@@faithbecauseofreason8381 how do you respond to the use of skepticism by Roman apologists who say that you can't know authorship or that it's Scripture unless there is an official declaration by their organization? I have my answer but I'm curious on yours or if you have done a video on that.
@@truthisbeautiful7492 largely the same way I would respond to the skeptics cited in this video. None of the evidence for the authorship of the Gospels cited in my video relied upon a declaration from the RCC.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 thanks I figured that would be the case since I also generally hold to classical apologetics. However I do have sympathy for a John frame type view. My biggest question on classical apologetics is does it *rule out* either the Gospels or Scripture being self authenticating? That is, is it logically possible for classical arguments (example: the Lord Jesus rose from the dead and fulfilled prophecy, He affirmed the OT and promised the NT through the Apostles and their companions, and that has been fulfilled in the NT documents) and for self authentication to be true? For example, Ireanus of Lyons in the 2nd century makes the argument that the 4 Gospels are from God because of their spiritual power from God to convert sinners, which all the false Gospels do not have. So it would seem Ireanus is teaching the Gospels at least have self authentication. But does that rule out classical arguments? 2. I spend most of my time talking to followers of RC and EO which often reject that there can be a rational conclusion that the NT is the Word of God. But at least in Rome at Vatican 1 if I recall RC are required to believe that reason alone can prove the existence of God and the resurrection. But once the resurrection is proven, (which uses historical documents) it doesn't seem that difficult of a step to look to what Jesus taught on Scripture. So it seems as if the steps they deny are that Jesus affirm the OT or promised the NT, or that we could know that what they consider the historically reliable NT documents are actually Scripture without an official declaration from the council of Trent or Florence or the north african councils, or Trullo or the EO councils of the 17th century (different people appeal to different official statements). The other objection I have heard is that Scripture must have an infallible table of contents on every page or even every verse, which is impossible so therefore you have to relay on some official statement. Thoughts? PS I've read that historically the Jesuits in the counter reformation tried to use skeptical arguments against the Reformed scholasticism and that is the background to Descartes global skepticism.
Still only halfway done, but I can't help but think that finding some of Papias's original works in full would be the archeological find of a lifetime.
@@tgrogan6049 Even if Pappas has dubious, and terrible theological takes, and stuff like this, it's very likly that more of his work would name the 4 gospels explicitly at some point, which would still make it a major archeological find as itvwould essentially be the deathblow to all this spurious modern scholarship claims of anonymity. I mean some people would still argue for it no doubt. But it would be abundantly clear to any outside observer that it is being argued from a place of extreme bias against authentic gospel authorship, as opposed to now where the evidence is still not in their favor, but they have just enough historical wiggle room to make claims about being objective in said denial of authentic authorship.
@@anthonypolonkay2681 Why would you give credence to a person who spoke such fantastic ideas and put crazy sayings in Jesus mouth? Eusebius apparently had the works of Papias and only quoted him very sparingly. Why do you think he didn't use his work more????
@@tgrogan6049 The saying about vines and grades sounds actually alot like something jesus might have said. For one of two reasons, perhaps a combination of both. Firstly jesus often taught on parables. It's extremely likly that if jesus said this, it was a parable. We are not given context of jesus speech through the quotes of papius. And it seems that the critics MO is to only allow a hyper liberalism wooden interpretation of the quote for the purpouses of discrediting papers, which is extremely disingenuous. The other reason it might be something jesus actually said is that it seems to harken to thr ultimate end of everything in christendom. that is after the tribulation, and the millennium riegn god destroys the universe, abd recreates it back to its perfected" very good" state before the fall. Alot of what thr quote is saying seems to harken to that garden of eden type state that everything is supposed to be made back into. There's ofcourse no reason to dogmaticly defend either of those positions, or that jesus even said it since it's not a dirrectly recorded first hand account of the saying like the gospels supposedly are. But the big issue isn't uf papius is some super reliable guy on everything he says theologically, I mean we know that later accretion to the faith, abd tradition happened, that's why stuff like the papacy eventually came about. So if this quote is wrong then that's something we can chalk it up to. The issue is if ANY first century, or very early second century source explicitly mentions the gospels by name that is pretty much ball game for the anonymity hypothesis, because we aren't trying to establish the authorship as authentic in a vacuum. We know by mid second century the 4 names were unanimously attributed to the gospels because there are no competing traditions from there. The anonymity argument is trying to say that some time after the mid to late first century (because you have to have time to let everyone who was there when the gospels started circulating die off otherwise you'll have big logical issues with trying to attribute later names to original anonymous stuff) so you have roughly 50 years if we are being generous between that, and when we get irrenaus mentions of the gospel names. That is unfortunatly just enough supposed wiggle room for skeptics to pretend they are being logical with assigning anonymity. In real life thinking with common sense. That's not actually enough time at all, because if I wrote an anonymous book today and it got famous but nobody knew who it was, if you waited 20 years after I died to start slapping names on it, you won't have a solid case for trying to say that the book was always written by me, a d everyone always knew it was written by me, because there's going to be a litany of people who lived most of thier lives knowing that nobody actually knows who wrote that book, and if a movement trys to start saying it was always Anthony who wrote it most of those people aren't going to just start believing you, and there's going tk arise a ton of competing ideas for who actually wrote that book, and nobody os ever gunna actually know, or get it settled. Kinda like how the book of Hebrews always was. With those factors in mind, and in our search tk determine how the naming tradition was started if you get mentions of those names before or at 100ish AD. That's ballgame. There's no chance that those gospels were originally anonymous because most of the people alive at the time that citation comes from are like middle aged at most when the gospels started circulating, mabey the ones who were around for when mathew, and mark got circulated would be up there, and starting to get pretty old, but they would still be around to call foul. Now this doesn't prove those gospels were written by those people, just that the tradition goes all the way back to the first century of their names being on it. And thag presents a problem for trying to say they didn't write it because that puts it contemporary with the supposed authors. Imagine if a book was circulated saying C.S Lewis wrote it, while he was still alive, but he didn't. Someone just slapped his name on it. Then the idea that he wrote it isn't going to last very long once C.S Lewis starts calling it out. That's called the "says who" criteria. Abd once you have mentions of the gospels far enough back to reach roughly 100AD that critera had to have been met In order for those gospel authorship to stick.
Masterfully done!!! Without having watched your series on the "Synoptic Problem," I will toss in my two cents: Nearly all the difficulties surrounding the alleged "problem" disappear if you accept that these three books were all written within the same decade by men who knew each other, and indeed may have been close together geographically at the time they were creating their first drafts. Therefore I believe Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all written between 50 and 60 AD, and were complete and beginning to circulate BEFORE Paul was transported from Caesarea to Rome. That certainly makes more textual and chronological sense than the ridiculous assertion that Luke was written after 90 AD and must have borrowed from the works of Josephus!
This is how I date them. Matthew and Mark between 49 and 54 AD, Luke between 60 and 62 AD, and John between 60 and 70 AD. Would you like me to provide some solid evidence as to why I believe this?
I place Matthew and Luke in the 40s (since I think that Paul uses them). I place Mark in the early 60s. As stated in the video, I think that John had two editions, one prior to AD 70, and one soon after John's death in the early 90s.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 What do you think of the following evidence that I've examined for early dating? 1) Acts were written between 62 and 65 AD. Acts abruptly ended in 62 AD, with no mention of Paul's final trial and execution that occurred no later than 65 AD. Given that Luke recorded in detail Paul's trial before both Antonius Felix and Porcius Festus, he would have also recorded Paul's trial before Caesar if he wrote it after Paul had died. See Acts 24:1-26, and Acts 25:1-12 Therefore, since Luke does not record it, Acts must have been written prior to this since it had not yet occurred. 2) The Gospel of Luke was written shortly before Acts, either during the 3 months he spent with Paul in Malta or during the 2 years that Paul was under house arrest, awaiting the trial before Caesar. Both Acts and the Gospel of Luke are addressed to Theophilus, implied within the text to be written in quick succession. See Luke 1:3, Acts 1:1, Acts 28:11, and Acts 28:30 Paul's trial occurred in 58 AD, 2 years before Antonius Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus in 60 AD as the 5th Roman Procerator of the Judean Province. See Acts 24:27 3) The Council of Jerusalem was in 49 AD. In this council, they spoke of spreading 'the Gospel' as opposed to 'their Gospel', suggesting that nobody had yet written down a Gospel. See Acts 15:1-21 4) The foretelling of the future seige of Jerusalem in 70 AD is within all 4 canonical Gospels. Given that they all prophesied the future seige, we can conclude that all 4 canonical Gospels must have been written prior to this, or else, it would make no sense for the authors to warn of the seige if it had already occured. See Mark 13:1-31, Matthew 24:1-35, Luke 21:5-38, and John 5:1-5 5) Irenaeus of Lyons notes, "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter." Paul and Peter were preaching in Rome from 42 to 54 AD, placing both Matthew and Mark prior to 54 AD since Mark was written before Matthew. Therefore, we can conclude the following... Mark (49 - 54 AD) Matthew (49 - 54 AD) Luke (60 - 62 AD) John (60 - 70 AD)
@darkwolf7740 well I think that Mark shows literary dependence upon both Matthew and Luke so I'd kick him up to 61-62 AD. But I definitely agree with a lot of your comments on Acts.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 While I agree that Mark had his own sources of information in the Gospels, I disagree with the idea that he wrote after both Matthew and Luke. Let's analyse the information recorded in the Gospels to see if your claim holds weight. I have listed the data in accordance with the Gospels from earliest to latest (Mark, Matthew, Luke, then John). 1) The number of miracles recorded. Mark (22) Matthew (20) Luke (21) John (7) Excluding John, there is an insignificant decrease of 1. Including John, there is a significant decrease of 15. 2) The number of place names and places of interest recorded (E.g, I recorded 'Galilee' and 'Sea of Galilee' as 2 separate places). Mark (21) Matthew (26) Luke (24) John (21) Excluding John, there is an insignificant increase of 3. Including John, there is no change. 3) The number of named people recorded (excluding Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Prophets, and the Disciples). Mark (19) Matthew (13) Luke (23) John (13) Excluding John, there is an insignificant increase of 4. Including John, there is a significant decrease of 6. 4) The number of recorded witnesses who watched the crucifixion of Jesus. Mark (3 - see Mark 15:40) Matthew (3 - see Matthew 27:56) Luke (4 - see Luke 23:49, and John 19:25) John (4 - see John 19:25) Excluding John, there is an insignificant increase of 1. Including John, there is an insignificant increase of 1. 5) The number of recorded witnesses who went to the tomb of Jesus. Mark (3, see Mark 16:1) Matthew (2, see Matthew 28:1) Luke (3, see Luke 24:10) John (1, see John 20:1) Excluding John, there is no change. Including John, there is an insignificant decrease of 2. 6) The total of recorded details from 1) to 5) Mark (68) Matthew (64) Luke (75) John (45) Excluding John, there is a significant increase of 7. Including John, there is a significant decrease of 23. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Conclusions 1) There is sufficient evidence to suggest that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their Gospels. Matthew records 94% of Mark, whereas Luke records 91% of Mark and 85% of Matthew. This supports the idea that Mark and Matthew were written early, before Luke, and that Mark was the 1st written Gospel. c) There is no sufficient evidence to suggest that John used Matthew, Mark, or Luke as a source for his Gospel. John records 66% of Mark, 70% of Matthew, and 60% of Luke. This supports the idea that John was the last written Gospel.
This is incredible and deserves more attention. Unfortunately I am not educated enough on this side of Bible history to be able to understand much😭🙏 but then again I’m also listening to this while at work. I’ll give it another shot in the future! But again, from what I could understand this is incredible and certainly has given me confidence. God bless you.
This is very good. I have been wanting to write an academic paper on the maximal data argument for the resurrection, with the first part of the entire paper focusing on the reliability of the gospels.
I like the point you make about Matthew. Why would someone assign his name to the Gospel when he was a tax collector? Those kinds of people were highly disliked in the 1st century, so for someone to make up that he was the author, if he wasn't, would be just as ridiculous as claiming that Jesus wrote the Gospels.
It's especially absurd that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, three fairly obscure figures from the New Testament, would have gospels ascribed to them when one considers that the apocryphal gospels just a few decades later didn't hesitate to ascribe gospels to big names such as Peter, Mary Magdalene, and even Jesus himself.
@@darkwolf7740 yes, the Fathers of the Church mention such a document, whether a copy has been found yet I do not know, in fact just about every apocryphal gospel ever found was mentioned in the writings of the Fathers, so we always knew about them
@@Michael-bk5nz That's pretty crazy 😬 I hope they find a lost copy. It would be interesting to see how different it is to the Gospels... As for the Gospels, if I was making up 4 authors, I'd go for Peter, Jesus, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. The fact that the authors include a ridiculed tax collector, a student of a disciple, and a man who accompanied a prior subduer of Christians gives me reason to believe they are the true authors.
@@darkwolf7740 not only did Mark accompany Paul but Acts records that Barnabas and Paul had a falling out over Mark because Mark deserted Paul on a mission and Paul refused to work with him again.... Not a very prestigious person to attribute a gospel to
All this time, all these discussions, and i never heard "title page, duh" as the necessary and sufficient analysis of this topic. The main problem with new testament "scholarship" is the lack of experimental controls. The new testament apparently gives people license to invent critical methodology that would collapse if used on any other book
"I have few of the skills and little of the knowledge New Testament criticism requires…But I do know something about reasoning, and I have been simply amazed by some of the arguments employed by redaction critics. My first reaction to these arguments, written up a bit, could be put in these words: "I'm missing something here. These appear to be glaringly invalid arguments, employing methods transparently engineered to produce negative judgments of authenticity. But no one, however badly he might want to produce a given set of conclusions, would "cook" his methods to produce the desired results quite so transparently. These arguments must depend on tacit premises, premises the reaction critics regard as so obvious that they don't bother to mention them." Peter van Inwagen, "Do You Want us to Listen to You?" C. Bartholomew et al. eds. "Behind" the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation (Zondervan, 2003), 127
False, the encyclopedic compilation of Greek myth called the Bibliotheca is often now attributed, not to Apollodorus of Athens, but to "pseudo-Apollodorus" and the Catasterismi, recounting the translations of mythic figure into asterisms and constellations, not to the serious astronomer Eratosthenes, but to a "pseudo-Eratosthenes", and it is likewise with the Homeric Hymns. Ancient Greek authors often refer to texts which claimed to be by Orpheus or his pupil Musaeus of Athens but which attributions were generally disregarded.
This is very tightly reasoned, and the dialectical structure superb. I am alway surprised, even when attending a conservative seminary, how easily it is for people to concede that the Gospels are anonymous. The mere fact that there is consistency in the title of the works appearing in the early manuscripts is empirical evidence against it. There are no complete manuscripts without the appellations. To say they were “added” is not supported by evidence. The presumption, especially in light of the external historical witness should be in favor of known authors. Your case provides even more reason in support of this reality.
But presuming apostolic authorship of the gospels doesn't hurt skeptics in the least. You are still fallaciously presuming that somebody or something "intended" the audience for the gospels to be broader than merely the 1st century people the authors manifestly intended. I'm not confident you can show that anybody or anything intended an authorship any broader than the 1st century people. So that if I ignore the gospels 2000 years later, I cannot possibly be unreasonable, because all I'm doing is ignoring 2000 year old testimony that was never meant for me in the first place. Are you quite sure that God demands of unbelievers today anything that he demanded of 1st century unbelievers? Where's that in the bible? If you can find it, is your interpretation/application of the text so clear and compelling that only fools would disagree with it?
@@Tom-j4v7f, Thanks for the question. I take it as an argument that is assuming the Bible to be true on its own claims-otherwise it would not matter what it said, if God does not exist and it is not his revelation-and you are asking for evidence that it claims or intends to have something to say to us today and not only to those in the first century. What would be the evidence for this? It would be a teaching in the Bible that it’s message was for all mankind and for all time. On the Bible’s own terms, here are some claims that it makes. Romans 4:20-25 (ESV): 20 No unbelief made him [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” *were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.* Romans 15:4 (ESV): 4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. The teaching of scripture is a narrative of the divine sacrifice of God for the sake of his beloved creation. From the promised seed of the women, who would cut down the dragon of self-deception, to the the rejection of child sacrifice of Issac and the provision of a substitute by God himself, to the incarnation of the son of a virgin, a new humanity, who was God written into the fabric of his own narrative, and dies at his peoples hands, yet declares their forgiveness. This one claims to be the Lord of heaven, but seeks those who would not come in compulsion but will be “willing in the day of his power” (Ps. 110:3). He is the hidden treasure who would be sought for himself out of love, even as he seeks for us (Mat. 13:44)-in secret, for the sake of authenticity. Nor is he far from anyone of us, for as even the Greek poets have said, in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). There was an immediate imminence of his coming in judgment to that first generation who saw his death and heard his resurrection proclaimed to the covenant people. And that promise came to fulfillment with the destruction of the old temple system (this is open to all history, it is known). Yet, this was proclaimed long before by Isa. 66:3 (after Messiah, “He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man”) and Daniel 9:26 (“And the [Judean] people of [Jesus] the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come). In the last days of the old covenant (Heb. 1:1) it was proclaimed by Jesus-But he answered them, “You see all these [temple buildings], do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mat. 24:3), all this shall come upon this generation (Mat. 24:34). Yet there remain promises of restoration to Israel and for the Gentiles who will hear the Apostles of Jesus. As Peter proclaimed in Acts 3:17-21 (ESV): I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and *that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”* This promise is not just for those of the first century. As Peter said to them: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and *for your children and for all who are far off,* everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself (Acts 2:38-39). This is the “eternal gospel” (Rev. 14:6), this is the “faith” of Seth, and Abraham, and David, in its various degrees of revelation, “which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Titus 1:3). And it matters to us today, because our individual moral meaning is based upon a future day when the only Father that matters will either say “this is my son” and “well done” or “I don’t know you” (Acts 17:31). So, that, from inside the reality described by the many writings of the Bible, over many thousands of years, is why it is still relevant to you and to me. You don’t need to believe it. But the Lord commands us to believe it. Yet, not in power of compulsion but by the inner work of reason and the spirit of love. These are the ones that Jesus seeks: John 4:21-24 (ESV): 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Of this truth, with much difficulty, I have been persuaded. I don’t know about you, but I would know myself a fool if I were to ignore it.
