So we assume they were wrong then?
No we don't 'assume' anything, we review the evidence, and the reliability of the sources of that evidence, and we come to a conclusion.
Just to recap, we are talking about people who had known a blind beggar for years before his sight was restored, and other similar eyewitnesses of miracles.
No, we aren't, that's part of the analysis of the sources. We are dealing with CLAIMS of having known a blind beggar for years, with CLAIMS of eyewitness accounts, but assessment of the texts, and their changes through time, and the likely generation of the written documents makes it extremely unlikely these were written by the people to whom they are attributed.
Again, should we assume they were wrong because some of them (eg. Luke) hadn't met Jesus?
No, we should determine if we think that a single account purporting to be eye-witness testimony, written long after the fact, with a vested interest, is a reliable enough account to justify accepting that physics is optional for some people.
Is that not an assumption based on the AD 70 prophecy?
As I understand it, that's one piece of the evidence, but it's not all of it.
Which underlying concepts?
I don't know, I'm not a bronze-age Arab Jew.
The gospels were written for different cultures: some contain translations to assist the reader, for example; why would that be a problem?
Intrinsically, no, but it does give insight into the intended purpose of the document - this was a text by an expansive organisation with an aim to getting a memorable story into the minds of a disparate range of people. That, in itself, means that at best accurate history was only part of the remit.
You can put them to the test, and ask God to reveal himself.
Did that; he apparently put me on hold. Now I'm left with using my own intellect (and that of the collective of human academia) to make a rational judgment on the veracity of these claims: they are in defiance of everything we understand about how reality works; they are qualitatively similar to other, defunct, mythological claims (Greek pantheon, Roman pantheon, Sumerian, Aztec etc) and other, extant, spiritual and religious claims (Shintoism, Hinduism, paganism etc.) which they explicitly decry; they are almost certainly not written by the people they are attributed to; the people they were written by were almost certainly not eye-witnesses to the events, and it is unlikely they had access to eyewitness accounts at the time of writing.
On that understanding, I dismiss the Christian canon as unreliable on the same basis I dismiss the Hindu texts, and stories of the Walkabout - they're just not sufficiently reliable to justify the extreme nature of the claims.
O.
