Mark's use of Matthew and Luke

[Roses]

Logically you are just wrong.

According to your idea of logic.

[Nearly Sane]

According to your idea of logic.

  Your inability to think clearly is reminiscent of both Alan Burns and Vlad.

[Aruntraveller]

According to your idea of logic.

You are the one that posted:

Many think god was always there, nothing created it.   

Surely you can see that is logically inconsistent with an assertion that God "popped out of nowhere" that you also make on behalf of Christians.

Three smileys don't cut it as an argument.

[ippy]

Maybe the distinction needed to be reiterated because your position seems confused. After all, you had earlier stated that you didn't see the point of threads such as this one.
The thread is essentially concerned with academic questions, though Spud approaches the problems from the point of view of a believer and is therefore subject to a lot of confirmation bias. Conversely, Spud would claim that JP and the Prof are also biased by their non-belief over what conclusions they come up with.
However, your earlier assertion that supernatural claims should be established as fact before such a discussion can begin is just silly.

If you were to go back on my posts to j p, you'll see where I said, 'I take your point j p', in other words yes you're right and this a reference to the part of a previous post of mine you're referring to, I can see why you're saying this as it seems to me more than likely you hadn't seen that other post of mine.

Regards, ippy.

[Roses]

You are the one that posted:

Surely you can see that is logically inconsistent with an assertion that God "popped out of nowhere" that you also make on behalf of Christians.

Three smileys don't cut it as an argument.

I don't see that at all, anyway I have better things to do than argue about it, I am sure you do too.

[Spud]

This is all very well if you can PROVE that they were written pre-AD70, which you can't.

Until you can PROVE that they were written pre-AD70 it is a reasonable assumption that they are complete and utter rubbish

I've already said here that all we can do is assess them rationally, and in #37 I posted this: "Another reason why the gospels can be trusted is because they were written before AD 70 at a time when, according to Matthew, people would routinely go to the temple to offer a sacrifice, would pray on street corners and would 'swear by the temple'. Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple within his generation and it happened."

This article gives 6 reasons, with verses from Matthew why a pre-AD70 date for that book is likely. I disagree on one detail - I think Mark's sources included Matthew and Luke.

made up to con money out of a gullible public, a con that the Christian churches still pursue to the tune of milllions, if not billions. of pounds per year.

I agree, the amount of money spent seems astronomical. But as long as they account for every penny, that's what counts as it means the money is more likely to be used in the way the people who give want it to be.

[Owlswing]

I've already said here that all we can do is assess them rationally, and in #37 I posted this: "Another reason why the gospels can be trusted is because they were written before AD 70 at a time when, according to Matthew, people would routinely go to the temple to offer a sacrifice, would pray on street corners and would 'swear by the temple'. Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple within his generation and it happened."

This article gives 6 reasons, with verses from Matthew why a pre-AD70 date for that book is likely. I disagree on one detail - I think Mark's sources included Matthew and Luke.
I agree, the amount of money spent seems astronomical. But as long as they account for every penny, that's what counts as it means the money is more likely to be used in the way the people who give want it to be.

HUGE GROAN!

[Spud]

HUGE GROAN!

When did you first notice the pain?

[Owlswing]

When did you first notice the pain?

When I started trying to understand the logic behind your attempts to justify the unjustifiable!

Go join Vlad in the "Ignored" box!

[Spud]

When I started trying to understand the logic behind your attempts to justify the unjustifiable!

Go join Vlad in the "Ignored" box!

Maybe this will help, as it goes into

a bit more depth

[Roses]

All conjecture.

[SteveH]

According to your idea of logic.

Logic is objective. There's no "your logic" and "my logic"

[Spud]

Spud - regardless of when the original might have been written we know with absolute certainty that every single copy of the gospels, whether fragment or full text, was written long after 70AD. As such they could easily have been amended retrospectively with hindsight knowledge of the destruction of the second temple.

But lets, for the sake of argument, assume we have an original text (we don't of course) that we know for certain was written prior to AD70 (we don't of course) that predicted the destruction of the second temple. So what. All sorts of texts make predictions and sometimes those predictions turn out to be correct - in those countless other examples we don't assume that the predictor must be a god, so why should we in this case.

But I'll go back to my first point - regardless of when the gospels were originally written the ones we have available to us were, at the earliest, written decades or centuries later and we have no way of knowing how the versions we have compare to the original.

Re: your point about prophecies being retrospectively inserted: the analysis I'm reading shows that they actually fit into the narrative naturally, and thus are most likely part of the original text.

[Gordon]

Re: your point about prophecies being retrospectively inserted: the analysis I'm reading shows that they actually fit into the narrative naturally, and thus are most likely part of the original text.

Or were inserted by someone who wanted the narrative to appear natural: some people can be quite effective at writing you know, such as authors, and especially so when they wish to emphasise something.