@@jrhemmerich Thanks for the question. I take it as an argument that is assuming the Bible to be true on its own claims -------------- Yes, feel free to assume the bible is the inerrant word of God. Your cited bible verses are problematic. "but for ours also" and "our instruction" are referring to Paul and his intended readers. If you come along and insist Paul or somebody intended the "we" and "our" to include those beyond Paul's contemporaries, that is YOUR claim, for which YOU have the burden of proof. I'm not seeing anything about the Pauline authorship of those texts, nor their contexts, that suggests Paul or anybody else intended such words to reach beyond his 1st century contemporaries. "The teaching of scripture is a narrative of the divine sacrifice of God for the sake of his beloved creation." -------------And when you show that God intended for 21st century Gentiles to obey anything God demanded of Gentiles in the NT, we can talk. "From the promised seed of the women, who would cut down the dragon of self-deception," ---------You are assuming somebody connected to the authorship of the NT intended such a narrative for anybody living after the first century. Why? Revelation was written to 7 first century churches, with no evidence that John intended to address anybody living in the 21st century. "to the the rejection of child sacrifice of Issac and the provision of a substitute by God himself," ----------stories intended for the original authors' contemporaries, we all agree. YOU come along and insist these were also intended for people of the 21st century too. How do you know this? You are applying the bible in a way that is so lacking in foundation that we can hardly be unreasonable to reject such application. "to the incarnation of the son of a virgin," -----------God became incarnate before Jesus. See Genesis 18:1-2, but that hardly necessitates that God intended such a story to be communicated to 21sts century people. As far as Jesus, yes, a savior sent to die for the sins of his 1st century people. Nothing in the bible expresses or implies that Jesus died for the sins of Trump or Biden. "a new humanity, who was God written into the fabric of his own narrative, and dies at his peoples hands, yet declares their forgiveness." -----------The forgiveness available to 1st century people, yes. This one claims to be the Lord of heaven, but seeks those who would not come in compulsion but will be “willing in the day of his power” (Ps. 110:3). -----------See the doctrine of full preterism. Jesus fulfilled his second-coming promises before the close of the 1st century. No evidence that "day of his power" was delayed beyond the 1st century. Would you advise today's spiritually dead people to evaluate the differences between Christian preterists and Christian anti-preterists? How do you know God wants them to perform such evaluations? Does God speak through you with the same degree of certitude that you believe God spoke through the biblical authors prophets and apostles? "He is the hidden treasure who would be sought for himself out of love, even as he seeks for us (Mat. 13:44) --------What evidence is there that Matthew intended 21st century people to believe Mat. 13:44 was for them? "in secret, for the sake of authenticity. Nor is he far from anyone of us, for as even the Greek poets have said, in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). --------"us" in context means the 1st century people Paul was addressing, but you don't show that Paul intended the "us" to include 21st century people. And besides, "in him we live and move and have our being" is just Paul's way of paraphrasing from prior pagan poets to pique the interest of his contemporary pagan audience, which makes it impossible for you to persuasively argue Paul intended the "us" to include 21st century people. Would Paul have have quoted Epimenedes of Crete to pagans living today? Would God expect such a quote to pique the interest of 21st century pagans the way it did the 1st century pagans? Not likely. "There was an immediate imminence of his coming in judgment to that first generation who saw his death and heard his resurrection proclaimed to the covenant people. And that promise came to fulfillment with the destruction of the old temple system (this is open to all history, it is known)." "Yet, this was proclaimed long before by Isa. 66:3 (after Messiah, “He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man”) and Daniel 9:26 (“And the [Judean] people of [Jesus] the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come). In the last days of the old covenant (Heb. 1:1) it was proclaimed by Jesus-But he answered them, “You see all these [temple buildings], do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mat. 24:3), all this shall come upon this generation (Mat. 24:34). ------------Ok, the promise was seen fulfilled by 1st century people "this generation". How does that argue that the promise was intended for 21st century people? "Yet there remain promises of restoration to Israel and for the Gentiles who will hear the Apostles of Jesus. As Peter proclaimed in Acts 3:17-21 (ESV): I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.” This promise is not just for those of the first century. As Peter said to them: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself (Acts 2:38-39). ----------"and for all who are afar off" is referring to separation by distance, and nobody denies that Paul and others traveled great distances to bring the gospel to people physically far away from Jerusalem. If you think it "afar off" also meant separation in TIME, that's YOUR burden.
@@jrhemmerichPART TWO "This is the “eternal gospel” (Rev. 14:6), ---------- And that "eternal" can still be temporary is clear from Jude 1:7, which refers to the clearly temporal fires that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as "eternal", and it does not express or imply that the killed inhabitants are suffering in literally eternal fire in an afterworld. And many of the Mosaic Theocracy's self-descriptions similarly say the theocracy was a permanent ordinance (Lev. 16:29), but nobody says this automatically requires that it applies to everybody in the future. Since "eternal gospel" doesn't mean "applies to absolutely everybody in the future", that phrase does not fulfill your burden to show that anybody connected to the authorship of the original version of the NT ever intended a 21st century audience. "this is the “faith” of Seth, and Abraham, and David, in its various degrees of revelation, “which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Titus 1:3). ----------The saints whom Paul was addressing, or 1st century people. You do not show that Paul there intended "saints" to include anybody beyond his indisputably 1st century addressees. "And it matters to us today, because our individual moral meaning is based upon a future day when the only Father that matters will either say “this is my son” and “well done” or “I don’t know you” (Acts 17:31)." -------You do not show that what Paul preached to the 1st century people he ever intended to be expanded to 21st century unbelievers. The Christian eschatological view called full preterism does a fantastic job of limiting the fulfillment of biblical promises to before the 2nd century a.d. If anybody trifles that "partial preterism" is better, its only because they espouse inerrancy, and some biblical promises intended for 1st century people had failed, and failed prophecy is not acceptable to inerrantists. But their concern to preserve the bible error-free hardly constitutes anything the least bit compelling upon an unbeliever. "So, that, from inside the reality described by the many writings of the Bible, over many thousands of years, is why it is still relevant to you and to me." ----------Nothing you quoted from the bible expresses or implies that the responsible authors intended any audience any broader than the 1st century people we already know they were addressing. "You don’t need to believe it. But the Lord commands us to believe it. Yet, not in power of compulsion but by the inner work of reason and the spirit of love. These are the ones that Jesus seeks: John 4:21-24 (ESV): 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Of this truth, with much difficulty, I have been persuaded. I don’t know about you, but I would know myself a fool if I were to ignore it. --------------Jesus' phrase "and is now here" makes it likely impossible for you to justify expanding what he said to anybody living after the first century. Another problem with your viewpoint is that despite the fact that the promises clearly applied to 1st century people and their application to post-1st century people is highly controversial at best, you talk as if the the promises were equally applicable to both 1st century and 21st century people. Humility would require that you reduce the dogmatism when the bible is less than clear about something. And the bible is much less clear in applying the promises to 21st century people. I'm sorry, but today's Christians who try to "imitate Paul' despite admittedly lacking his divine inspiration, are fools. Those who lack that level of divine inspiration have no right to scream just as loudly as Paul about what he meant.
@@Tom-j4v7f, I will point point out an inferential argument that I consider the a descent an answer to your question. But where is the argument to support your assumed position? What is the basis for the view that a person is limited to speaking only to their time? Where does Moses, Jesus, or Paul say their words only applied to those who hear them? Where is this artificial rule coming from? To answer your question. Your assumption makes no sense in the context of the Bible, because the Bible starts as a history of all mankind, with Abraham it becomes a story about the redemption of Abraham's seed and all mankind. The good news of Jesus was the new covenant fulfillment of the old promise which was for the salvation of the world. Jesus told Thomas that he had enough information to believe without seeing for himself, and these who believed without being there like Thomas was would be blessed. The answer to your question is that the Old covenant was for thousands (all) generations to follow, and the New Covenant is for all generations. I'm interesting in your reason for your view. But honestly, it seems oddly idiosyncratic to you.
@@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser I hadn't seen that one. Is there anything new in it? Kamil's criticisms are the same basic arguments I've already critiqued between this video and my follow-up on supposed Gospel anonymity.
@faithbecauseofreason8381 I couldn't tell honestly. I only got like 2/3 of the way through and just had to stop. So many names and dates and references to other material, it was just impossible to keep straight. If Kamil's critiques are roughly the same, then meh, just wondering because I hadn't heard of him and thought he might be a new voice on this topic.
@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser oh no, he's old news. He has an article out there which skeptics have cited to me dozens of times before. TBH most of the arguments in that article are addressed in this video and my follow-up. I strongly suspect that this video from Paulogia is just going to be the video version of that article. I'll give it watch at some point to see if there's anything new to be found. But I honestly expect that I have already responded to most of the arguments which he's going to make.
So if Hebrews is anonymous why is it authoritative? If it is authoritative while being anonymous why can't the Gospels be authoritative and be anonymous?
Excellent point. And since nothing in the bible expresses or implies that God wants any unbeliever to consider traditional gospel authorship arguments, we can plausibly justify ignoring such arguments by pointing out that modern day defenses of traditional gospel authorship boil down to a Phariseeic effort to lure us into a bunch of uncertain trifling that we are under no obligation to consider in the first place. Nothing in the bible expresses or implies that God wants unbelievers to render probability judgments about gospel authorship.
Hebrews being anonymous isn’t a problem bs A. It is not a biography, or and B. It was not always anonymous, the original author and or authors have simply been forgotten. It is very likely that Priscilla, Paul, Apollos and perhaps Aquila, all played a role in Hebrews, and which in addition to its very sound doctrine, explains why it was viewed as scripture and authoritative among believers every since it began to be distributed. Edit: The Gospels could be anonymous, and still authoritative, the problem is that the arguments for the anonymity of the gospels are poor, and don’t take into consideration several historical norms of the time, and the positive data and evidence shows the authors have always been known, why would Christians insist on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, just to openly acknowledge they forgot who wrote Hebrews?!
I might also point out that in quoting Irenaeus " Only fragments of the original text in ancient Greek remain today, but many complete copies in Latin, the dates of writing of which remain unknown, still survive. Books IV and V exist in their entirety in a literal version in Armenian." Another problem for apologetics is the lateness of these texts from the "Church Fathers" remember we are talking about miraculous events here, so we need a lot of good solid evidence.
What's interesting is that nothing in the bible expresses or implies that unbelievers are obligated by God to read a "bible". We cannot possibly be unreasonable in ignoring the bible, because the Christians cannot show that God ever wanted us to read a "bible" in the first place.
@@Tom-j4v7f Hey if you got some time check out the Jordan Peterson Christians. Mystical humbuggery all the way down. They science haters and absolutely thrilled to see 'the collapse of modernity"! Sick.
No. This is just silly as this point. Justin as well as his audience would have absolutely no ground to stand on whatsoever in any shape or form at all to remark the gospels as written by the apostles “and those that followed them”, if they didn’t already know the identity of these apostles or there companions. “But… but… but… he doesn’t name them with the names Matthew, Mark, Luke or John or clear names, so he is treating them as if he doesn’t know the authorship.” This is a stupidity of an argument since Justin also calls the writings of the prophets “memoirs” in the same passage when he calls the gospels that, and he doesn’t slap names on like Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, David or Jeremiah (for example). So I guess Justin didn’t know who was thought to have written the texts of the Hebrew Bible, or any writings of the Old Testament for that matter, since he doesn’t slap names on. No. It’s just pure and utter nonsense and stupidity. Further more, why does Justin think that the gospels were written by the apostles and there companions in the first place? Where do you think he got that does from? Well? At no point did Justin or his audience ever ask the question “oh, oh, who exactly were these apostles and there companions? Was it Peter, Thomas, Andrew, or maybe it was James…?” No. This argument fails from a lack of logic and explanation. The better explanation is that Justin and his audience knew who wrote the gospels..
Pretty good synopsis, and a good scholarly approach to the evidence. A couple points I thought were pretty weak, specifically Papius' mention of John or even having known John the apostle. Not a very convincing link. And the explanation for Papius errant quoting of the gospel of Matthew, a lot to surmise from a misunderstanding of translation alone. All in all, very good video.
@@AnyProofOfTheseClaims Papias doesn't quote from Matthew. Are you referring to the issue of Papais supposedly saying that Matthew was written in Hebrew?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Correct. I also want to point out your issue of Eusebius lacking respect for Papius, your argument was great there and convinced me that's not a contentious issue as I thought.
@@AnyProofOfTheseClaims I think that Gundry, Orchard, and Kurtzinger have given good arguments for thinking that Papais doesn't say that Matthew was written in the Hebrew language. But at the very least, skeptics can't merely assume that he does. They need to argue for this.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 You got that secret admirer... but the next question is... are they anonymous, or can we identify the author of this comment 🤔 WE NEED A VIDEO ON THIS IMMEDIATELY
This video does not, no. This is the positive case for the traditional authorship of the Gospels. In an upcoming video, I will take on the arguments for the anonymity of the Gospels including the supposed anonymity of the Gospels in early Patristic literature.
Justin Martyr mentions “how the New Testament, which God formerly announced” Dialogue with Trypho the Jew ch.51 p.221. “For the Apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them;” First Apology of Justin ch.66 p.185 Allusion: Acts 1:7 Justin On the Resurrection ch.9 p.298
This tells us that 1. Christians possessed "memoirs" of Jesus which were also called Gospels and 2. They were written by apostles and by those who were their followers something else about Justin Martyr is that he had a student called Tatain who wrote the Diatessaron, the four New Testament Gospels compiled as a single narrative by Tatian (q.v.) about AD 150. It was the standard Gospel text in the Syrian Middle East until about AD 400, when it was replaced by the four separated Gospels. Quotations from the Diatessaron appear in ancient Syriac literature, but no ancient Syriac manuscript now exists. A 3rd-century Greek papyrus fragment was discovered in 1933 at Doura-Europus, northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. Whether the original writing was done in Greek or Syriac is unknown. There are also manuscripts in Arabian and Persian and translations into European languages made during the Middle Ages.
Justin Martyr mentions a literal millennium in Dialogue with Trypho the Jew ch.75-81 p.236-240. In ch.81 he says, “And further, there was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that thereafter the general, and, in short, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place.”
You can be convinced of something because there is good reason. Or you can illustrate a depth of faith in the relative absence of reason. But you can not have a great amount of both at the same time. The more you are exercising reason, the less you can exercise faith. These are complimentary portions of belief. If you value reason, it is at the expense of faith.
Faith is trust in someone, including that what they tell you is true and not a lie. This is not opposed to reason. In fact, it can be very reasonable to have faith in someone (based on experience, personal corroboration, testimony of others whom one trusts/has faith in, etc.) Just as human reasoning can be flawed based on faulty logic, incomplete data, etc., so too can faith in humans be flawed for similar reasons. Yet we still reason and have faith.
11:38 That assumes that "Theophilus" is a real person and not just a shorthand for "Friend Of God, Loving God, Loved By God". This preface , if it isn't a later addition, seems to assume many gospels in circulation pointing to a late first or early second century date.
For anyone reading, tne reason some suspect that Theophilus is really a person, a higher ranking Roman official, is that the term "most excellent" or "excellent" is also used of Luke to describe other high ranking officials in his narrative in Acts. Of "Felix" and of "Festus" in Acts 23, 24, and 26.
@@MrMortal_Ra Don't most religious texts make up a lot of things? Isn't that the general rule with this type of literature? Strictly background probabilities and no special pleading for "special texts"!
16:02 So someone (or many people) "edited, redacted changed the original "divinely inspired" text of John's Gospel? Who are these people and what did the add or subtract from the gospel of John? Doesn't this throw the entire story into doubt. What does this do to "verbal, plenary inspiration"? "Inerrancy"? Where the editors and redactors also divinely inspired?
@tgrogan6049 I believe that they are inspired, but I could grant for the sake of argument that they are not. Regardless of whether they are inspired, my arguments for traditional authorship go through. In this video I am arguing for the traditional authorship of the Gospels, not for their divine inspiration.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So you must rely on "Church tradition" are you going to become a Roman Catholic? Papias? Irenaeus? do these people really have any credibility? Eusebius had a very low opinion of Papias quotes him very sparingly. Who is the "Elder" that Papias allegedly uses as a source for the origin of Mark? Matthew consists of a lot more than a "logia" in Hebrew ( I believe Mike Licona stated that the original Matthew was lost.)
Maybe at some point. I covered a lot of his objections in my response to Kevin Nontradicath on Gospel anonymity though, so I almost feel like it would be redundant.
Great job covering all the angles. It was as if the skeptics kept throwing any kind of mud against the wall to make their arguments stick and you kept hosing them down. For your consideration: 1. John's Gospel contributes to the skeptics' supposition of anonymity since the author is so self-effacing. He was the unnamed beloved disciple: (A) who leaned on Jesus' chest at the Last Supper and asked who was to betray Him; (B) who stood with Jesus' mother at the foot of the cross; (C) who ran ahead of Peter to the empty tomb but waits for Peter to arrive to enter first; (D) who was mentioned only as one of Zebedee's sons at the Sea of Tiberius and (E) whose future status is there discussed by Jesus and Peter. 2. Now consider John 1:40 (ESV): "One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother." The other of the two is not mentioned by name in this chapter. Andrew is honored by the Orthodox Church as the First-Called (Protokletos). However, wouldn't the First-Called designation equally apply jointly to this other unnamed follower of Jesus? 3. Consistent with the self-effacing authorship demonstrated in No. 1 above, just who might this unnamed other first follower of Jesus be in the first chapter of John's Gospel?
