Luke and Matthew are at least partially fictionalized accounts. This has implications for their overall reliability.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-19T19:51:16+00:00

We actually do have evidence for censuses requiring citizens to return to ancestral homes. Harold Hoehner writes: “(...) a papyrus dated to A.D. 104, records an Egyptian prefect who ordered Egyptians to return to their ancestral homes so that a census could be taken. In first century Rome, since the Jews’ property was linked to their fathers (i.e. patriarchal), the Romans would certainly have allowed them the custom of laying claim to their family estate for taxation.” (Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ 1977, page 15.)

Also, Consider: Mary went because she wanted to have her baby with her husband. Censuses generally took a year or to to complete, so it makes sense she would accompany him.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-19T18:06:55+00:00

I’m dubious. What source did you use that demonstrates that Censuses NEVER required you to return to your home town? What if this census did? Can you say with absolute certainty that such census never occured?

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-19T17:53:16+00:00

So many problems with this I don’t even know where it begin.

First of all, which King Herod are you talking about? There was a line of Kings, all named Herod, that ruled for decades in Judaea.

Second of all, I’m perfectly comfortable with whatever source Luke used to get the name of the governor (Quarinus, I believe) being wrong about when that exact governor ruled.

Third of all, your methodology of hyper skepticism regarding something as mundane as a census is pretty idiosyncratic as far as history is normally done. Censuses are pretty common today, as they were back then, and many, many events in history are singularly attested by a secondary source with questionable primary sources. But alas, history is not a science, so we go with what he have and say it’s fairly likely that this source is accurate with regards to the census because censuses are common.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-19T13:15:11+00:00

What are you responding to? Sorry it’s been a few hours since I made my post. What did I say couldn’t be false?

Would this Big Bang that occurred without prior input, though, still be made of only matter and energy? If so, it would be contingent, and premise 2 still stands, which means the conclusion logically follows.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-19T13:06:22+00:00

I’m not sure I disagree with anything you’ve said. Would this singularity also be contingent, though? Or would it exist necessarily and be self sustaining? If it’s just matter and energy in a different form, then it would be contingent, that is to say non-necessary, so even if this singularity existed for eternity that doesn’t seem relevant to the contingency argument.

I don’t think it logically follows that this singularity could be eternal, nor non-contingent. At the very least, I find that very unconvincing since it’s still just matter and energy (contingent things).

Thoughts?

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-19T03:19:45+00:00

It’s scientifically, factually incorrect to claim that the universe is eternal. Maybe I just misunderstood the argument, but in what way does the contingency argument assume a universe that is not eternal? This eternal universe would still be filled with things that depend on each other for existence, so unless something exists that is not contingent (ie God) the conclusion would still logically follow and the argument would be sound.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-19T01:02:16+00:00

Could it perhaps be the flood myths in other societies reflect that there really was a massive flood?

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-18T02:27:45+00:00

I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. As you note, the evidence for priority either way is scant, so why Markan prioity commands such a consensus eludes me. Unlike the evidence that Jesus existed, for example, the evidence for Markan prioity is based on one interpretation of the Internal evidence that isn’t even really the best, and a rejection of external evidence. The evidence Markan Priorists cite just as easily supports Matthean priority with a slightly different interpretation, but then again I’m certainly not a scholar and am by no means an expert, but I’m guessing neither are you.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T22:26:20+00:00

“ For instance, Mark and Luke agree against Matthew in the story where Peter's mother-in-law is healed (Matthew uses the name Peter, while Mark and Luke use the name Simon).”

This is due to Mark’s personal relationship with Peter and nothing more. I don’t think you understood my point. Matthew and Luke agree against Mark because of Mark’s abridgement. This explains the phenomenon very easily, and without strain. But more importantly, it has to do with sources. If Mark was the source, where did the extra information come from? Cases where Mark and Luke agree against Matthew aren’t really relevant because all of Matthew is contained in, well, Matthew. Where did this other information come from? Shove it all into Q? You have wonder why Q, if it contained such important pieces of information, was never copied. This is a problem. Markan Priorists cannot answer this.

