about being eyewitnesses? Do you also deny the bodily resurrection of Christ?
Not unless the authors were actually eyewitnesses. There is no evidence to suggest that they were.
I’ve read a fair amount of scholarly material on this.
The current manuscripts are actually at variance with the early ones in a number of places.
Furthermore, while the Bible was written in Greek, Jesus spoke Aramaic. (This leads me to suspect that the eyewitnesses would also be Aramaic speakers.) In Aramaic, many key words have several meanings, the choice of which could alter the meaning of what’s being said. it seems that this requires an editorial choice when translating what Jesus said, as you have to pick one meaning over another.
And if you were John, you would say it as well! What tests are you applying to determine John was not written by an eyewitness, who was a disciple?
So have I. Have you seen a list of these errors, and how they change the fundamentals of the Gospel, that the sinless Jesus died for our sins, was buried 3 days, and was bodily resurrected?
No doubt, but not necessarily exclusively. He may well have been trilingual, but then, as God in the flesh, he could speak any language.
But then, if you doubt the authorship of the books, then you must doubt their veracity, and the basics of Christ's claims about himself.
I think that is called Pascal’s Wager, named for the same thought that a French (?) mathematician came up with in the 1600s.
So congratulations, you’re thinking like a famous guy. :)
I tend to think that because of the Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, that those who believe in earlier dates for most (all?) of the NT are correct.
Otherwise, the gospel writers would make a VERY big deal out of Jesus’ prediction of Jerusalem’s fall coming true.
Makes sense to me, anyway.
Further, we have some manuscripts which date to the 50's which cannot be attributed but which recount some of the events described in the gospels.
The criticisms about the dating also does not sound as critical when you observe that the manuscripts recount events that occurred in the last half of the third decade (25-30 AD).
>> Furthermore, while the Bible was written in Greek, Jesus spoke Aramaic. (This leads me to suspect that the eyewitnesses would also be Aramaic speakers.)
I think you mean The New Testament was written in Greek.
There’s a great reason for that. It’s the same reason that Gentiles were referred to as Greeks, even when they were not Greek at all.
If you’re as scholarly as you claim, I shouldn’t have to tell you why, especially since I’m an ignorant old man who doesn’t even have a Bachelor’s Degree.
I concur. Odd that one of the reasons the “scholars” argue for a late date is because of the temples destruction, which they reason was looking backward at a past event, but deceptively portrayed as a prophecy of Jesus. Fits with their patent denial of the possibility of miracles, prophecy, and most importantly, the resurrection.
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