The plain fact is that there is no extant copy of this narrative that predates 70CE and, as such, a clear risk that any elements in its current form could have been added later, such as 'predictions' that have already occurred - how does your analysis address this risk?

[ProfessorDavey]

Re: your point about prophecies being retrospectively inserted: the analysis I'm reading shows that they actually fit into the narrative naturally, and thus are most likely part of the original text.

But what do you mean by 'the original' - we have no idea what 'the original' looked like as all the extant texts and fragments are from, at best decades and typically centuries after the original was purported to have been written. Certainly everything we have is way after the temple destruction. So what you describe as 'the original will have been subject to change, addition and deletion over those decades and centuries - some of those changes (probably the vast majority) will simply be copying errors, but there will also be some deliberate changes.

[ProfessorDavey]

the analysis I'm reading shows that they actually fit into the narrative naturally, and thus are most likely part of the original text.

Exactly the opposite is likely to be the case - in the field of textual criticism a very coherence and 'smoothed' narrative is considered to be evidence that the text is more recent rather than older. This from Bart Ehrman's Historical introduction to the early christian writings, in which he sets out six criteria for considering that a text is more or less likely to resemble the original (when we don't have the original as is the case here):

"The Difficulty of the Reading. Scholars have found this criterion to be extraordinarily useful. We have seen that scribes sometimes eliminated possible contradictions and discrepancies, harmonized stories, and changed doctrinally questionable statements. Therefore, when we have two forms of a text, one that would have been troubling to scribes—for example, one that is possibly contradictory to another passage or grammatically inelegant or theologically problematic—and one that would not have been as troubling, it is the former form of the text, the one that is more “difficult,” that is more likely to be original. That is, since scribes were far more likely to have corrected problems than to have created them, the comparatively smooth, consistent, harmonious, and orthodox readings are more likely to have been created by scribes. Our earliest manuscripts, interestingly enough, are the ones that tend to preserve the more difficult readings."

[Owlswing]

Exactly the opposite is likely to be the case - in the field of textual criticism a very coherence and 'smoothed' narrative is considered to be evidence that the text is more recent rather than older. This from Bart Ehrman's Historical introduction to the early Christian writings, in which he sets out six criteria for considering that a text is more or less likely to resemble the original (when we don't have the original as is the case here):

"The Difficulty of the Reading. Scholars have found this criterion to be extraordinarily useful. We have seen that scribes sometimes eliminated possible contradictions and discrepancies, harmonized stories, and changed doctrinally questionable statements. Therefore, when we have two forms of a text, one that would have been troubling to scribes—for example, one that is possibly contradictory to another passage or grammatically inelegant or theologically problematic—and one that would not have been as troubling, it is the former form of the text, the one that is more “difficult,” that is more likely to be original. That is, since scribes were far more likely to have corrected problems than to have created them, the comparatively smooth, consistent, harmonious, and orthodox readings are more likely to have been created by scribes. Our earliest manuscripts, interestingly enough, are the ones that tend to preserve the more difficult readings."

Come on, Prof, you know as well as I that the only way you are going to get a resolution to the arguments of Spud and his ilk is to build a time-machine and carry them back to sit next to the scribes who wrote the originals!

Probably men who were paid per page by the priests to create something that would be believed by the gullible 2,000 years later!

)O(

[ProfessorDavey]

Come on, Prof, you know as well as I that the only way you are going to get a resolution to the arguments of Spud and his ilk is to build a time-machine and carry them back to sit next to the scribes who wrote the originals!

Probably men who were paid per page by the priests to create something that would be believed by the gullible 2,000 years later!

)O(

Spud seems so desperate to accept that the gospels were originally written prior to the destruction of the temple - but I don't understand why this really helps him. To my view there remains three intractable problems.

1. As mentioned before even if the gospel was written prior to AD70 (the autograph) the version we have are way, way later and won't be the same as the autograph (and we cannot know how close or otherwise they are).

2. Just because the gospels (even if originally written in the AD60s) say that Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple, that doesn't mean he actually did as there is decades of time between when Jesus was alive, and possibly making that prediction, and the writing of the gospels.

3. Even if Jesus did predict it - so what - why would that prove he was a deity. All sorts of people have made all sorts of predictions that came true.

https://www.rd.com/list/historical-predictions-that-came-true/

Are all these people gods?

[ippy]

I see that Stephen Fry enjoys Greek Mythology and has published a couple of book on the subject it's good to see such an enthusiast about this subject giving it his all.

What a shame those that follow the religious stories and seem unable to differentiate between the myth, mystical, superstitious nonsense and reality, whilst so many of the stories are so good and almost believable, just like some of the Greek myths are.

It's the total lack of viable evidence for the magical, mystical and superstitious material in the religions, that makes one wonder about the people that label themselves as believers, although of course there's no harm studying these stories a la Stephen Fry mode, none at all.   