Great video! Just a quick question in regards to Papias. He makes it really clear in his preface that he is only concerned about getting his information from eyewitnesses and from people in attendance of the eyewitnesses. You say that Papias may actually be reliably relaying the traditions from these elders, such as the tradition of Judas or the vines. Do you think these “dubious” (for lack of a better term) traditions originated from people who were so close up to the facts? People who had direct access to the apostles themselves? If these traditions really did originate from them, how can we trust anything else they related to Papias if indeed, Papias was reliable in relaying their traditions?
If we believe Papias in that passage, he also obtained this tradition from John the apostle as well. That's one reason I think it likely goes back to Jesus.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So you’d maintain that Papias reliably relayed what the elders said about the vine tradition and that John the Apostle himself relayed this same tradition? I know in your video, you said you don’t see it conflicting with theology or doctrine, but don’t you think it’s a bit weird? Could it be that the elders/Papias misunderstood John and that John did not attribute this to Jesus? Furthermore, even if this is the case, do you still think that these very early elders, who had direct access to apostles, had such a “false” (for lack of a better word) tradition in regards to Judas so early to begin with that Papias thought that their testimony was so authoritative to then include it in his own writings? This somewhat legendary tradition seems surprising if these elders where so close up to the facts and had access to the apostles and other people who may have potentially seen Jesus. It kind of lends credence to what the skeptic would say when they say that you don’t need years for a myth to develop. It can develop within days.
@lukadasilva7050 I don't see anything particular weird about it. Jesus certainly said more than is recorded in the Gospels. I would expect some of it to survive. The statement about the grapes and vines may be just that. As for Judas, we have no idea where this tradition came from nor even how much of it Papias actually records. We have no reason to think that Papias actually believed this let alone than any other elders believed this.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Isn’t it arbitrary to say we don’t know where the Judas tradition came from if Papias literally says, “Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself”? If this tradition did not come from the elders, it sure does sound like a tradition from “those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments”, which Papias explicitly says he takes no pleasure in. In regards to the vine tradition, I can see how one can accept that Jesus might have said something like this so that may not be such a big problem, it just seems kind of weird to me. Thanks for responding to the comments btw!
@lukadasilva7050 I don't think it's arbitrary. In that passage, Papias doesn't say that absolutely everything he ever reports comes from the Lord's disciples or the elders. This gets back to my point that we don't have the context of this passage. We don’t who the "they" references. It could be the elders. But it could just as easily refer to a different group of people. We simply have no way of knowing where this tradition is coming from.
C.E. Hill of Reformed Theological Seminary whose statement of faith says:"Since the Bible is absolutely and finally authoritative as the inerrant Word of God, it is the basis for the total curriculum." Not a scholarly institution.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 No, he is simply and correctly pointing out that an institution that can't even do academic inquiry and has to work backwards to affirm dogmas is not actually a scholarly institution. An ad hominem is an attack on an aspect of someone's character irrelevant to the argument, this is 100% relevant.
Concerning Papias' testimony about Mathew: the reason it is reasonable to construe Papias' comment to mean Matthew was written in Hebrew language, not merely "style", is because all church fathers who mention the language Matthew was written in, never say it was Greek, they always say it was written in Hebrew. Curiously, no church fathers specify the language Mark, Luke and John were originally written in...as if they all knew that the case of Matthew was an exception to the rule, which justified disclosing the news for the sake of posterity. We can be reasonable to reject Martin Mosse's explanation too: If those early fathers who say Matthew was written in Hebrew had known Matthew also wrote a second original in Greek, their mentioning of the Hebrew argues they would likely have mentioned the Greek version too. So because they never do, we are reasonable to deny that canonical Greek Matthew ever had an original, and is at best nothing more than an anonymously composed translation. Jerome in the 4th century said it was in his own day that some unknown person finally translated Matthew into Greek. The reasonable deduction from his statement is that Matthew never appeared in Greek prior to the 4th century. If then you try to get away from the consistent patristic witness by saying they all probably misconstrued Papias, then you have set a precedent showing just how easily the majority patristic view could be based on falsehood. We have to wonder whether the majority patristic witness concerning authorship of the gospels similarly stems from a very ancient errant view. And there are devastating consequences to the apologist if Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and not translated into Greek for the next 300 years: it would strongly imply that Matthew (and his followers) did not intend his gospel for Gentiles, thus the Gentile-oriented "Great Commission" of Matthew 28:19-20 may plausibly be construed as non-Matthean interpolation going back earlier than our earliest manuscripts can document. That spells doom for the apologist: An original apostle of Jesus who, despite writing at least two decades after Jesus died and thus writing around 55 a.d. when Paul was still active, who has no intention of taking the gospel to the Gentiles? Sounds like an original apostle of Jesus thought Pauls' Gentile-oriented gospel was an unacceptable extension of the original gospel. Thus we rightly remain suspicious of anything in the bible suggesting Matthew approved of Paul's Gentile focus...such as the apostolic letter in Acts 15, which was allegedly the will of all the original apostles. that letter is contradicted by Galatians 2:9, where we are told that the original apostles, after conferring with Paul, chose to confine their evangelism to the Jews. Another reason to say the Gentile Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20 is a later interpolation. Would you be willing to have a video-debate with a counter-apologist?
@@justchilling704 And your 4-word answer doesn't exactly generate any worries that anything I said could be refuted on the merits. Thanks for confirming me in my skepticism. Try again?
Ehrman at 27:19 - "they needed to be attributed to real, established authorities". Fascinating, Bart, really fascinating... I wonder how a Greek doctor became a real, established authority in a religion with Jewish roots? Furthermore, I wonder how any of the 4 became "established authorities" without, so it seems, according to Ehrman, leaving a scrap of written material... Yet here we have Irenaeus et al circa the second century deciding to attribute authorship of the four gospels to these particular authors because of... Reasons? Why not Peter? Why include a foreigner? And why wait the better part of 200 years to do it? Erhman is great, as long as you don't think about anything he says for more than 5 consecutive seconds.
Irenaeus said that Jesus lived to the age of 50 (Against Heresies, Book II, Chapter 22, Section 5.) and that there are 4 Gospels because there are 4 corners of the earth.
@@tomasrocha6139 "Although it is sometimes claimed that Irenaeus believed Christ did not die until he was older than is conventionally portrayed, the bishop of Lyon simply pointed out that because Jesus turned the permissible age for becoming a rabbi (30 years old and above), he recapitulated and sanctified the period between 30 and 50 years old, as per the Jewish custom of periodization on life, and so touches the beginning of old age when one becomes 50 years old."
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 It's the one responding to holy coolaid. It's time stamped so you can find where it's talking about authorship. Your video is great btw.
P1 probably had the title is just ripped off . P1 has the alpha sign above the text . In other manuscripts the Gospel according to …. is above the alpha sign . So the Top of P1 is missing and probably had the title .
The very fact that Eusebius, Papias, et al, felt they had to tell us who wrote the gospels means that people were asking who wrote them. They did not originally have their titles "The gospel according to X". If you *really believe* the gospels are telling the truth, let take another look at the intro to Luke. It looks like a cover letter, but it does *not* name who sent it. Cf with the letters, say, of Paul--they always start out saying who sent them, like all letters did in ancient Rome and all (even email) do today. The Author of Luke talks about other gospels written before his, but he doesn't mention any titles or authors of them either. If we just read what the gospel of Luke actually says, we have to conclude that both the gospel he is writing, and all previous gospels, were anonymous. Again, if you think that the gospels are true, well, just believe what the text right there in the gospel says. Same goes for the ending of John--whoever wrote that didn't give us his name---and he didn't even give us the name of the earlier author--he called him "the beloved disciple" specifically *not* to tell us the author's name. The canonical gospels are real standouts here--*every* *single* noncannonical gospel--the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Peter, *always* explicitly says who it was written by. Its one of the ways you can tell that the early church did not take the noncannonical gospels as seriously as they did the canonical gospels--because anybody else who wrote a gospel felt like they had to aedd their name (or pretend they were an apostle adding his name).
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I did not get that far originally. Your statement "There is no sound reasons to suppose Matthew's Gospel is dependent on Mark's Gospel" is simply not true. There are a great number of textual examples that shows that one is dependent on the other, and several of these are good evidence for Mark being first. This statement was either born of ignorance or at least misleading. The standard of greek in the two Gospels indicates that Matthew was most fluent writer, if Mark had copied Matthew he would surely have copied the good Greek as well, as it is, it appears Matthew 'corrects' some of Mark's rougher language. This is but one example. Markian priority is simply inconvenient for your hypothesis - which, I must say, uses the phrase "it is not impossible to suppose" an awful lot.
6:56 "Luke claims" as if "Luke" was the actual author of this text. NO circular reasoning here. "Luke" feels at liberty to completely change and rewrite his "sources" so he didn't consider their "eyewitness" status (more question begging) as equal to accuracy.
@tgrogan6049 an unavailable source doesn't always look like a nonexistent sources, especially when independent evidence exists for the unavailable source.
13:57 "It is possible....." how possible? Additionally, is John 21:24 a forgery? How many other forged passages are there in the gospels that we don't know about????
“John 21:24 is a forgery” no. It was most likely added on by the community who was centred around and closely connected to the beloved disciple who thus knew the beloved disciple. This addition to John would have been agreed upon to add.
52:50 also reveals Bart Ehrman to be a charlatan. His argument is basically as if someone had addressed Ehrman after he published his first book and told him: "Well, all these years of studying and learning and all you know fits unto 300 or so pages. You must be very ignorant." Given that Ehrman has written books aimed at being read, his argument is totally dishonest.
Great work, thanks for putting this together. Quick question, whats your position re the millenium given Papias' beleifs and his possible connection with John and other elders? Cheers
I actually tend to disagree with Papias on beliefs about the millennium. I think that Eusebius is probably right on that issue from a theological standpoint. I would disagree with Eusebius' assumption that Papias was right about the millennium just because he had connections to John the apostle. But yes, see Bauckham's article. It's probably the best treatment of the subject.
You argue against the thesis that the titles were added later, because Christians would have needed a way to identify the books as soon as they were written. But the literary evidence seems to tell a different story. Just to give two examples: Justin Martyr, who appears to use the canonical gospels as sources (although this is disputed by some scholars) refers to them collectively as “memoirs of the apostles”. The Didachist also refers generically to his own sources as a unity: “the Gospel of our Lord”. We don't get the titles "Gospel according to [fill-in-the-blank]" until around 170 or 180 CE. Of course that doesn't mean the titles couldn't have been added earlier. But what _could have been_ doesn't seem like a very strong point of evidence. Even a conservative evangelical like Blomberg, in his commentary on Matthew, admits that the gospel titles "are almost certainly not original" (p43).
Hey, thanks for watching. If you see my recent debate on this topic with Kevin Nontradicath on Kyle Whittington's channel, then you'll see how I respond to this objection. I am considering doing another video on this particular objection since many seem to be raising it. As for Blomberg, he doesn't get a free pass just because he's evangelical. If he thinks that the titles were later additions, he will also need to argue for that thesis.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Thanks for the reply. I listened to your remarks about this in the debate you mention, so thank you for that. But please note, I'm not arguing that Justin didn't know that Peter was connected to the Gospel of Mark, or even that he had never heard the modern titles "Gospel According to X". Rather, I'm pointing out that Justin doesn't seem to _need_ those titles as a way to distinguish between them. Nor does the Didachist. So, if they didn't need to do that, why insist (as Pitre does) that the titles must have been added as soon as they were written?
@@HatsoffHistory I mean, couldn’t “the memoirs of the apostles” and “the Gospel of our Lord” work as convenient shorthand? Doing this would not only stress the authority of the sources but also their unity, without going into too much detail on who they were written by or when/how/why they diverge. I would bet that would be helpful to the aims of the Didachist, Justin Martyr, etc.
@@vulteiuscatellus4105 Well yes, but that is just the point! If Justin and the Didachist could refer to them without titles, that goes to show titles weren't necessary to distinguish between them. The early Christians just don't seem to be interested in doing that, because for them it's all one Gospel unity.
@@HatsoffHistory I would differentiate between distinguishing between the Gospels the by name and a practical need to do so. The fact that early (and even modern) Christians sometimes colloquially refer to the "the Gospels" collectively in no way implies that there isn't a practical need to distinguish between them.
48:04 is typical of Carrier's MO. He starts out with a true or at least defensible statement, then jumps to an extreme conclusion way off the mark and going beyond the actual issue. So if Papias was wrong on particular book (and even that isn't clear), Carrier concludes that he had "NO idea what he was talking about", "NO reliable sources of information about the first century of Christianity", all that despite the fact that Papias actually lived in the first century of Christianity. All that doesn't follow and is extremist hogwash. Carrier uses scholarly sounding arguments to attain not knowledge but non-knowledge in order not to critique or reflect but to simply dismiss.
10:04 "It is very difficult to imagine" how about this "Mark" is a proxy for the Peter faction and "Luke" is a proxy for the Pauline faction. I can imagine this easily.
I thought Mark was with Barnabas and Paul and The early church met at his mothers house in Jerusalem . Rhodda recognised Peters voice so he must have met with the house church often
In a discuscussion with Bart Ehrman on Unbelievable Bauckham admits 53:57 "Let me agree with Bart for a change. I do think it is rather unlikely that Jesus Galilean followers....could have written the Gospels we have and I DON'T CLAIM THAT THEY DID." (EMPHASIS ADDED) Bauckham also states that the "disciple John" did not write the fourth gospel but rather some "educated Greek speaking Jewish follower".
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I think what he meant is that because Bauckham strongly defends the eyewitness nature of the gospels, his reticence to ascribe John's authorship to apostle John likely implies the less scholarly apologists who advocate Johannine authorship (like Lydia McGrew) are overstating their case, since a conservative like Bauckham would be presumed to jump at any chance to defend John's apostolic authorship.
That’s funny. Richard takes the position that the gospel of John was written by John the elder who he doesn’t identify as one and the same with the apostle John. However, he does in fact think that John the elder was the beloved disciple and thus is an eyewitness regardless.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Hi, thanks for the reply. Here is a video more aligned with how the authorship seemed to come about. And i agree more with it than i do with your video. The 2 of you should get together and hash it out. Paul is very accommodating and nice to chat with. You sound the same in your video. Video: "Who REALLY Wrote the Gospels?" Paulogia. This should be a good starter. cheers
11:15 "Mark" mentions Peter but forgot to mention this: "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." Maybe "Peter" forgot to tell "Mark" about this???? "It is difficult to imagine" that "Peter" could have forgotten to tell "Mark" about this incident. We can "imagine" that "Peter" had Alzheimer's or that he was too humble or some other imaginary story, right?
I've argued the point myself, it's very powerful, and renders us reasonable to say Matthew's more theologically detailed account of the incident it not a case of him bringing out details Mark knowingly chose to exclude, but a case of Matthew putting in Jesus' mouth words Jesus never said.
I thought Mark was very prominent in the early church . He went with Paul and Barnabas . The Church met at his mothers house Peter visited the house often because Rhodda recognised his voice
He was *relatively* obscure compared to people like Paul and Jesus' disciples. The point is just that there seem to be better candidates to have written this Gospel if the idea is that the authorship of the Gospels what is simply fabricated to give them the facade of credibility. Also, Mark abandoned Paul on his missionary journey. So this does not really indicate that he was prominent. If anything, this would have been a reason not to invent him as being the author of a Gospel.
@@tgrogan6049This actually would against your case since the early church would have absolutely no reason whatsoever in any way shape or form to make up authorship and then attribute that authorship to some unknown, random, practically none existent, shallow, dark obscure figure who no body knew.
It would be nice if you could present some evidence for this or interact with the evidence I presented to the contrary. This is just kinda your opinion as far as I can see.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 The gospels were written between 70 and 100 CE. There is the academic consensus and there's many reasons for that such as knowledge of the destruction of the temple. None of the gospel manuscripts had authorship stated within them. They were written in Greek by highly educated highly skilled writers; most likely Roman Christians. The names of the four gospels were assigned to them by Irenaeuss of Lyon in or around 180CE. This is the academic consensus that based on the data.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So was the gospel of "Matthew" originally written in Hebrew? Papias thought so. Papias also said Judas' head swelled up to the size of a wagon. Do you believe that?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So yes or no Judas head swelled to the size of a wagon and Eusebius thought Papias was "weak minded"? Papias also wrote (via Eusebius or Irenaeus) that Jesus taught there would be talking grapes in the Millenium. Are you doing a video on that? Eusebius who had, if anyone did, full access to Papias writings has these things to say about him but you know better. How?
Mark and Luke are 85% similar, implying they come from a similar source. Mark was a known disciple of Peter, and Luke was a travelling companion of Paul. Also, we got this quote from 'Irenaeus of Lyons' about it... "After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter." Given that Matthew is 94% similar to Mark, and we know that Matthew was himself a disciple of Jesus, it makes logical sense to support the idea that Mark also got his information from a direct disciple of Jesus. Or, in other words, from Peter directly.
29:50 Monte A. Shanks is not a real scholar he works for Liberty University where there is a statement of faith that the faculty must believe. Notice his language "this fragment SHOULD NOT BE UNNECESSARILY MARGINALIZED as having no historical value". Why not? It's just his opinion. Given all the other crackpot things Papias has to say in other fragments and Eusebius very low opinion of him, why should we take anything he says seriously at all???? For all those Christians here who are interested in the truth about what a fool Papias was Google "exiting fragments of Papias writing" and read them for yourself.
"Given all the other crackpot things Papias has to say in other fragments and Eusebius very low opinion of him, why should we take anything he says seriously at all????" ----------Fundamentalists will trifle that Papias was a chiliast, Eusebius disagrees with that doctrine, therefore, Eusebius' basis for negating Papias' intelligence was unjustifiable bias. So we have to wonder: why is doctrinal disagreement always a faulty basis for condemning the opponent's intelligence for those outside the biblical authors....but if biblical authors had doctrinal disagreement with somebody, this must always be proof that the opponent was wrong? What rule of historiography says religious bias is only a good thing for biblical authors and apostles, but never a good thing for anybody else? "For all those Christians here who are interested in the truth about what a fool Papias was Google "exiting fragments of Papias writing" and read them for yourself." ----------We can sandbag the apologists on this: The more effort they put into defending Papias' credibility and connection to the apostles, the more we are justified to agree with Papias that his absurd "talking grapes" story really and truly did originate with the apostle John. We have to wonder: Was the original apostolic testimony plagued with similar absurdities, perhaps justifying us to suppose somebody whitewashed the original testimonies before they took their canonical form?