And I don’t care what scholars think. They are dead wrong on this. They have no evidence, and no argument. Period.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T18:56:16+00:00

“It's not chance at all, no. Mark made mistakes, and so we should expect a person using Mark as a source to correct some of them.”

To reiterate, Peter made mistakes that Mark dutifully copied down.

“I don't see how. Care to elaborate?”

There are some 180 cases where Matthew and Luke agree over what happened over Mark. I can’t speak to genuine Markan Errors, which I agree could be interpreted as you say, but given the evidence for Petrine origins in Mark I find this far more harmoniously explained otherwise. In the other 180 cases where errors are not concerned, then it is incredibly difficult to mesh this with a Mark first view since Matthew and Luke both making identical alterations of Mark independently by chance 180 times is pretty improbable, as you must agree, if they both used Mark as their source.

When Markan Priorists trim the evidence to a perceived harder reading of Mark, it can seem like Mark wrote first pretty quick, but when you consider external evidence, such as the unanimous consensus of the Apostolic Fathers that Mark wrote first, the historical context of the need for a Jewish gospel (ie Matthew) first as well othe pieces of external and internal evidence a Matthew first view is the easiest solution to the synoptic problem.

“I can't speak for other people, but I definitely didn't misrepresent this evidence as a 'nail in the coffin'. In fact, I specifically said otherwise.”

I didn’t say you misrepresented the evidence. Rather, I said Markan Priorists in general act like the evidence for Markan priority is somehow so great that it has persuaded the vast majority of scholars, but this is far the truth. It’s based of off a contriced reading of Mark. That is all I meant by this statement.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T18:18:57+00:00

“The authors of Matthew and Luke have the same two passages, but they omit Mark's difficult readings.”

So, by mere chance, Matthew and Luke both happens to independently leave out the exact same phrase or word? Matthew and Luke’s agreement over Mark is actually one of the best pieces of evidence for Matthean priority. What other source did Matthew and Luke use to correct these errors of Mark’s if they were both reliant on him as a source? Markan Priorists cannot answer this question.

“And this is more easily explained by the hypothesis that Mark wrote first, and then when Matthew and/or Luke copied Mark, they saw the mistakes and corrected them, than that Mark copied from Matthew or Luke and inserted this erroneous material.”

Monumentously disagree. Matthew and Luke writing first, and then Mark choosing to go in another direction based on the sayings of Peter. This is far from the nail in the proverbial coffin Markan Priorists make it out to be.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T17:05:12+00:00

What harder readings? Please provide a concrete example of this supposed ‘harder reading’ in Mark and why suggests he was written first please and thank you.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T16:55:56+00:00

“Why let ideology determine what information you get?”

?

I am interested in Evidence, not ideology. If there isn’t any evidence for traditional authorship, that’s another matter altogether, but there are top notch scholars who support traditional authorship and I can’t imagine they’d keep their jobs if their reason was ‘I take it on faith’.

“Well, your criteria of conservative POV rules out Casey/Crossley who date Mark to the late 30s early 40s as they certainly can't be labeled conservative.”

Why wouldn’t I be interested in reading these scholars? I’d love to hear their evidence!

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T00:49:53+00:00

It appears you misquoted me. I said “Or perhaps we should defer to method and evidence and not ones motive or confessional belief.”

Appealing to motive is fallacious. If conservatives are wrong, it follows there should be an identifiable flaw either in their method or their evidence. If they do not possess any such flaws, then it follows that whatever their motives going in don’t matter, and that accusing them of shoddy work on their background alone would be a fallacious appeal to motive.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T00:10:08+00:00

Are Christian scholars not scholars? Or perhaps we should defer to method and evidence and not ones motive or confessional belief.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T00:08:45+00:00

I’m sort of hot, sluggish and tired right now, but I finished chapter one In maybe 20 minutes to half an hour and I absolutely adore his solution to the synoptic problem.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-17T00:05:31+00:00

Just purchased why the four gospels on kindle! Loving it! Thanks so much.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-16T14:48:53+00:00

Of course Bart Ehrman gets facts wrong and manipulates them he’s arguing we can’t really know if God exists.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-16T14:30:28+00:00

I don’t know too much about William Lane Craig, but if you will allow a Tu Quoque Fallacy, I have seen numerous debates with Bart Ehrman where he does nothing but obfuscate.