[Spud]

Or were inserted by someone who wanted the narrative to appear natural: some people can be quite effective at writing you know, such as authors, and especially so when they wish to emphasise something.

The plain fact is that there is no extant copy of this narrative that predates 70CE and, as such, a clear risk that any elements in its current form could have been added later, such as 'predictions' that have already occurred - how does your analysis address this risk?

If there was some editing of Matthew's account of the Olivet discourse, the essence of the original account was preserved in Mark, who (as I believe we can know for other reasons) made use of it, and in Luke, who had an independent source and possibly used Matthew as well. It is possible to identify parts of Matthew that could be insertions to an earlier text, and these include the references to the final judgment in Matthew 25. Neither Mark nor Luke have this. But they do have the prophecy of the temple's destruction.

2. Just because the gospels (even if originally written in the AD60s) say that Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple, that doesn't mean he actually did as there is decades of time between when Jesus was alive, and possibly making that prediction, and the writing of the gospels.

How did they know to leave the city, flee to the mountains etc?

3. Even if Jesus did predict it - so what - why would that prove he was a deity. All sorts of people have made all sorts of predictions that came true.

https://www.rd.com/list/historical-predictions-that-came-true/

Are all these people gods?

I don't think I have claimed that it shows Jesus was divine, but rather that the gospels can be trusted as honest reports. The point of them writing down the prophecy was to warn readers to be ready for it. If someone had warned some Jews to leave Germany in the 1930s, those Jews that did heed the warnings would know that person could be taken seriously.

[Gordon]

If there was some editing of Matthew's account of the Olivet discourse, the essence of the original account was preserved in Mark, who (as I believe we can know for other reasons) made use of it, and in Luke, who had an independent source and possibly used Matthew as well. It is possible to identify parts of Matthew that could be insertions to an earlier text, and these include the references to the final judgment in Matthew 25. Neither Mark nor Luke have this. But they do have the prophecy of the temple's destruction.

Unless you have an unedited copy of the first draft, with sufficient provenance to confirm this, corroboration of what is claimed in the text and also a timeline of amendments and alterations with separate provenance for each case - then your 'essence' is that of a mixed bag of writings that are indistinguishable from fiction.

You can cite Christians apologists until the cows come home, and assert your own preparedness to take these texts seriously, but in doing so you are over-reaching to a ridiculous degree.


 

[ProfessorDavey]

If there was some editing of Matthew's account of the Olivet discourse, the essence of the original account was preserved in Mark, who (as I believe we can know for other reasons) made use of it, and in Luke, who had an independent source and possibly used Matthew as well. It is possible to identify parts of Matthew that could be insertions to an earlier text, and these include the references to the final judgment in Matthew 25. Neither Mark nor Luke have this. But they do have the prophecy of the temple's destruction.

But all you have to base this on are fragments and full texts from the early 200sAD, so perhaps 150 years after the original is considered to have been written. Neither you nor I, nor anyone, can know what alterations, additions and deletions occurred in those 150 years - we are completely in the dark. All we can say is that a many-generations copy that is the earliest extant version we have includes these words - there is no guarantee that the original did.

[ProfessorDavey]

I don't think I have claimed that it shows Jesus was divine, but rather that the gospels can be trusted as honest reports.

So you are using extant texts written perhaps 150 years after the destruction of the temple as a guide to then honesty of the report Neither you, nor I, nor anyone knows whether this claim was in the original texts or even if it were whether it is an accurate representation of a claim Jesus actually made.

And doesn't the gospel also claim that there would be a second coming in generations - hmm - don't think that happened. By your own argument that would make the gospels dishonest reports. And further the honesty of a report of someone making a prophecy is surely whether it accurately reports that prophecy, not whether the prophecy actually came to pass.

[ProfessorDavey]

How did they know to leave the city, flee to the mountains etc?

Because the City was being surrounded and besieged by the Romans.

[Spud]

But all you have to base this on are fragments and full texts from the early 200sAD, so perhaps 150 years after the original is considered to have been written. Neither you nor I, nor anyone, can know what alterations, additions and deletions occurred in those 150 years - we are completely in the dark. All we can say is that a many-generations copy that is the earliest extant version we have includes these words - there is no guarantee that the original did.

Morning, fair point. Let me have a go at answering it: take the healing of blind Bartimaeus, and if you compare the three synoptic accounts you notice differences in detail, but it is recognizably the same incident in all three. Clearly there are at least two sources: two or one blind men? Leaving or approaching Jericho? Name? Crowd praising God? Jesus touches eyes or speaks only? The story is basically the same, though: a blind man is healed miraculously at Jericho. Are we going to suggest that this story is based on chapter 10 of "Twelve have a big adventure" in which a sleepy homeless man wakes up and becomes a follower?