@@tgrogan6049 Glad to join the minority. I should enjoy the moment because in my experience, the vast majority of RUclips-apologists simply delete my powerful challenges. Skepticism toward Christianity has much to gain from being able to prove that many "apologists" are only able to maintain the facade of argumentative strength because they quietly skip town when confronted with a serious scholarly challenge. I'm hoping that "Faith Because of Reason" is more honest than that.
Another problem is you don't address the credulity and superstitious beliefs of these "Church Fathers" Papias for example was clearly nuts and had all sorts of crazy beliefs about Judas, the millennium even putting words in Jesus's mouth from the "Apocalypse of Baruch". Ditto for the rest of these "fathers".
Really makes you wonder whether the original form of the gospels were as fantastic as Gospel of Peter's resurrection story, and the less fantastic canonical form of that testimony was achieved by somebody whitewashing it of its more unbelievable elements. Apparently, somebody somewhere made the decision that apostle John's story about talking grapes would be be one of those things best excluded from his gospel.
No Papias was not “crazy”. His alleged remarks on the death of Judas is wildly surrounded by textual issues as it is quoted and attributed to Papias from about 200 years after Papias was thought to have written his works through fragments. It was only quoted by Apollinaris of Laodicea by which he actually has two different inconsistent versions of this quote, one of which is less exaggerated. Showing that Apollinaris is not getting this information from a primary source like from one of Papias’ own works, but of two different inconsistent traditions about what Papias allegedly said. As Monte A. Shanks, notes: “The fact that this fragment was assimilated from a collection of quotes from Theophylact as he interacted with Apollinaris’s quotes of Papias makes it difficult to regard either of the above conjectures as accurate reflections of what Papias actually wrote” (Papias and the New Testament, page 205). Further more, we don’t even have the full context or any context at all for understanding what Papias was actually saying or trying to say. He could of as well as been criticising and disagreeing with this claim about Judas’s death as he found been equally as been agreeing, again, we simply do not know. So skeptics using this alleged saying of Papias as evidence that he didn’t know what he was talking about or didn’t know the gospel of Matthew, cannot presuppose that Papias thought that was the actual death of Judas..
@@MrMortal_Ra Well then stop using Papias as a witness for the canonical gospels. You can't have it both ways. Monte A. Shanks works for "Liberty University" and is not a scholar.
I've got a lot of things to say, and some are critical or mention something you didn't, so I want to say this before the rest: This video was very well done, well researched, and well argued. This is good work, and I gave it a thumbs up because you deserved it. I think you're wrong about John 21:24. It doesn't make sense to assume that another person than the beloved disciple wrote this, because it's not the end. If someone were to come along later and add this, they would have added this and stopped. But there's another verse after this, and it's not about authorship, it's about a concern that the author has. In addition, John 21:20-25 flow quite well and make concluding points. 20-23 tell us about a rumor about the author, which the author tells us is baseless. 24 identifies the author and reminds readers that they know and trust him. 25 gives a reason why the author didn't write whole libraries worth of books, instead of the one book in front of us. In particular, verse 25 doesn't make sense for a non-author to write. The author is clearly concerned with supplementing the synoptics with additional facts about Jesus. His purpose is to write down the other things Jesus did, and we have traditions that he was asked to do this. Here, he tells us that there is more, but he can't physically write down every single detail, giving the excuse that there are too many. A non-author would not have reason to say that, but the author would. Your theory about the motives of a hypothetical editor would make sense if a hypothetical editor existed. It would equally make sense for the author to quash an incorrect rumor about himself, especially if the author was old and the rumor was that he'd never die. The author could easily forsee his death producing a crisis of faith for people who believed the rumor that Jesus had predicted he would never die. Telling people authoritatively that Jesus had said no such thing would solve that problem. That one sentence in Papias about Matthew writing the sayings in Hebrew dialect is one of our most important early sources of information -- yet maddeningly vague. "Sayings" could mean anything from a list of sayings to a complete gospel, and "Hebrew dialect" could mean the language Hebrew, Aramaic, since most Jews spoke it as a native tongue at this time, or Greek, but in a Hebrew style. Papias is early, and is likely quite correct in what he says, but what is he actually saying? Given all combinations of each of these things, there are at least 6 different meanings we can choose from. I think the response to Ehrman's objection to Papias' comments on Mark is overcomplicated. It can be simplified to this: Ehrman is overreading Papias, assuming that Papias meant to absolutely deny that Mark could have remembered anything at all about Jesus but not also have written it down. There is an argument that I think you didn't mention for John's authorship: the lack of disambiguation. John was a very common name, so the only time when you could say "John" and not add any disambiguation is when there's only one John under consideration. In the early Christian church, there was only one John that was true of, and that was the Apostle. So if the theory that Papias referred to 2 Johns were true, we'd still get John the Apostle as author, because the title says "John", not "John the elder" or "John of Ephesus" or "John the lesser" or "John the younger" or something like that. It just says "John", and expects you to know which one. And that tells you which one.
We have Them that is the important thing Altho many modern versions have appeared the 1611kjv Is the best Authoritive inspiring and intact No missing verses!
Oh my goodness. Where to begin? So first off, on the issue of "missing" verses, has it ever dawned on you that these verses were actually added later on?
We don't have the originals for most ancient documents today, and many of them themselves have had parts added to them over time. Guess we can throw them all out too, yeah?
I was saved before I even read the scriptures Or heard any preacher Only after regeneration I began To read and God guided me to The 1611kjv his inspired word!
@@angloaust1575so "textus receptus" basically? Like the Luther Bible till 1912 (there are still new bibles printed based on that one and it's actually also one of my favourites). Fun story: the women caught in adultery in John is not in some early manuscripts but there was at least one of the church fathers (forgot the name) who said it was actually taken out and later re-inserted into the text because it was too lenient on the woman depicted and they didn't want to give "false ideas" to women. So I consider it authentic.
The KJV has missing verses. For instance, Daniel has 14 chapters. What's that? The extra chapters are fake? I wonder if such thinking applies elsewhere
The narrator focus on the anonymity of the authors was irrelevant. Jesus had little interaction with the scribes, scholars and anyone consumed with self agrandizement.. I had hoped to get a history of the four gospels not a scholarly insight.
Jesus called Matthew to become a follower. He was a tax collector, therefore he could read and write. Scribes were not about "self whatever", they were simple secretaries who wrote down what someone dictated. There is no reason to think Matthew couldn't have begun writing things down while still following Jesus during his lifetime. Or at least very shortly afterwards.
I strongly urge you to read Matthew 23:13-39 regarding Jesus thoughts about false intellects viz , Scribes Pharisees, etc. Man made Theorist ( the narrator of the video ) don't represent God nor Jesus nor the authenticity of scriptures, Theorist purport ideas that interest them. Post Jesus ascension, the Apostles were busy establishing and maintaining the Church. In time they or a designer would recall the accounts of their times with Jesus. Keep in mind the constant agitations confronting them on their travels and stays, especially in Jerusalem which would eventually go through a turbulent and destructive war. Theorist cast doubts in people's minds. This is a novel tactic of the enemy of God and Jesus Christ. Believers must study ( be diligent) the scriptures not Theorist knowledge.
@@MrSeedi76 "Tax collectors" in ancient Judea were not necessarily literate, the position was more like a guy sitting at a tollbooth. It is extremely obvious that GMatt is not actually written by Matthew.
Your citations of Papias (with editing by Eusebius?) about some gossip he heard from an unknown "the elder" amounts to nothing. Who is "the elder" and how does he know anything about this subject? As for the rest of the Church Fathers you mention I must quote Supernatural Religion: "Even if we took the statements of Irenæus, and later Fathers like the Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, and Origen, about the Gospels, they are absolutely without value except as personal opinion at a late date, for which no sufficient grounds are shown." Cassels, Walter Richard. Supernatural Religion, Vol. I. (of III) An Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation . Kindle Edition.
I agree, but a more powerful argument to achieve your intended goal is to ask how today's Christian justifies leaping from "God commanded 1st century unbelievers to repent" over to "God commands 21st century unbelievers to repent". They can't justify this. And Christians who adopt dispensationalism (a doctrine very popular among the fundamentalists who push Christianity the most) will tell you that even within the bible, God will not demand of a later generation the same things he demanded of an earlier generation. Christians cannot even be reasonably certain whether God wanted 1st century Jews to reinstitute the Mosaic Theocracy. God's desire for you to repent and believe the gospel in 2024 is about as provable as God's desire for you to learn Judaism from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“Who is this elder” Oh gosh. This elder who both Polycarp and Ignatius heard, saw and were direct students who studied under this elder, is John the apostle himself. Papias who was himself a contemporary of Polycarp and heard the elder through his disciples and those that heard him, indicates that he is in fact the apostle John himself, Irenaeus also remakes this as well.
@@MrMortal_Ra Hear say all the way down! Why are you so credulous. Why are these "Church Fathers" to be trusted implicitly? Reports of a report of a report by someone we know almost zero about. "The Fathers will show themselves to be wholly destitute of common sense of opinion and of common honesty of statement, credulous and mendacious to the n-th degree." Joseph Wheless. Forgery in Christianity (Kindle Locations 1617-1618). Kindle Edition.
Papias is wrong John Mark (Mark) knew Jesus and the Apostles since the last supper was at his mother's house and he witnessed Jesus being arrested. He was too young to have followed Jesus around like the Apostles. His father was Greek and mother Jewish from so being a translator to Peter makes sense.
Strong evidence is different from truth or definitive evidence. Gospel according to is not clear that they wrote it. They could have told it to a writer or written it. We don’t know. Speculation doesn’t equal truth. This is cute for a school paper in seventh grade but not fact. I was hoping for new info.
No one ho wrote the gospels knew Jesus or had an eye withness account of anything that happened in his life. Case in point. Luke 9 28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. *Wouldn't an omnipotent, omniscient omnipresent god know Moses is a myth* So Jesus had a seance with his imaginary friend? And that is what you believe. Moses has been proven to be a myth by mountains of evidence that shows the Israelites were just another Canaanite tribe that rose to the top after the bronze age collapse. That was the 10th century *BCE* Not a shred of evidence has ever been found support Exodus or Moses or Joshua. Now why would i believe anything else in the gospels?
8:32 So why does "Paul" take great pains to identify himself by name in his letters. He could have left his name out, right? Nobody cares (outside of classicists and a few Christian apologists) if Plutarch is legit. The presence of miracles and fantastic events in the NT make it important who wrote these books and that they were in a position to know what they were talking about. Let's not lower our standards for the all-powerful Yahweh!
8:25 Don't we need higher standards for miracle stories of the "Second Person of the Trinity" coming to Earth and doing miracles? We have independent evidence that these other ancient writers existed and even they DID NOT exist. SO WHAT! I am not asked to place credence in their work on PAIN OF ETERNAL HELL FIRE. See the difference?
Most people are not able to admit ignorance. Christians are taught to not think. If they think then will notice discrepancies. For instance, of the 3 gospels that list the disciples, 2 have the same list and the other list two Judas’.
1:00:30 Um, no. Irenaeus does not say that Papias was a "hearer of John the apostle". You will search in vain for any place in which Irenaeus declares that Papias knew John the apostle.
The most improbable miracle in the Bible is Genesis 1:1, THE CREATION ACCOUNT! If that is possible, nothing isn’t. With this in mind it’s quite clear that this did actually take place (we exist within a created world that had a beginning) and therefore nothing is impossible. If this is true the miracles within the NT would be expected and I’d be surprised if there weren’t miracles given the claims being made of an all powerful God who became man and dwelt among us to save us. I sure would expect things to happen that I can’t explain. And if i didn’t see any, well then that’s just a claim and I have no reason to believe said claim (God became man and dwelt among us).
But u haven't given ONE shred of EVIDENCE of ANY AUTHENTIC ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS TO PROVE ANYTHING IN THIS VIDEO JUST MERE SPECULATION. In time many top scholars will make a rebuttal to this nonsense...specially the claim the original gospels left their original context and read elsewhere 😅😂😂 no explicit evidence given!
Most ancient documents don't have original versions, and yet, you wouldn't reject that they are reliable in the copied versions that we have of the originals. I guess that just magically makes the Gospels unreliable all of a sudden 🤷♂️
@@darkwolf7740 yes it makes them very unreliable for it claims that the holy spirit God inspired them that alone what makes it so different from ancient documents... ancient documents nowhere claims so called Hebrew God the creator inspired ancient documents. However, whats more profound is how can so called pagans as sumerian cuneiform be in their original cuneiform which claims wrote by gods yet the supposed creator who claims to be the author and finisher of ur faith cant even have one shred of any original manuscript...if he did we wouldn't be having this discussion let alone other denominations, along with millions of other skepticism...
With faith the most unreasonable position one can take, and with Christianity in particular being one of the more hideous as well as nonsensical religions ever invented, the entire idea of "Faith Because of Reason" is inherently dishonest.
Where to begin? So "faith" is not a position as such. Faith has no inherent propositional content. So your identification of faith as a position is what's actually nonsensical.
@ObservantHistorian and so the non-responses begin. You chose to comment. If you consider that a waste of time, that's on you buddy. You can pull out any time you like.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I provided a clear response that you ignored. Add your "two gods in one," just part of the Christian polytheism, no different from ancient religions with multiple gods. It's just another mythology. Reason is out the door the minute you believe your invisible gods are any more real than those you reject.
If that's the condition, and if the gospels were written by the same author mentioned in the bible, the biggest problem is, ALL THE 4 APOLOGIES CONTRAINDICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER. THE NEXT PROBLEM IS, GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE, FOUND IN THE BERLIN CODEX, IS ALSO WRITTEN BY ACTUAL CHARECTER, WHO SAW THE TOMB EMPTY. Her GOSPEL is the most unique of all the Gnostic Gospels and it seriously contraindicate the teachings of the Catholic Church. How do you answer these questions?
The church fathers falsify the gnostic sources because they knew that they were false historically, and theologically. Also the gospels don't contradict, they're merely idiosyncratic like eyewitness testimony.
This is spectacular work - a high water mark on the topic!
Thank you very much!
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 how do you respond to the use of skepticism by Roman apologists who say that you can't know authorship or that it's Scripture unless there is an official declaration by their organization?
I have my answer but I'm curious on yours or if you have done a video on that.
@@truthisbeautiful7492 largely the same way I would respond to the skeptics cited in this video. None of the evidence for the authorship of the Gospels cited in my video relied upon a declaration from the RCC.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 thanks I figured that would be the case since I also generally hold to classical apologetics. However I do have sympathy for a John frame type view. My biggest question on classical apologetics is does it *rule out* either the Gospels or Scripture being self authenticating? That is, is it logically possible for classical arguments (example: the Lord Jesus rose from the dead and fulfilled prophecy, He affirmed the OT and promised the NT through the Apostles and their companions, and that has been fulfilled in the NT documents) and for self authentication to be true?
For example, Ireanus of Lyons in the 2nd century makes the argument that the 4 Gospels are from God because of their spiritual power from God to convert sinners, which all the false Gospels do not have. So it would seem Ireanus is teaching the Gospels at least have self authentication. But does that rule out classical arguments?
2. I spend most of my time talking to followers of RC and EO which often reject that there can be a rational conclusion that the NT is the Word of God. But at least in Rome at Vatican 1 if I recall RC are required to believe that reason alone can prove the existence of God and the resurrection. But once the resurrection is proven, (which uses historical documents) it doesn't seem that difficult of a step to look to what Jesus taught on Scripture. So it seems as if the steps they deny are that Jesus affirm the OT or promised the NT, or that we could know that what they consider the historically reliable NT documents are actually Scripture without an official declaration from the council of Trent or Florence or the north african councils, or Trullo or the EO councils of the 17th century (different people appeal to different official statements). The other objection I have heard is that Scripture must have an infallible table of contents on every page or even every verse, which is impossible so therefore you have to relay on some official statement. Thoughts?
PS I've read that historically the Jesuits in the counter reformation tried to use skeptical arguments against the Reformed scholasticism and that is the background to Descartes global skepticism.
Still only halfway done, but I can't help but think that finding some of Papias's original works in full would be the archeological find of a lifetime.
Indeed!
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I think you would be extremely disappointed Eusebius thought Papias was a moron. His works were probably burned.
@@tgrogan6049
Even if Pappas has dubious, and terrible theological takes, and stuff like this, it's very likly that more of his work would name the 4 gospels explicitly at some point, which would still make it a major archeological find as itvwould essentially be the deathblow to all this spurious modern scholarship claims of anonymity.
I mean some people would still argue for it no doubt. But it would be abundantly clear to any outside observer that it is being argued from a place of extreme bias against authentic gospel authorship, as opposed to now where the evidence is still not in their favor, but they have just enough historical wiggle room to make claims about being objective in said denial of authentic authorship.
@@anthonypolonkay2681 Why would you give credence to a person who spoke such fantastic ideas and put crazy sayings in Jesus mouth? Eusebius apparently had the works of Papias and only quoted him very sparingly. Why do you think he didn't use his work more????
@@tgrogan6049
The saying about vines and grades sounds actually alot like something jesus might have said. For one of two reasons, perhaps a combination of both.
Firstly jesus often taught on parables. It's extremely likly that if jesus said this, it was a parable. We are not given context of jesus speech through the quotes of papius. And it seems that the critics MO is to only allow a hyper liberalism wooden interpretation of the quote for the purpouses of discrediting papers, which is extremely disingenuous.
The other reason it might be something jesus actually said is that it seems to harken to thr ultimate end of everything in christendom. that is after the tribulation, and the millennium riegn god destroys the universe, abd recreates it back to its perfected" very good" state before the fall. Alot of what thr quote is saying seems to harken to that garden of eden type state that everything is supposed to be made back into.