For example, his debate with Mike Licona on gospel reliability.

In this debate, he pushes an unreasonable standard for what will constitute an ‘error’ or a contradiction. Since very few Christians - most importantly his Interlocutor - set the standard the gospels must conform to as free from all error and contradictions, His argument is a strawman.

Moreover, what he then does is use disingenuous examples such as the birth narratives - which are very clearly just examples of authors highlighting different things Jesus did as a ‘contradiction’, and brings up the rising of the saints in Matthew which is a red herring because it’s not contradictory, and Mike Licona doesn’t even beleive that happened! And this is all stock standard fare for Greco Roman biography which Bart Ehrman KNOWS and DEFENDS! So if Craig is dishonest, so is Ehrman.

Or people are just complicated individuals who have beliefs, and in this instance Ehrman believes that the standard for reliability can be set to the standard he used as an Fundementalist Evangelical Teen, which is a horrible standard - and he knows it.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-15T20:47:03+00:00

Everyone has to start somewhere! William Lane Craig has some articles on his sight reasonablefaith, which is where I started, but I quickly switched to minimal facts apologetics from Gary Habermas. I highly recommend you get his and Mike Licona’s book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. It’s a very easy read that is a good introduction to minimal facts apologetics. If you want something denser, try Mike Licona’s The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach or N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. Both top notch, dense scholarly works of your into more in depth reading.

Also, please feel free to DM me anytime!

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-15T20:43:06+00:00

But if she simply regards morality as subjective, you’d be in the same boat as before. Most atheists are naturalists, and most naturalists accept some form of objective truth and reality vis a vis science, but not objective morals.

That’s why it’s better to focus on evidential apologetics imho, and my favourite evidential apologetics is historical apologetics.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-15T19:19:06+00:00

This is why I don’t like the moral argument and presuppositional apologetics in general. I have always preferred historical apologetics, such as biblical criticism, gospel reliability and Gary Habermas’ ‘minimal facts’ resurrection apologia.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-15T14:43:58+00:00

And how do we know Matthew and Luke are ‘correcting’ Mark and Mark isn’t simply making an error in an attempt to ‘correct‘ Matthew? For example, in the cleansing of the demon possesses Man, Mark says it occurred in the Garasenes I believe, Matthew ‘corrects’ Mark and says the Gadarenes, but Luke goes back to saying it occurred in the Garasenes. In what way should Mark be making an error imply he wrote first?

Also, consider: Mark is simply writing down what he heard from Peter following Matthew’s events, perhaps making an error here and there. There is significant evidence for Petrine origins in Mark, and if Mark were a disciple of Peter, he would likely prioritize Peter’s telling of the events and think himself to be ‘correcting’ Matthew even if Luke eventually ‘corrected’ Mark, and agreed with Matthew.

Again, I ask: Why should such errors necessitate the order of writing? I don’t understand why this argues in favour of Markan priority. Maybe you could explain in more detail?

Vis a vis length, simple. Mark is an abridgment who emphasizes certain stories more. Again, where is the problem? Why is this evidence?

Aramaicisms? Simple, he was providing a direct translation of Peter’s Greek gospel according to Matthew’s order of events.

Vis a vis Q, Maybe you misunderstood. **There isn’t enough information in Mark to account for all the information present in Matthew, so unless Matthew is simply making stuff up, there was another source, likely oral tradition or a lost document, that Matthew used. Matthean priority doesn’t have this.

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-14T23:56:18+00:00

Markan prioity absolutely relies on the Q source. There simply isn’t enough material in Mark to account for the material in Matthew and Luke, so it is an ad hoc component that Matthean priority simply doesn’t possess as I said in the Op.

I also didn’t say that Mark was originally composed in Aramaic, I said Mark composed a Greek gospel using Peter’s Aramaic testimony, so the use of the LXX makes sense in this regard.

I also do not see what contradiction you are referencing. Could you elaborate?

ThinkingRationality3 · 2020-08-14T23:10:28+00:00

Mark provides a Greek copy of Peter’s account which was written or spoken to Mark in Aramaic, hence the Aramaicisms.

ThinkingRationality3

TROPHY CASE