There's ofcourse no reason to dogmaticly defend either of those positions, or that jesus even said it since it's not a dirrectly recorded first hand account of the saying like the gospels supposedly are.
But the big issue isn't uf papius is some super reliable guy on everything he says theologically, I mean we know that later accretion to the faith, abd tradition happened, that's why stuff like the papacy eventually came about. So if this quote is wrong then that's something we can chalk it up to.
The issue is if ANY first century, or very early second century source explicitly mentions the gospels by name that is pretty much ball game for the anonymity hypothesis, because we aren't trying to establish the authorship as authentic in a vacuum. We know by mid second century the 4 names were unanimously attributed to the gospels because there are no competing traditions from there. The anonymity argument is trying to say that some time after the mid to late first century (because you have to have time to let everyone who was there when the gospels started circulating die off otherwise you'll have big logical issues with trying to attribute later names to original anonymous stuff) so you have roughly 50 years if we are being generous between that, and when we get irrenaus mentions of the gospel names.
That is unfortunatly just enough supposed wiggle room for skeptics to pretend they are being logical with assigning anonymity. In real life thinking with common sense. That's not actually enough time at all, because if I wrote an anonymous book today and it got famous but nobody knew who it was, if you waited 20 years after I died to start slapping names on it, you won't have a solid case for trying to say that the book was always written by me, a d everyone always knew it was written by me, because there's going to be a litany of people who lived most of thier lives knowing that nobody actually knows who wrote that book, and if a movement trys to start saying it was always Anthony who wrote it most of those people aren't going to just start believing you, and there's going tk arise a ton of competing ideas for who actually wrote that book, and nobody os ever gunna actually know, or get it settled. Kinda like how the book of Hebrews always was.
With those factors in mind, and in our search tk determine how the naming tradition was started if you get mentions of those names before or at 100ish AD. That's ballgame. There's no chance that those gospels were originally anonymous because most of the people alive at the time that citation comes from are like middle aged at most when the gospels started circulating, mabey the ones who were around for when mathew, and mark got circulated would be up there, and starting to get pretty old, but they would still be around to call foul.
Now this doesn't prove those gospels were written by those people, just that the tradition goes all the way back to the first century of their names being on it. And thag presents a problem for trying to say they didn't write it because that puts it contemporary with the supposed authors.
Imagine if a book was circulated saying C.S Lewis wrote it, while he was still alive, but he didn't. Someone just slapped his name on it. Then the idea that he wrote it isn't going to last very long once C.S Lewis starts calling it out.
That's called the "says who" criteria. Abd once you have mentions of the gospels far enough back to reach roughly 100AD that critera had to have been met In order for those gospel authorship to stick.
Masterfully done!!!
Without having watched your series on the "Synoptic Problem," I will toss in my two cents: Nearly all the difficulties surrounding the alleged "problem" disappear if you accept that these three books were all written within the same decade by men who knew each other, and indeed may have been close together geographically at the time they were creating their first drafts. Therefore I believe Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all written between 50 and 60 AD, and were complete and beginning to circulate BEFORE Paul was transported from Caesarea to Rome.
That certainly makes more textual and chronological sense than the ridiculous assertion that Luke was written after 90 AD and must have borrowed from the works of Josephus!
This is how I date them.
Matthew and Mark between 49 and 54 AD, Luke between 60 and 62 AD, and John between 60 and 70 AD.
Would you like me to provide some solid evidence as to why I believe this?
I place Matthew and Luke in the 40s (since I think that Paul uses them). I place Mark in the early 60s. As stated in the video, I think that John had two editions, one prior to AD 70, and one soon after John's death in the early 90s.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381
What do you think of the following evidence that I've examined for early dating?
1) Acts were written between 62 and 65 AD.
Acts abruptly ended in 62 AD, with no mention of Paul's final trial and execution that occurred no later than 65 AD.
Given that Luke recorded in detail Paul's trial before both Antonius Felix and Porcius Festus, he would have also recorded Paul's trial before Caesar if he wrote it after Paul had died.
See Acts 24:1-26, and Acts 25:1-12
Therefore, since Luke does not record it, Acts must have been written prior to this since it had not yet occurred.
2) The Gospel of Luke was written shortly before Acts, either during the 3 months he spent with Paul in Malta or during the 2 years that Paul was under house arrest, awaiting the trial before Caesar.
Both Acts and the Gospel of Luke are addressed to Theophilus, implied within the text to be written in quick succession.
See Luke 1:3, Acts 1:1, Acts 28:11, and Acts 28:30
Paul's trial occurred in 58 AD, 2 years before Antonius Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus in 60 AD as the 5th Roman Procerator of the Judean Province.
See Acts 24:27
3) The Council of Jerusalem was in 49 AD.
In this council, they spoke of spreading 'the Gospel' as opposed to 'their Gospel', suggesting that nobody had yet written down a Gospel.
See Acts 15:1-21
4) The foretelling of the future seige of Jerusalem in 70 AD is within all 4 canonical Gospels.
Given that they all prophesied the future seige, we can conclude that all 4 canonical Gospels must have been written prior to this, or else, it would make no sense for the authors to warn of the seige if it had already occured.
See Mark 13:1-31, Matthew 24:1-35, Luke 21:5-38, and John 5:1-5
5) Irenaeus of Lyons notes,
"Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter."
Paul and Peter were preaching in Rome from 42 to 54 AD, placing both Matthew and Mark prior to 54 AD since Mark was written before Matthew.
Therefore, we can conclude the following...
Mark (49 - 54 AD)
Matthew (49 - 54 AD)
Luke (60 - 62 AD)
John (60 - 70 AD)
@darkwolf7740 well I think that Mark shows literary dependence upon both Matthew and Luke so I'd kick him up to 61-62 AD.
But I definitely agree with a lot of your comments on Acts.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381
While I agree that Mark had his own sources of information in the Gospels, I disagree with the idea that he wrote after both Matthew and Luke.
Let's analyse the information recorded in the Gospels to see if your claim holds weight. I have listed the data in accordance with the Gospels from earliest to latest (Mark, Matthew, Luke, then John).
1) The number of miracles recorded.
Mark (22)
Matthew (20)
Luke (21)
John (7)
Excluding John, there is an insignificant decrease of 1.
Including John, there is a significant decrease of 15.
2) The number of place names and places of interest recorded (E.g, I recorded 'Galilee' and 'Sea of Galilee' as 2 separate places).
Mark (21)
Matthew (26)
Luke (24)
John (21)
Excluding John, there is an insignificant increase of 3.
Including John, there is no change.
3) The number of named people recorded (excluding Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Prophets, and the Disciples).
Mark (19)
Matthew (13)
Luke (23)
John (13)
Excluding John, there is an insignificant increase of 4.
Including John, there is a significant decrease of 6.
4) The number of recorded witnesses who watched the crucifixion of Jesus.
Mark (3 - see Mark 15:40)
Matthew (3 - see Matthew 27:56)
Luke (4 - see Luke 23:49, and John 19:25)
John (4 - see John 19:25)
Excluding John, there is an insignificant increase of 1.
Including John, there is an insignificant increase of 1.
5) The number of recorded witnesses who went to the tomb of Jesus.
Mark (3, see Mark 16:1)
Matthew (2, see Matthew 28:1)
Luke (3, see Luke 24:10)
John (1, see John 20:1)
Excluding John, there is no change.
Including John, there is an insignificant decrease of 2.
6) The total of recorded details from 1) to 5)
Mark (68)
Matthew (64)
Luke (75)
John (45)
Excluding John, there is a significant increase of 7.
Including John, there is a significant decrease of 23.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Conclusions
1) There is sufficient evidence to suggest that both Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their Gospels.
Matthew records 94% of Mark, whereas Luke records 91% of Mark and 85% of Matthew.
This supports the idea that Mark and Matthew were written early, before Luke, and that Mark was the 1st written Gospel.
c) There is no sufficient evidence to suggest that John used Matthew, Mark, or Luke as a source for his Gospel.
John records 66% of Mark, 70% of Matthew, and 60% of Luke.
This supports the idea that John was the last written Gospel.
This is incredible and deserves more attention. Unfortunately I am not educated enough on this side of Bible history to be able to understand much😭🙏 but then again I’m also listening to this while at work. I’ll give it another shot in the future! But again, from what I could understand this is incredible and certainly has given me confidence. God bless you.
This is very good. I have been wanting to write an academic paper on the maximal data argument for the resurrection, with the first part of the entire paper focusing on the reliability of the gospels.
@faithbecauseofreason8381 Honestly, your type of argumentation reminds me of early Michael Jones so big ups
I was looking forward to you posting this, and right on time to start watching on my lunch break
Enjoy!
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 The video or the lunch 🤔
@@darkwolf7740 both?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 That's hearsay, my friend
Thank you from India! Love your work!!
Thanks for watching!
Me from India too!
I like the point you make about Matthew. Why would someone assign his name to the Gospel when he was a tax collector?
Those kinds of people were highly disliked in the 1st century, so for someone to make up that he was the author, if he wasn't, would be just as ridiculous as claiming that Jesus wrote the Gospels.
It's especially absurd that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, three fairly obscure figures from the New Testament, would have gospels ascribed to them when one considers that the apocryphal gospels just a few decades later didn't hesitate to ascribe gospels to big names such as Peter, Mary Magdalene, and even Jesus himself.
@@Michael-bk5nz There's actually a Gospel of Jesus? I was just joking 😂
@@darkwolf7740 yes, the Fathers of the Church mention such a document, whether a copy has been found yet I do not know, in fact just about every apocryphal gospel ever found was mentioned in the writings of the Fathers, so we always knew about them
@@Michael-bk5nz
That's pretty crazy 😬 I hope they find a lost copy. It would be interesting to see how different it is to the Gospels...
As for the Gospels, if I was making up 4 authors, I'd go for Peter, Jesus, Paul, and Mary Magdalene.
The fact that the authors include a ridiculed tax collector, a student of a disciple, and a man who accompanied a prior subduer of Christians gives me reason to believe they are the true authors.
@@darkwolf7740 not only did Mark accompany Paul but Acts records that Barnabas and Paul had a falling out over Mark because Mark deserted Paul on a mission and Paul refused to work with him again.... Not a very prestigious person to attribute a gospel to
All this time, all these discussions, and i never heard "title page, duh" as the necessary and sufficient analysis of this topic.
The main problem with new testament "scholarship" is the lack of experimental controls. The new testament apparently gives people license to invent critical methodology that would collapse if used on any other book
"I have few of the skills and little of the knowledge New Testament criticism requires…But I do know something about reasoning, and I have been simply amazed by some of the arguments employed by redaction critics. My first reaction to these arguments, written up a bit, could be put in these words: "I'm missing something here. These appear to be glaringly invalid arguments, employing methods transparently engineered to produce negative judgments of authenticity. But no one, however badly he might want to produce a given set of conclusions, would "cook" his methods to produce the desired results quite so transparently. These arguments must depend on tacit premises, premises the reaction critics regard as so obvious that they don't bother to mention them." Peter van Inwagen, "Do You Want us to Listen to You?" C. Bartholomew et al. eds. "Behind" the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation (Zondervan, 2003), 127
False, the encyclopedic compilation of Greek myth called the Bibliotheca is often now attributed, not to Apollodorus of Athens, but to "pseudo-Apollodorus" and the Catasterismi, recounting the translations of mythic figure into asterisms and constellations, not to the serious astronomer Eratosthenes, but to a "pseudo-Eratosthenes", and it is likewise with the Homeric Hymns. Ancient Greek authors often refer to texts which claimed to be by Orpheus or his pupil Musaeus of Athens but which attributions were generally disregarded.
This is very tightly reasoned, and the dialectical structure superb.
I am alway surprised, even when attending a conservative seminary, how easily it is for people to concede that the Gospels are anonymous. The mere fact that there is consistency in the title of the works appearing in the early manuscripts is empirical evidence against it. There are no complete manuscripts without the appellations. To say they were “added” is not supported by evidence.
The presumption, especially in light of the external historical witness should be in favor of known authors.
Your case provides even more reason in support of this reality.
But presuming apostolic authorship of the gospels doesn't hurt skeptics in the least. You are still fallaciously presuming that somebody or something "intended" the audience for the gospels to be broader than merely the 1st century people the authors manifestly intended. I'm not confident you can show that anybody or anything intended an authorship any broader than the 1st century people. So that if I ignore the gospels 2000 years later, I cannot possibly be unreasonable, because all I'm doing is ignoring 2000 year old testimony that was never meant for me in the first place.
Are you quite sure that God demands of unbelievers today anything that he demanded of 1st century unbelievers? Where's that in the bible? If you can find it, is your interpretation/application of the text so clear and compelling that only fools would disagree with it?
@@Tom-j4v7f, Thanks for the question. I take it as an argument that is assuming the Bible to be true on its own claims-otherwise it would not matter what it said, if God does not exist and it is not his revelation-and you are asking for evidence that it claims or intends to have something to say to us today and not only to those in the first century.
What would be the evidence for this? It would be a teaching in the Bible that it’s message was for all mankind and for all time.
On the Bible’s own terms, here are some claims that it makes.
Romans 4:20-25 (ESV): 20 No unbelief made him [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” *were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.*
Romans 15:4 (ESV): 4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
The teaching of scripture is a narrative of the divine sacrifice of God for the sake of his beloved creation.
From the promised seed of the women, who would cut down the dragon of self-deception, to the the rejection of child sacrifice of Issac and the provision of a substitute by God himself, to the incarnation of the son of a virgin, a new humanity, who was God written into the fabric of his own narrative, and dies at his peoples hands, yet declares their forgiveness.
This one claims to be the Lord of heaven, but seeks those who would not come in compulsion but will be “willing in the day of his power” (Ps. 110:3). He is the hidden treasure who would be sought for himself out of love, even as he seeks for us (Mat. 13:44)-in secret, for the sake of authenticity. Nor is he far from anyone of us, for as even the Greek poets have said, in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
There was an immediate imminence of his coming in judgment to that first generation who saw his death and heard his resurrection proclaimed to the covenant people. And that promise came to fulfillment with the destruction of the old temple system (this is open to all history, it is known).
Yet, this was proclaimed long before by Isa. 66:3 (after Messiah, “He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man”) and Daniel 9:26 (“And the [Judean] people of [Jesus] the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come). In the last days of the old covenant (Heb. 1:1) it was proclaimed by Jesus-But he answered them, “You see all these [temple buildings], do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mat. 24:3), all this shall come upon this generation (Mat. 24:34).
Yet there remain promises of restoration to Israel and for the Gentiles who will hear the Apostles of Jesus.
As Peter proclaimed in Acts 3:17-21 (ESV): I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and *that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”*
This promise is not just for those of the first century. As Peter said to them: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and *for your children and for all who are far off,* everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself (Acts 2:38-39).
This is the “eternal gospel” (Rev. 14:6), this is the “faith” of Seth, and Abraham, and David, in its various degrees of revelation, “which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Titus 1:3). And it matters to us today, because our individual moral meaning is based upon a future day when the only Father that matters will either say “this is my son” and “well done” or “I don’t know you” (Acts 17:31).
So, that, from inside the reality described by the many writings of the Bible, over many thousands of years, is why it is still relevant to you and to me.
You don’t need to believe it. But the Lord commands us to believe it. Yet, not in power of compulsion but by the inner work of reason and the spirit of love. These are the ones that Jesus seeks:
John 4:21-24 (ESV): 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Of this truth, with much difficulty, I have been persuaded. I don’t know about you, but I would know myself a fool if I were to ignore it.
@@jrhemmerich Thanks for the question. I take it as an argument that is assuming the Bible to be true on its own claims
--------------
Yes, feel free to assume the bible is the inerrant word of God. Your cited bible verses are problematic. "but for ours also" and "our instruction" are referring to Paul and his intended readers. If you come along and insist Paul or somebody intended the "we" and "our" to include those beyond Paul's contemporaries, that is YOUR claim, for which YOU have the burden of proof. I'm not seeing anything about the Pauline authorship of those texts, nor their contexts, that suggests Paul or anybody else intended such words to reach beyond his 1st century contemporaries.
"The teaching of scripture is a narrative of the divine sacrifice of God for the sake of his beloved creation."
-------------And when you show that God intended for 21st century Gentiles to obey anything God demanded of Gentiles in the NT, we can talk.
"From the promised seed of the women, who would cut down the dragon of self-deception,"
---------You are assuming somebody connected to the authorship of the NT intended such a narrative for anybody living after the first century. Why? Revelation was written to 7 first century churches, with no evidence that John intended to address anybody living in the 21st century.
"to the the rejection of child sacrifice of Issac and the provision of a substitute by God himself,"
----------stories intended for the original authors' contemporaries, we all agree. YOU come along and insist these were also intended for people of the 21st century too. How do you know this? You are applying the bible in a way that is so lacking in foundation that we can hardly be unreasonable to reject such application.
"to the incarnation of the son of a virgin,"
-----------God became incarnate before Jesus. See Genesis 18:1-2, but that hardly necessitates that God intended such a story to be communicated to 21sts century people. As far as Jesus, yes, a savior sent to die for the sins of his 1st century people. Nothing in the bible expresses or implies that Jesus died for the sins of Trump or Biden.
"a new humanity, who was God written into the fabric of his own narrative, and dies at his peoples hands, yet declares their forgiveness."
-----------The forgiveness available to 1st century people, yes.
This one claims to be the Lord of heaven, but seeks those who would not come in compulsion but will be “willing in the day of his power” (Ps. 110:3).
-----------See the doctrine of full preterism. Jesus fulfilled his second-coming promises before the close of the 1st century. No evidence that "day of his power" was delayed beyond the 1st century. Would you advise today's spiritually dead people to evaluate the differences between Christian preterists and Christian anti-preterists? How do you know God wants them to perform such evaluations? Does God speak through you with the same degree of certitude that you believe God spoke through the biblical authors prophets and apostles?
"He is the hidden treasure who would be sought for himself out of love, even as he seeks for us (Mat. 13:44)
--------What evidence is there that Matthew intended 21st century people to believe Mat. 13:44 was for them?
"in secret, for the sake of authenticity. Nor is he far from anyone of us, for as even the Greek poets have said, in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
--------"us" in context means the 1st century people Paul was addressing, but you don't show that Paul intended the "us" to include 21st century people. And besides, "in him we live and move and have our being" is just Paul's way of paraphrasing from prior pagan poets to pique the interest of his contemporary pagan audience, which makes it impossible for you to persuasively argue Paul intended the "us" to include 21st century people. Would Paul have have quoted Epimenedes of Crete to pagans living today? Would God expect such a quote to pique the interest of 21st century pagans the way it did the 1st century pagans? Not likely.
"There was an immediate imminence of his coming in judgment to that first generation who saw his death and heard his resurrection proclaimed to the covenant people. And that promise came to fulfillment with the destruction of the old temple system (this is open to all history, it is known)."
"Yet, this was proclaimed long before by Isa. 66:3 (after Messiah, “He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man”) and Daniel 9:26 (“And the [Judean] people of [Jesus] the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come). In the last days of the old covenant (Heb. 1:1) it was proclaimed by Jesus-But he answered them, “You see all these [temple buildings], do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mat. 24:3), all this shall come upon this generation (Mat. 24:34).
------------Ok, the promise was seen fulfilled by 1st century people "this generation". How does that argue that the promise was intended for 21st century people?
"Yet there remain promises of restoration to Israel and for the Gentiles who will hear the Apostles of Jesus.
As Peter proclaimed in Acts 3:17-21 (ESV): I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”
This promise is not just for those of the first century. As Peter said to them: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself (Acts 2:38-39).
----------"and for all who are afar off" is referring to separation by distance, and nobody denies that Paul and others traveled great distances to bring the gospel to people physically far away from Jerusalem. If you think it "afar off" also meant separation in TIME, that's YOUR burden.
@@jrhemmerichPART TWO
"This is the “eternal gospel” (Rev. 14:6),
---------- And that "eternal" can still be temporary is clear from Jude 1:7, which refers to the clearly temporal fires that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as "eternal", and it does not express or imply that the killed inhabitants are suffering in literally eternal fire in an afterworld. And many of the Mosaic Theocracy's self-descriptions similarly say the theocracy was a permanent ordinance (Lev. 16:29), but nobody says this automatically requires that it applies to everybody in the future. Since "eternal gospel" doesn't mean "applies to absolutely everybody in the future", that phrase does not fulfill your burden to show that anybody connected to the authorship of the original version of the NT ever intended a 21st century audience.
"this is the “faith” of Seth, and Abraham, and David, in its various degrees of revelation, “which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Titus 1:3).
----------The saints whom Paul was addressing, or 1st century people. You do not show that Paul there intended "saints" to include anybody beyond his indisputably 1st century addressees.
"And it matters to us today, because our individual moral meaning is based upon a future day when the only Father that matters will either say “this is my son” and “well done” or “I don’t know you” (Acts 17:31)."
-------You do not show that what Paul preached to the 1st century people he ever intended to be expanded to 21st century unbelievers. The Christian eschatological view called full preterism does a fantastic job of limiting the fulfillment of biblical promises to before the 2nd century a.d. If anybody trifles that "partial preterism" is better, its only because they espouse inerrancy, and some biblical promises intended for 1st century people had failed, and failed prophecy is not acceptable to inerrantists. But their concern to preserve the bible error-free hardly constitutes anything the least bit compelling upon an unbeliever.
"So, that, from inside the reality described by the many writings of the Bible, over many thousands of years, is why it is still relevant to you and to me."
----------Nothing you quoted from the bible expresses or implies that the responsible authors intended any audience any broader than the 1st century people we already know they were addressing.
"You don’t need to believe it. But the Lord commands us to believe it. Yet, not in power of compulsion but by the inner work of reason and the spirit of love. These are the ones that Jesus seeks: John 4:21-24 (ESV): 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Of this truth, with much difficulty, I have been persuaded. I don’t know about you, but I would know myself a fool if I were to ignore it.
--------------Jesus' phrase "and is now here" makes it likely impossible for you to justify expanding what he said to anybody living after the first century.
Another problem with your viewpoint is that despite the fact that the promises clearly applied to 1st century people and their application to post-1st century people is highly controversial at best, you talk as if the the promises were equally applicable to both 1st century and 21st century people. Humility would require that you reduce the dogmatism when the bible is less than clear about something. And the bible is much less clear in applying the promises to 21st century people. I'm sorry, but today's Christians who try to "imitate Paul' despite admittedly lacking his divine inspiration, are fools. Those who lack that level of divine inspiration have no right to scream just as loudly as Paul about what he meant.
@@Tom-j4v7f, I will point point out an inferential argument that I consider the a descent an answer to your question.
But where is the argument to support your assumed position? What is the basis for the view that a person is limited to speaking only to their time?
Where does Moses, Jesus, or Paul say their words only applied to those who hear them? Where is this artificial rule coming from?
To answer your question. Your assumption makes no sense in the context of the Bible, because the Bible starts as a history of all mankind, with Abraham it becomes a story about the redemption of Abraham's seed and all mankind. The good news of Jesus was the new covenant fulfillment of the old promise which was for the salvation of the world.
Jesus told Thomas that he had enough information to believe without seeing for himself, and these who believed without being there like Thomas was would be blessed. The answer to your question is that the Old covenant was for thousands (all) generations to follow, and the New Covenant is for all generations.
I'm interesting in your reason for your view. But honestly, it seems oddly idiosyncratic to you.
Brilliant, David!
Excellent video, very well structured and argued. Thanks!
Wondering if youd make a response to paulogias new video? Theres just so much info in it, its hard to parse.
I already did one on Testify's channel
@faithbecauseofreason8381 oh I meant the new new one. I'll be sure to go back and watch the talk you had though.
@@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser I hadn't seen that one. Is there anything new in it? Kamil's criticisms are the same basic arguments I've already critiqued between this video and my follow-up on supposed Gospel anonymity.
@faithbecauseofreason8381 I couldn't tell honestly. I only got like 2/3 of the way through and just had to stop. So many names and dates and references to other material, it was just impossible to keep straight. If Kamil's critiques are roughly the same, then meh, just wondering because I hadn't heard of him and thought he might be a new voice on this topic.
@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser oh no, he's old news. He has an article out there which skeptics have cited to me dozens of times before. TBH most of the arguments in that article are addressed in this video and my follow-up. I strongly suspect that this video from Paulogia is just going to be the video version of that article.
I'll give it watch at some point to see if there's anything new to be found. But I honestly expect that I have already responded to most of the arguments which he's going to make.
Great video brother
So if Hebrews is anonymous why is it authoritative? If it is authoritative while being anonymous why can't the Gospels be authoritative and be anonymous?
Excellent point. And since nothing in the bible expresses or implies that God wants any unbeliever to consider traditional gospel authorship arguments, we can plausibly justify ignoring such arguments by pointing out that modern day defenses of traditional gospel authorship boil down to a Phariseeic effort to lure us into a bunch of uncertain trifling that we are under no obligation to consider in the first place. Nothing in the bible expresses or implies that God wants unbelievers to render probability judgments about gospel authorship.
Yeah… I don’t know where the fuck your getting that argument from? Faith because of reasons, doesn’t even mention that argument.
Hebrews being anonymous isn’t a problem bs A. It is not a biography, or and B. It was not always anonymous, the original author and or authors have simply been forgotten.
It is very likely that Priscilla, Paul, Apollos and perhaps Aquila, all played a role in Hebrews, and which in addition to its very sound doctrine, explains why it was viewed as scripture and authoritative among believers every since it began to be distributed.
Edit: The Gospels could be anonymous, and still authoritative, the problem is that the arguments for the anonymity of the gospels are poor, and don’t take into consideration several historical norms of the time, and the positive data and evidence shows the authors have always been known, why would Christians insist on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, just to openly acknowledge they forgot who wrote Hebrews?!
I might also point out that in quoting Irenaeus " Only fragments of the original text in ancient Greek remain today, but many complete copies in Latin, the dates of writing of which remain unknown, still survive. Books IV and V exist in their entirety in a literal version in Armenian." Another problem for apologetics is the lateness of these texts from the "Church Fathers" remember we are talking about miraculous events here, so we need a lot of good solid evidence.
What's interesting is that nothing in the bible expresses or implies that unbelievers are obligated by God to read a "bible". We cannot possibly be unreasonable in ignoring the bible, because the Christians cannot show that God ever wanted us to read a "bible" in the first place.
@@Tom-j4v7f Hey if you got some time check out the Jordan Peterson Christians. Mystical humbuggery all the way down. They science haters and absolutely thrilled to see 'the collapse of modernity"! Sick.
@@Tom-j4v7fI can tell you’ve never thoroughly read the Bible, or scholarship, and commentaries on it.
@@justchilling704 Ok, make your strongest argument that your god wants anybody living in the 21st century to read the bible.
24:35 Why doesn't Justin Martyr name the gospels? Because he didn't know the names? That is a very logical explanation!
No. This is just silly as this point. Justin as well as his audience would have absolutely no ground to stand on whatsoever in any shape or form at all to remark the gospels as written by the apostles “and those that followed them”, if they didn’t already know the identity of these apostles or there companions. “But… but… but… he doesn’t name them with the names Matthew, Mark, Luke or John or clear names, so he is treating them as if he doesn’t know the authorship.”
This is a stupidity of an argument since Justin also calls the writings of the prophets “memoirs” in the same passage when he calls the gospels that, and he doesn’t slap names on like Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, David or Jeremiah (for example). So I guess Justin didn’t know who was thought to have written the texts of the Hebrew Bible, or any writings of the Old Testament for that matter, since he doesn’t slap names on. No. It’s just pure and utter nonsense and stupidity.
Further more, why does Justin think that the gospels were written by the apostles and there companions in the first place? Where do you think he got that does from? Well? At no point did Justin or his audience ever ask the question “oh, oh, who exactly were these apostles and there companions? Was it Peter, Thomas, Andrew, or maybe it was James…?” No. This argument fails from a lack of logic and explanation. The better explanation is that Justin and his audience knew who wrote the gospels..
Pretty good synopsis, and a good scholarly approach to the evidence. A couple points I thought were pretty weak, specifically Papius' mention of John or even having known John the apostle. Not a very convincing link. And the explanation for Papius errant quoting of the gospel of Matthew, a lot to surmise from a misunderstanding of translation alone. All in all, very good video.
Errant quoting of Matthew? What are you talking about?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Or what he was quoting as the gospel of Matthew I should say, sorry about that.
@@AnyProofOfTheseClaims Papias doesn't quote from Matthew. Are you referring to the issue of Papais supposedly saying that Matthew was written in Hebrew?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Correct. I also want to point out your issue of Eusebius lacking respect for Papius, your argument was great there and convinced me that's not a contentious issue as I thought.
@@AnyProofOfTheseClaims I think that Gundry, Orchard, and Kurtzinger have given good arguments for thinking that Papais doesn't say that Matthew was written in the Hebrew language. But at the very least, skeptics can't merely assume that he does. They need to argue for this.
Great Job David! Loved it
You a Matthean priorist yet? 😀
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 well, I've always been open on this issue haha but yeah your case made a lot of sense.
Interesting will watch it.
Love your high quality videos. God bless you.
Glad you like them!
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Plot Twist: It's not the high quality videos that they love, it's you
@@darkwolf7740 daaaaawwwwww 💕
@@faithbecauseofreason8381
You got that secret admirer... but the next question is... are they anonymous, or can we identify the author of this comment 🤔
WE NEED A VIDEO ON THIS IMMEDIATELY
@@darkwolf7740 🤣
Plan to watch this later! Quick question: does this video address the claim that the Didache and Justin Martyr believed the Gospels were anonymous?
This video does not, no. This is the positive case for the traditional authorship of the Gospels. In an upcoming video, I will take on the arguments for the anonymity of the Gospels including the supposed anonymity of the Gospels in early Patristic literature.
Justin Martyr mentions “how the New Testament, which God formerly announced” Dialogue with Trypho the Jew ch.51 p.221.
“For the Apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them;” First Apology of Justin ch.66 p.185
Allusion: Acts 1:7 Justin On the Resurrection ch.9 p.298
This tells us that 1. Christians possessed
"memoirs" of Jesus which were also called Gospels and 2. They were written by apostles and by those who were their followers something else about Justin Martyr is that he had a student called Tatain who wrote the Diatessaron, the four New Testament Gospels compiled as a single narrative by Tatian (q.v.) about AD 150. It was the standard Gospel text in the Syrian Middle East until about AD 400, when it was replaced by the four separated Gospels. Quotations from the Diatessaron appear in ancient Syriac literature, but no ancient Syriac manuscript now exists. A 3rd-century Greek papyrus fragment was discovered in 1933 at Doura-Europus, northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. Whether the original writing was done in Greek or Syriac is unknown. There are also manuscripts in Arabian and Persian and translations into European languages made during the Middle Ages.
Justin Martyr mentions a literal millennium in Dialogue with Trypho the Jew ch.75-81 p.236-240. In ch.81 he says, “And further, there was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that thereafter the general, and, in short, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place.”
You can be convinced of something because there is good reason.
Or you can illustrate a depth of faith in the relative absence of reason.
But you can not have a great amount of both at the same time.
The more you are exercising reason, the less you can exercise faith. These are complimentary portions of belief.
If you value reason, it is at the expense of faith.
Faith is trust in someone, including that what they tell you is true and not a lie. This is not opposed to reason. In fact, it can be very reasonable to have faith in someone (based on experience, personal corroboration, testimony of others whom one trusts/has faith in, etc.)
Just as human reasoning can be flawed based on faulty logic, incomplete data, etc., so too can faith in humans be flawed for similar reasons. Yet we still reason and have faith.
11:38 That assumes that "Theophilus" is a real person and not just a shorthand for "Friend Of God, Loving God, Loved By God". This preface , if it isn't a later addition, seems to assume many gospels in circulation pointing to a late first or early second century date.
For anyone reading, tne reason some suspect that Theophilus is really a person, a higher ranking Roman official, is that the term "most excellent" or "excellent" is also used of Luke to describe other high ranking officials in his narrative in Acts. Of "Felix" and of "Festus" in Acts 23, 24, and 26.
@@youngknowledgeseeker Yes nobody would ever think of making up such a thing to enhance credibility! Are you kidding?
@@tgrogan6049This is a fucking joke at this point. “He.. he… made it up… for authority…” evidence? Data? Reason? No. Just an assertion.
@@MrMortal_Ra Don't most religious texts make up a lot of things? Isn't that the general rule with this type of literature? Strictly background probabilities and no special pleading for "special texts"!
@@tgrogan6049 No. Again, like I said before: a fucking joke. Get some evidence and then we’ll talk.
16:02 So someone (or many people) "edited, redacted changed the original "divinely inspired" text of John's Gospel? Who are these people and what did the add or subtract from the gospel of John? Doesn't this throw the entire story into doubt. What does this do to "verbal, plenary inspiration"? "Inerrancy"? Where the editors and redactors also divinely inspired?
I never mentioned inspiration or inerrancy. Has zero bearing on my arguments.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So you don't believe they are inerrant or inspired. Being a bit disingenuous, no?
@tgrogan6049 I believe that they are inspired, but I could grant for the sake of argument that they are not. Regardless of whether they are inspired, my arguments for traditional authorship go through. In this video I am arguing for the traditional authorship of the Gospels, not for their divine inspiration.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So you must rely on "Church tradition" are you going to become a Roman Catholic? Papias? Irenaeus? do these people really have any credibility? Eusebius had a very low opinion of Papias quotes him very sparingly. Who is the "Elder" that Papias allegedly uses as a source for the origin of Mark? Matthew consists of a lot more than a "logia" in Hebrew ( I believe Mike Licona stated that the original Matthew was lost.)
@@tgrogan6049 these issues are already addressed in the video
If they were false, the Romans could have written a tome refuting them, whenever they came out.
Simple argument yet obvious
@@OrthodoxJoker Yup. Blessings.
Have you ever thought of covering Hatsoff's response to this video?
Maybe at some point. I covered a lot of his objections in my response to Kevin Nontradicath on Gospel anonymity though, so I almost feel like it would be redundant.
Great job covering all the angles. It was as if the skeptics kept throwing any kind of mud against the wall to make their arguments stick and you kept hosing them down.
For your consideration:
1. John's Gospel contributes to the skeptics' supposition of anonymity since the author is so self-effacing. He was the unnamed beloved disciple: (A) who leaned on Jesus' chest at the Last Supper and asked who was to betray Him; (B) who stood with Jesus' mother at the foot of the cross; (C) who ran ahead of Peter to the empty tomb but waits for Peter to arrive to enter first; (D) who was mentioned only as one of Zebedee's sons at the Sea of Tiberius and (E) whose future status is there discussed by Jesus and Peter.
2. Now consider John 1:40 (ESV): "One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother." The other of the two is not mentioned by name in this chapter. Andrew is honored by the Orthodox Church as the First-Called (Protokletos). However, wouldn't the First-Called designation equally apply jointly to this other unnamed follower of Jesus?
3. Consistent with the self-effacing authorship demonstrated in No. 1 above, just who might this unnamed other first follower of Jesus be in the first chapter of John's Gospel?
Great video! Just a quick question in regards to Papias. He makes it really clear in his preface that he is only concerned about getting his information from eyewitnesses and from people in attendance of the eyewitnesses. You say that Papias may actually be reliably relaying the traditions from these elders, such as the tradition of Judas or the vines. Do you think these “dubious” (for lack of a better term) traditions originated from people who were so close up to the facts? People who had direct access to the apostles themselves? If these traditions really did originate from them, how can we trust anything else they related to Papias if indeed, Papias was reliable in relaying their traditions?
If we believe Papias in that passage, he also obtained this tradition from John the apostle as well. That's one reason I think it likely goes back to Jesus.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So you’d maintain that Papias reliably relayed what the elders said about the vine tradition and that John the Apostle himself relayed this same tradition? I know in your video, you said you don’t see it conflicting with theology or doctrine, but don’t you think it’s a bit weird? Could it be that the elders/Papias misunderstood John and that John did not attribute this to Jesus? Furthermore, even if this is the case, do you still think that these very early elders, who had direct access to apostles, had such a “false” (for lack of a better word) tradition in regards to Judas so early to begin with that Papias thought that their testimony was so authoritative to then include it in his own writings? This somewhat legendary tradition seems surprising if these elders where so close up to the facts and had access to the apostles and other people who may have potentially seen Jesus. It kind of lends credence to what the skeptic would say when they say that you don’t need years for a myth to develop. It can develop within days.
@lukadasilva7050 I don't see anything particular weird about it. Jesus certainly said more than is recorded in the Gospels. I would expect some of it to survive. The statement about the grapes and vines may be just that.
As for Judas, we have no idea where this tradition came from nor even how much of it Papias actually records. We have no reason to think that Papias actually believed this let alone than any other elders believed this.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Isn’t it arbitrary to say we don’t know where the Judas tradition came from if Papias literally says, “Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself”? If this tradition did not come from the elders, it sure does sound like a tradition from “those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments”, which Papias explicitly says he takes no pleasure in. In regards to the vine tradition, I can see how one can accept that Jesus might have said something like this so that may not be such a big problem, it just seems kind of weird to me. Thanks for responding to the comments btw!
@lukadasilva7050 I don't think it's arbitrary. In that passage, Papias doesn't say that absolutely everything he ever reports comes from the Lord's disciples or the elders. This gets back to my point that we don't have the context of this passage. We don’t who the "they" references. It could be the elders. But it could just as easily refer to a different group of people. We simply have no way of knowing where this tradition is coming from.
C.E. Hill of Reformed Theological Seminary whose statement of faith says:"Since the Bible is absolutely and finally authoritative as the inerrant Word of God, it is the basis for the total curriculum." Not a scholarly institution.
Ad hominem fallacy
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 He is not an unbiased scholar. He has to tow the party line or be fired. Just a fact.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 No, he is simply and correctly pointing out that an institution that can't even do academic inquiry and has to work backwards to affirm dogmas is not actually a scholarly institution. An ad hominem is an attack on an aspect of someone's character irrelevant to the argument, this is 100% relevant.
Concerning Papias' testimony about Mathew: the reason it is reasonable to construe Papias' comment to mean Matthew was written in Hebrew language, not merely "style", is because all church fathers who mention the language Matthew was written in, never say it was Greek, they always say it was written in Hebrew. Curiously, no church fathers specify the language Mark, Luke and John were originally written in...as if they all knew that the case of Matthew was an exception to the rule, which justified disclosing the news for the sake of posterity.
We can be reasonable to reject Martin Mosse's explanation too: If those early fathers who say Matthew was written in Hebrew had known Matthew also wrote a second original in Greek, their mentioning of the Hebrew argues they would likely have mentioned the Greek version too. So because they never do, we are reasonable to deny that canonical Greek Matthew ever had an original, and is at best nothing more than an anonymously composed translation.
Jerome in the 4th century said it was in his own day that some unknown person finally translated Matthew into Greek. The reasonable deduction from his statement is that Matthew never appeared in Greek prior to the 4th century.
If then you try to get away from the consistent patristic witness by saying they all probably misconstrued Papias, then you have set a precedent showing just how easily the majority patristic view could be based on falsehood. We have to wonder whether the majority patristic witness concerning authorship of the gospels similarly stems from a very ancient errant view.
And there are devastating consequences to the apologist if Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and not translated into Greek for the next 300 years: it would strongly imply that Matthew (and his followers) did not intend his gospel for Gentiles, thus the Gentile-oriented "Great Commission" of Matthew 28:19-20 may plausibly be construed as non-Matthean interpolation going back earlier than our earliest manuscripts can document. That spells doom for the apologist: An original apostle of Jesus who, despite writing at least two decades after Jesus died and thus writing around 55 a.d. when Paul was still active, who has no intention of taking the gospel to the Gentiles? Sounds like an original apostle of Jesus thought Pauls' Gentile-oriented gospel was an unacceptable extension of the original gospel. Thus we rightly remain suspicious of anything in the bible suggesting Matthew approved of Paul's Gentile focus...such as the apostolic letter in Acts 15, which was allegedly the will of all the original apostles. that letter is contradicted by Galatians 2:9, where we are told that the original apostles, after conferring with Paul, chose to confine their evangelism to the Jews. Another reason to say the Gentile Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20 is a later interpolation.
Would you be willing to have a video-debate with a counter-apologist?
These are horrible arguments 😂
@@justchilling704 And your 4-word answer doesn't exactly generate any worries that anything I said could be refuted on the merits. Thanks for confirming me in my skepticism. Try again?
Ehrman at 27:19 - "they needed to be attributed to real, established authorities".
Fascinating, Bart, really fascinating...
I wonder how a Greek doctor became a real, established authority in a religion with Jewish roots?
Furthermore, I wonder how any of the 4 became "established authorities" without, so it seems, according to Ehrman, leaving a scrap of written material...
Yet here we have Irenaeus et al circa the second century deciding to attribute authorship of the four gospels to these particular authors because of... Reasons?
Why not Peter? Why include a foreigner?
And why wait the better part of 200 years to do it?
Erhman is great, as long as you don't think about anything he says for more than 5 consecutive seconds.
Irenaeus said that Jesus lived to the age of 50 (Against Heresies, Book II, Chapter 22, Section 5.) and that there are 4 Gospels because there are 4 corners of the earth.
@@tomasrocha6139 "Although it is sometimes claimed that Irenaeus believed Christ did not die until he was older than is conventionally portrayed, the bishop of Lyon simply pointed out that because Jesus turned the permissible age for becoming a rabbi (30 years old and above), he recapitulated and sanctified the period between 30 and 50 years old, as per the Jewish custom of periodization on life, and so touches the beginning of old age when one becomes 50 years old."
Great video, congrats on your achievement!!!
Thank you so much!
I just finished a video that covered this. I wish I had found this BEFORE making my video, haha.
Where can I find your video?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 It's the one responding to holy coolaid. It's time stamped so you can find where it's talking about authorship. Your video is great btw.
P1 probably had the title is just ripped off . P1 has the alpha sign above the text . In other manuscripts the Gospel according to …. is above the alpha sign . So the Top of P1 is missing and probably had the title .
The very fact that Eusebius, Papias, et al, felt they had to tell us who wrote the gospels means that people were asking who wrote them. They did not originally have their titles "The gospel according to X".
If you *really believe* the gospels are telling the truth, let take another look at the intro to Luke. It looks like a cover letter, but it does *not* name who sent it. Cf with the letters, say, of Paul--they always start out saying who sent them, like all letters did in ancient Rome and all (even email) do today.
The Author of Luke talks about other gospels written before his, but he doesn't mention any titles or authors of them either. If we just read what the gospel of Luke actually says, we have to conclude that both the gospel he is writing, and all previous gospels, were anonymous. Again, if you think that the gospels are true, well, just believe what the text right there in the gospel says.
Same goes for the ending of John--whoever wrote that didn't give us his name---and he didn't even give us the name of the earlier author--he called him "the beloved disciple" specifically *not* to tell us the author's name.
The canonical gospels are real standouts here--*every* *single* noncannonical gospel--the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Peter, *always* explicitly says who it was written by. Its one of the ways you can tell that the early church did not take the noncannonical gospels as seriously as they did the canonical gospels--because anybody else who wrote a gospel felt like they had to aedd their name (or pretend they were an apostle adding his name).
What would you say is the simplest and most accurate description of the criteria for canonicity?
I don't have any opinion on that issue
Why would Matthew, a supposed eyewitness copy from at least two different sources?
They can never answer this question because the entire argument for "traditional authorship" is based on bold-faced delusion.
This very question was addressed near the end of the video
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I did not get that far originally. Your statement "There is no sound reasons to suppose Matthew's Gospel is dependent on Mark's Gospel" is simply not true. There are a great number of textual examples that shows that one is dependent on the other, and several of these are good evidence for Mark being first. This statement was either born of ignorance or at least misleading. The standard of greek in the two Gospels indicates that Matthew was most fluent writer, if Mark had copied Matthew he would surely have copied the good Greek as well, as it is, it appears Matthew 'corrects' some of Mark's rougher language. This is but one example.
Markian priority is simply inconvenient for your hypothesis - which, I must say, uses the phrase "it is not impossible to suppose" an awful lot.
@@StudentDad-mc3pu Nailed it.
8:08 this objection was taken down by augustine of hippo when faustus was doubtful of matthean authorship
Nihil novi sub sole.
6:56 "Luke claims" as if "Luke" was the actual author of this text. NO circular reasoning here. "Luke" feels at liberty to completely change and rewrite his "sources" so he didn't consider their "eyewitness" status (more question begging) as equal to accuracy.
He doesn't rewrite them. You are assuming he doesn't have independent sources of information. You are begging the question.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So what are these "independent sources" show me where they are so I can look at them please.
@@tgrogan6049 they may no longer be available to us. Your inability to access a source is no reason to suppose that it never existed.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Invisible and nonexistent sources look very much alike right?
@tgrogan6049 an unavailable source doesn't always look like a nonexistent sources, especially when independent evidence exists for the unavailable source.
13:57 "It is possible....." how possible? Additionally, is John 21:24 a forgery? How many other forged passages are there in the gospels that we don't know about????
I never said it was a forgery
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 "made falsely especially with intent to deceive" a forgery.
“John 21:24 is a forgery” no. It was most likely added on by the community who was centred around and closely connected to the beloved disciple who thus knew the beloved disciple. This addition to John would have been agreed upon to add.
52:50 also reveals Bart Ehrman to be a charlatan. His argument is basically as if someone had addressed Ehrman after he published his first book and told him: "Well, all these years of studying and learning and all you know fits unto 300 or so pages. You must be very ignorant."
Given that Ehrman has written books aimed at being read, his argument is totally dishonest.
Great work, thanks for putting this together. Quick question, whats your position re the millenium given Papias' beleifs and his possible connection with John and other elders? Cheers
I actually tend to disagree with Papias on beliefs about the millennium. I think that Eusebius is probably right on that issue from a theological standpoint. I would disagree with Eusebius' assumption that Papias was right about the millennium just because he had connections to John the apostle.
But yes, see Bauckham's article. It's probably the best treatment of the subject.
@@ziphos Thanks for that, I certainly will!
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Thanks for that. Out of curiosity, which way would you go re the millennium? A? Post?
@@racsooj456 I lean toward amillenialism
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Dito.
You argue against the thesis that the titles were added later, because Christians would have needed a way to identify the books as soon as they were written. But the literary evidence seems to tell a different story. Just to give two examples: Justin Martyr, who appears to use the canonical gospels as sources (although this is disputed by some scholars) refers to them collectively as “memoirs of the apostles”. The Didachist also refers generically to his own sources as a unity: “the Gospel of our Lord”. We don't get the titles "Gospel according to [fill-in-the-blank]" until around 170 or 180 CE.
Of course that doesn't mean the titles couldn't have been added earlier. But what _could have been_ doesn't seem like a very strong point of evidence. Even a conservative evangelical like Blomberg, in his commentary on Matthew, admits that the gospel titles "are almost certainly not original" (p43).
Hey, thanks for watching. If you see my recent debate on this topic with Kevin Nontradicath on Kyle Whittington's channel, then you'll see how I respond to this objection. I am considering doing another video on this particular objection since many seem to be raising it.
As for Blomberg, he doesn't get a free pass just because he's evangelical. If he thinks that the titles were later additions, he will also need to argue for that thesis.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Thanks for the reply. I listened to your remarks about this in the debate you mention, so thank you for that.
But please note, I'm not arguing that Justin didn't know that Peter was connected to the Gospel of Mark, or even that he had never heard the modern titles "Gospel According to X". Rather, I'm pointing out that Justin doesn't seem to _need_ those titles as a way to distinguish between them. Nor does the Didachist. So, if they didn't need to do that, why insist (as Pitre does) that the titles must have been added as soon as they were written?
@@HatsoffHistory I mean, couldn’t “the memoirs of the apostles” and “the Gospel of our Lord” work as convenient shorthand? Doing this would not only stress the authority of the sources but also their unity, without going into too much detail on who they were written by or when/how/why they diverge. I would bet that would be helpful to the aims of the Didachist, Justin Martyr, etc.
@@vulteiuscatellus4105 Well yes, but that is just the point! If Justin and the Didachist could refer to them without titles, that goes to show titles weren't necessary to distinguish between them. The early Christians just don't seem to be interested in doing that, because for them it's all one Gospel unity.
@@HatsoffHistory I would differentiate between distinguishing between the Gospels the by name and a practical need to do so. The fact that early (and even modern) Christians sometimes colloquially refer to the "the Gospels" collectively in no way implies that there isn't a practical need to distinguish between them.
48:04 is typical of Carrier's MO. He starts out with a true or at least defensible statement, then jumps to an extreme conclusion way off the mark and going beyond the actual issue. So if Papias was wrong on particular book (and even that isn't clear), Carrier concludes that he had "NO idea what he was talking about", "NO reliable sources of information about the first century of Christianity", all that despite the fact that Papias actually lived in the first century of Christianity. All that doesn't follow and is extremist hogwash.
Carrier uses scholarly sounding arguments to attain not knowledge but non-knowledge in order not to critique or reflect but to simply dismiss.
10:04 "It is very difficult to imagine" how about this "Mark" is a proxy for the Peter faction and "Luke" is a proxy for the Pauline faction. I can imagine this easily.
I thought Mark was with Barnabas and Paul and The early church met at his mothers house in Jerusalem . Rhodda recognised Peters voice so he must have met with the house church often
7:24 "professedly conscientious investigator" anonymous of course! Unlike Joseph Smith who at least put his name to his "investigations".
In a discuscussion with Bart Ehrman on Unbelievable Bauckham admits 53:57 "Let me agree with Bart for a change. I do think it is rather unlikely that Jesus Galilean followers....could have written the Gospels we have and I DON'T CLAIM THAT THEY DID." (EMPHASIS ADDED) Bauckham also states that the "disciple John" did not write the fourth gospel but rather some "educated Greek speaking Jewish follower".
So? Argument from authority much.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I think what he meant is that because Bauckham strongly defends the eyewitness nature of the gospels, his reticence to ascribe John's authorship to apostle John likely implies the less scholarly apologists who advocate Johannine authorship (like Lydia McGrew) are overstating their case, since a conservative like Bauckham would be presumed to jump at any chance to defend John's apostolic authorship.
@@Tom-j4v7fExcept from the fact that Richard doesn’t think that John the apostle was the one who wrote the gospel of John..
That’s funny. Richard takes the position that the gospel of John was written by John the elder who he doesn’t identify as one and the same with the apostle John. However, he does in fact think that John the elder was the beloved disciple and thus is an eyewitness regardless.
If, If, If doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
For example?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381
Hi, thanks for the reply.
Here is a video more aligned with how the authorship seemed to come about. And i agree more with it than i do with your video. The 2 of you should get together and hash it out. Paul is very accommodating and nice to chat with. You sound the same in your video.
Video: "Who REALLY Wrote the Gospels?" Paulogia.
This should be a good starter.
cheers
11:15 "Mark" mentions Peter but forgot to mention this: "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." Maybe "Peter" forgot to tell "Mark" about this???? "It is difficult to imagine" that "Peter" could have forgotten to tell "Mark" about this incident. We can "imagine" that "Peter" had Alzheimer's or that he was too humble or some other imaginary story, right?
I've argued the point myself, it's very powerful, and renders us reasonable to say Matthew's more theologically detailed account of the incident it not a case of him bringing out details Mark knowingly chose to exclude, but a case of Matthew putting in Jesus' mouth words Jesus never said.
@@Tom-j4v7fNo. Again, is another cold argument from silence.
I thought Mark was very prominent in the early church . He went with Paul and Barnabas . The Church met at his mothers house Peter visited the house often because Rhodda recognised his voice
He was *relatively* obscure compared to people like Paul and Jesus' disciples. The point is just that there seem to be better candidates to have written this Gospel if the idea is that the authorship of the Gospels what is simply fabricated to give them the facade of credibility.
Also, Mark abandoned Paul on his missionary journey. So this does not really indicate that he was prominent. If anything, this would have been a reason not to invent him as being the author of a Gospel.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 Of course "Mark" was a very common name in the Roman Empire at this time.
@@tgrogan6049Source?
@@tgrogan6049This actually would against your case since the early church would have absolutely no reason whatsoever in any way shape or form to make up authorship and then attribute that authorship to some unknown, random, practically none existent, shallow, dark obscure figure who no body knew.
@@MrMortal_Ra Christians never do their own research. Their faith blinds them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_%28given_name%29
Is that your voice David?
Yeah. Does it stink?
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 No, just not what I must have imagined, I almost thought I knew what you sounded like.😁
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 After listening for awhile, you sound just like you!
No one knows who wrote the gospels. They're anonymous. There's no debate about that.
It would be nice if you could present some evidence for this or interact with the evidence I presented to the contrary. This is just kinda your opinion as far as I can see.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 The gospels were written between 70 and 100 CE. There is the academic consensus and there's many reasons for that such as knowledge of the destruction of the temple. None of the gospel manuscripts had authorship stated within them. They were written in Greek by highly educated highly skilled writers; most likely Roman Christians. The names of the four gospels were assigned to them by Irenaeuss of Lyon in or around 180CE. This is the academic consensus that based on the data.
Gospel like materials only start appearing in the second century. This would indicate that this is when they were written.
False
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So was the gospel of "Matthew" originally written in Hebrew? Papias thought so. Papias also said Judas' head swelled up to the size of a wagon. Do you believe that?
@@tgrogan6049 lol, I dealt with this in the video too
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 So yes or no Judas head swelled to the size of a wagon and Eusebius thought Papias was "weak minded"? Papias also wrote (via Eusebius or Irenaeus) that Jesus taught there would be talking grapes in the Millenium. Are you doing a video on that? Eusebius who had, if anyone did, full access to Papias writings has these things to say about him but you know better. How?
😂😂😂 Every single person alive on the planet who is at least familiar with this topic, knows that gospels written in the 1st century CE.
Ancient writers were credulous to the Nth degree. See Papias on Judas or on the millennium.
I dealt with this exact issue in this video
Can anyone see the influence of Peter in Mark, or of Paul in Luke? Why ever did they leave out “behold the lamb of God?”
Mark and Luke are 85% similar, implying they come from a similar source.
Mark was a known disciple of Peter, and Luke was a travelling companion of Paul.
Also, we got this quote from 'Irenaeus of Lyons' about it...
"After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter."
Given that Matthew is 94% similar to Mark, and we know that Matthew was himself a disciple of Jesus, it makes logical sense to support the idea that Mark also got his information from a direct disciple of Jesus. Or, in other words, from Peter directly.
@@darkwolf7740 Or get this...they both copied word for word from Mark
You people who never get truly saved and never get in touch with God BORE ME TO TEARS
29:50 Monte A. Shanks is not a real scholar he works for Liberty University where there is a statement of faith that the faculty must believe. Notice his language "this fragment SHOULD NOT BE UNNECESSARILY MARGINALIZED as having no historical value". Why not? It's just his opinion. Given all the other crackpot things Papias has to say in other fragments and Eusebius very low opinion of him, why should we take anything he says seriously at all???? For all those Christians here who are interested in the truth about what a fool Papias was Google "exiting fragments of Papias writing" and read them for yourself.
"Given all the other crackpot things Papias has to say in other fragments and Eusebius very low opinion of him, why should we take anything he says seriously at all????"
----------Fundamentalists will trifle that Papias was a chiliast, Eusebius disagrees with that doctrine, therefore, Eusebius' basis for negating Papias' intelligence was unjustifiable bias. So we have to wonder: why is doctrinal disagreement always a faulty basis for condemning the opponent's intelligence for those outside the biblical authors....but if biblical authors had doctrinal disagreement with somebody, this must always be proof that the opponent was wrong? What rule of historiography says religious bias is only a good thing for biblical authors and apostles, but never a good thing for anybody else?
"For all those Christians here who are interested in the truth about what a fool Papias was Google "exiting fragments of Papias writing" and read them for yourself."
----------We can sandbag the apologists on this: The more effort they put into defending Papias' credibility and connection to the apostles, the more we are justified to agree with Papias that his absurd "talking grapes" story really and truly did originate with the apostle John. We have to wonder: Was the original apostolic testimony plagued with similar absurdities, perhaps justifying us to suppose somebody whitewashed the original testimonies before they took their canonical form?
@@Tom-j4v7f Nice to see we have someone else questioning these assertions made by bible god fans. Getting a bit lonely here.
@@tgrogan6049 Glad to join the minority. I should enjoy the moment because in my experience, the vast majority of RUclips-apologists simply delete my powerful challenges. Skepticism toward Christianity has much to gain from being able to prove that many "apologists" are only able to maintain the facade of argumentative strength because they quietly skip town when confronted with a serious scholarly challenge. I'm hoping that "Faith Because of Reason" is more honest than that.
@@Tom-j4v7f Don't count on it. Its a money-making operation and there is a lot less money in skepticism compared with false promises.
@@Tom-j4v7f Good point on the possible "editing" of the Gospels! We have no idea of the original form of these writings!
Another problem is you don't address the credulity and superstitious beliefs of these "Church Fathers" Papias for example was clearly nuts and had all sorts of crazy beliefs about Judas, the millennium even putting words in Jesus's mouth from the "Apocalypse of Baruch". Ditto for the rest of these "fathers".
Really makes you wonder whether the original form of the gospels were as fantastic as Gospel of Peter's resurrection story, and the less fantastic canonical form of that testimony was achieved by somebody whitewashing it of its more unbelievable elements. Apparently, somebody somewhere made the decision that apostle John's story about talking grapes would be be one of those things best excluded from his gospel.
No Papias was not “crazy”. His alleged remarks on the death of Judas is wildly surrounded by textual issues as it is quoted and attributed to Papias from about 200 years after Papias was thought to have written his works through fragments. It was only quoted by Apollinaris of Laodicea by which he actually has two different inconsistent versions of this quote, one of which is less exaggerated. Showing that Apollinaris is not getting this information from a primary source like from one of Papias’ own works, but of two different inconsistent traditions about what Papias allegedly said. As Monte A. Shanks, notes: “The fact that this fragment was assimilated from a collection of quotes from Theophylact as he interacted with Apollinaris’s quotes of Papias makes it difficult to regard either of the above conjectures as accurate reflections of what Papias actually wrote” (Papias and the New Testament, page 205).
Further more, we don’t even have the full context or any context at all for understanding what Papias was actually saying or trying to say. He could of as well as been criticising and disagreeing with this claim about Judas’s death as he found been equally as been agreeing, again, we simply do not know. So skeptics using this alleged saying of Papias as evidence that he didn’t know what he was talking about or didn’t know the gospel of Matthew, cannot presuppose that Papias thought that was the actual death of Judas..
@@MrMortal_Ra Well then stop using Papias as a witness for the canonical gospels. You can't have it both ways. Monte A. Shanks works for "Liberty University" and is not a scholar.
I've got a lot of things to say, and some are critical or mention something you didn't, so I want to say this before the rest: This video was very well done, well researched, and well argued. This is good work, and I gave it a thumbs up because you deserved it.
I think you're wrong about John 21:24. It doesn't make sense to assume that another person than the beloved disciple wrote this, because it's not the end. If someone were to come along later and add this, they would have added this and stopped. But there's another verse after this, and it's not about authorship, it's about a concern that the author has.
In addition, John 21:20-25 flow quite well and make concluding points. 20-23 tell us about a rumor about the author, which the author tells us is baseless. 24 identifies the author and reminds readers that they know and trust him. 25 gives a reason why the author didn't write whole libraries worth of books, instead of the one book in front of us.
In particular, verse 25 doesn't make sense for a non-author to write. The author is clearly concerned with supplementing the synoptics with additional facts about Jesus. His purpose is to write down the other things Jesus did, and we have traditions that he was asked to do this. Here, he tells us that there is more, but he can't physically write down every single detail, giving the excuse that there are too many.
A non-author would not have reason to say that, but the author would.
Your theory about the motives of a hypothetical editor would make sense if a hypothetical editor existed. It would equally make sense for the author to quash an incorrect rumor about himself, especially if the author was old and the rumor was that he'd never die. The author could easily forsee his death producing a crisis of faith for people who believed the rumor that Jesus had predicted he would never die. Telling people authoritatively that Jesus had said no such thing would solve that problem.
That one sentence in Papias about Matthew writing the sayings in Hebrew dialect is one of our most important early sources of information -- yet maddeningly vague. "Sayings" could mean anything from a list of sayings to a complete gospel, and "Hebrew dialect" could mean the language Hebrew, Aramaic, since most Jews spoke it as a native tongue at this time, or Greek, but in a Hebrew style. Papias is early, and is likely quite correct in what he says, but what is he actually saying? Given all combinations of each of these things, there are at least 6 different meanings we can choose from.
I think the response to Ehrman's objection to Papias' comments on Mark is overcomplicated. It can be simplified to this: Ehrman is overreading Papias, assuming that Papias meant to absolutely deny that Mark could have remembered anything at all about Jesus but not also have written it down.
There is an argument that I think you didn't mention for John's authorship: the lack of disambiguation. John was a very common name, so the only time when you could say "John" and not add any disambiguation is when there's only one John under consideration. In the early Christian church, there was only one John that was true of, and that was the Apostle.
So if the theory that Papias referred to 2 Johns were true, we'd still get John the Apostle as author, because the title says "John", not "John the elder" or "John of Ephesus" or "John the lesser" or "John the younger" or something like that. It just says "John", and expects you to know which one. And that tells you which one.
We have Them that is the important thing
Altho many modern versions have appeared the 1611kjv
Is the best
Authoritive inspiring and intact
No missing verses!
Oh my goodness. Where to begin? So first off, on the issue of "missing" verses, has it ever dawned on you that these verses were actually added later on?
We don't have the originals for most ancient documents today, and many of them themselves have had parts added to them over time.
Guess we can throw them all out too, yeah?
I was saved before I even read the scriptures
Or heard any preacher
Only after regeneration I began
To read and God guided me to
The 1611kjv his inspired word!
@@angloaust1575so "textus receptus" basically? Like the Luther Bible till 1912 (there are still new bibles printed based on that one and it's actually also one of my favourites).
Fun story: the women caught in adultery in John is not in some early manuscripts but there was at least one of the church fathers (forgot the name) who said it was actually taken out and later re-inserted into the text because it was too lenient on the woman depicted and they didn't want to give "false ideas" to women. So I consider it authentic.
The KJV has missing verses. For instance, Daniel has 14 chapters.
What's that? The extra chapters are fake? I wonder if such thinking applies elsewhere
The narrator focus on the anonymity of the authors was irrelevant. Jesus had little interaction with the scribes, scholars and anyone consumed with self agrandizement.. I had hoped to get a history of the four gospels not a scholarly insight.
Jesus called Matthew to become a follower. He was a tax collector, therefore he could read and write. Scribes were not about "self whatever", they were simple secretaries who wrote down what someone dictated. There is no reason to think Matthew couldn't have begun writing things down while still following Jesus during his lifetime. Or at least very shortly afterwards.
I strongly urge you to read Matthew 23:13-39 regarding Jesus thoughts about false intellects viz
, Scribes Pharisees, etc. Man made Theorist ( the narrator of the video ) don't represent God nor Jesus nor the authenticity of scriptures, Theorist purport ideas that interest them. Post Jesus ascension, the Apostles were busy establishing and maintaining the Church. In time they or a designer would recall the accounts of their times with Jesus. Keep in mind the constant agitations confronting them on their travels and stays, especially in Jerusalem which would eventually go through a turbulent and destructive war.
Theorist cast doubts in people's minds. This is a novel tactic of the enemy of God and Jesus Christ.
Believers must study ( be diligent) the scriptures not Theorist knowledge.
@@MrSeedi76 "Tax collectors" in ancient Judea were not necessarily literate, the position was more like a guy sitting at a tollbooth. It is extremely obvious that GMatt is not actually written by Matthew.
Your citations of Papias (with editing by Eusebius?) about some gossip he heard from an unknown "the elder" amounts to nothing. Who is "the elder" and how does he know anything about this subject? As for the rest of the Church Fathers you mention I must quote Supernatural Religion: "Even if we took the statements of Irenæus, and later Fathers like the Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, and Origen, about the Gospels, they are absolutely without value except as personal opinion at a late date, for which no sufficient grounds are shown."
Cassels, Walter Richard. Supernatural Religion, Vol. I. (of III) An Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation . Kindle Edition.
I agree, but a more powerful argument to achieve your intended goal is to ask how today's Christian justifies leaping from "God commanded 1st century unbelievers to repent" over to "God commands 21st century unbelievers to repent". They can't justify this. And Christians who adopt dispensationalism (a doctrine very popular among the fundamentalists who push Christianity the most) will tell you that even within the bible, God will not demand of a later generation the same things he demanded of an earlier generation. Christians cannot even be reasonably certain whether God wanted 1st century Jews to reinstitute the Mosaic Theocracy. God's desire for you to repent and believe the gospel in 2024 is about as provable as God's desire for you to learn Judaism from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“Who is this elder” Oh gosh. This elder who both Polycarp and Ignatius heard, saw and were direct students who studied under this elder, is John the apostle himself. Papias who was himself a contemporary of Polycarp and heard the elder through his disciples and those that heard him, indicates that he is in fact the apostle John himself, Irenaeus also remakes this as well.
@@MrMortal_Ra Hear say all the way down! Why are you so credulous. Why are these "Church Fathers" to be trusted implicitly? Reports of a report of a report by someone we know almost zero about. "The Fathers will show themselves to be wholly destitute of common sense of opinion and of common honesty of statement, credulous and mendacious to the n-th degree."
Joseph Wheless. Forgery in Christianity (Kindle Locations 1617-1618). Kindle Edition.
Papias is wrong John Mark (Mark) knew Jesus and the Apostles since the last supper was at his mother's house and he witnessed Jesus being arrested. He was too young to have followed Jesus around like the Apostles. His father was Greek and mother Jewish from so being a translator to Peter makes sense.
11:49 Who is this guy? Why quote him as an "authority" on anything?
Strong evidence is different from truth or definitive evidence. Gospel according to is not clear that they wrote it. They could have told it to a writer or written it. We don’t know. Speculation doesn’t equal truth. This is cute for a school paper in seventh grade but not fact. I was hoping for new info.
You act like that was the only piece of evidence offered for the authenticity of the Gospels
No one ho wrote the gospels knew Jesus or had an eye withness account of anything that happened in his life.
Case in point.
Luke 9
28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.
*Wouldn't an omnipotent, omniscient omnipresent god know Moses is a myth*
So Jesus had a seance with his imaginary friend? And that is what you believe.
Moses has been proven to be a myth by mountains of evidence that shows the Israelites were just another Canaanite tribe that rose to the top after the bronze age collapse. That was the 10th century *BCE*
Not a shred of evidence has ever been found support Exodus or Moses or Joshua.
Now why would i believe anything else in the gospels?
Well this just ignores the arguments in the video to the contrary
@@faithbecauseofreason8381
You deflected like all good apologists
How did Jesus have a conversation with Moses?
@@fordprefect5304 and you begged the question like a good skeptic.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381
LOL
8:32 So why does "Paul" take great pains to identify himself by name in his letters. He could have left his name out, right? Nobody cares (outside of classicists and a few Christian apologists) if Plutarch is legit. The presence of miracles and fantastic events in the NT make it important who wrote these books and that they were in a position to know what they were talking about. Let's not lower our standards for the all-powerful Yahweh!
8:25 Don't we need higher standards for miracle stories of the "Second Person of the Trinity" coming to Earth and doing miracles? We have independent evidence that these other ancient writers existed and even they DID NOT exist. SO WHAT! I am not asked to place credence in their work on PAIN OF ETERNAL HELL FIRE. See the difference?
Most people are not able to admit ignorance. Christians are taught to not think. If they think then will notice discrepancies. For instance, of the 3 gospels that list the disciples, 2 have the same list and the other list two Judas’.
You don't seem to know what a discrepancy is...
6:27 Powerful evidence "hard to imagine", "might well have wanted to know", "not necessarily the case". That is some powerful evidence!
Only 1hr and 20 more minutes to go nice!
1:00:30 Um, no. Irenaeus does not say that Papias was a "hearer of John the apostle". You will search in vain for any place in which Irenaeus declares that Papias knew John the apostle.
Carrier got to be worst NT scholar there is .
9:16 "It is hard to believe" coming from a Christian apologist is a laughable statement given the unbelievable stories contained in the NT.
Biased.
The most improbable miracle in the Bible is Genesis 1:1, THE CREATION ACCOUNT! If that is possible, nothing isn’t. With this in mind it’s quite clear that this did actually take place (we exist within a created world that had a beginning) and therefore nothing is impossible. If this is true the miracles within the NT would be expected and I’d be surprised if there weren’t miracles given the claims being made of an all powerful God who became man and dwelt among us to save us. I sure would expect things to happen that I can’t explain. And if i didn’t see any, well then that’s just a claim and I have no reason to believe said claim (God became man and dwelt among us).
But u haven't given ONE shred of EVIDENCE of ANY AUTHENTIC ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS TO PROVE ANYTHING IN THIS VIDEO JUST MERE SPECULATION.
In time many top scholars will make a rebuttal to this nonsense...specially the claim the original gospels left their original context and read elsewhere 😅😂😂 no explicit evidence given!
Lowest effort comment yet
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 are u responding because u found the so called lost1st century manuscripts if not ur comment fits u well.
Most ancient documents don't have original versions, and yet, you wouldn't reject that they are reliable in the copied versions that we have of the originals.
I guess that just magically makes the Gospels unreliable all of a sudden 🤷♂️
@@darkwolf7740 yes it makes them very unreliable for it claims that the holy spirit God inspired them that alone what makes it so different from ancient documents... ancient documents nowhere claims so called Hebrew God the creator inspired ancient documents. However, whats more profound is how can so called pagans as sumerian cuneiform be in their original cuneiform which claims wrote by gods yet the supposed creator who claims to be the author and finisher of ur faith cant even have one shred of any original manuscript...if he did we wouldn't be having this discussion let alone other denominations, along with millions of other skepticism...
Scholars of the Gaps arguement.
With faith the most unreasonable position one can take, and with Christianity in particular being one of the more hideous as well as nonsensical religions ever invented, the entire idea of "Faith Because of Reason" is inherently dishonest.
Where to begin? So "faith" is not a position as such. Faith has no inherent propositional content. So your identification of faith as a position is what's actually nonsensical.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 And so the word salad begins.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 You share the primitive belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice. Don't waste my time.
@ObservantHistorian and so the non-responses begin.
You chose to comment. If you consider that a waste of time, that's on you buddy. You can pull out any time you like.
@@faithbecauseofreason8381 I provided a clear response that you ignored. Add your "two gods in one," just part of the Christian polytheism, no different from ancient religions with multiple gods. It's just another mythology. Reason is out the door the minute you believe your invisible gods are any more real than those you reject.
If that's the condition, and if the gospels were written by the same author mentioned in the bible, the biggest problem is, ALL THE 4 APOLOGIES CONTRAINDICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER.
THE NEXT PROBLEM IS, GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE, FOUND IN THE BERLIN CODEX, IS ALSO WRITTEN BY ACTUAL CHARECTER, WHO SAW THE TOMB EMPTY. Her GOSPEL is the most unique of all the Gnostic Gospels and it seriously contraindicate the teachings of the Catholic Church. How do you answer these questions?
I probably disagree with you that the Gospels contradict each other. I would like to see the evidence that Mary wrote that Gospel.
The church fathers falsify the gnostic sources because they knew that they were false historically, and theologically. Also the gospels don't contradict, they're merely idiosyncratic like eyewitness testimony.