120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[Sarpedon]

There are four gospels that say Jesus existed. How many Superman comics are there out there? Hundreds? Thousands? By how many different authors? Dozens?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Why can't you name any pre-Christian miracle legends which gave rise to the Jesus miracle stories?

Virtually ALL the miracle claims occurred BEFORE 600 BC, and AFTER 100 AD (or maybe 70-100 AD) and into the Middle Ages.

This is so silly, Lumpy.

You talk as if you're an acknowledged expert in lecture, but your bona fides just aren't there.

You are proving my point. That you are not giving any examples to show otherwise is evidence that there are no new miracle claims from 600 BC to 100 AD. You obviously have looked for an example and couldn't find any.

If there were any examples during this period, why does no one ever offer any? Why do we only get examples like Apollonius of Tyana and Plutarch and sources from 100 AD and later? Why don't you answer this?

Or in the other direction, back to 600 BC, why do we get nothing but Elijah and Elisha, who lived around 900 BC and who are reported in I-II Kings, dated about 600 BC? If you think there is not this EMPTY SPACE from 600 BC to 100 AD, then why can't you offer anything to fill it with?

Admittedly there are some possible exceptions -- it would be extreme to claim it's a total blank, absolute ZERO examples of anything during all those centuries. I've mentioned the Apocryphal books of Judith and Tobit, which arguably contain something close. So it's possible to find the extremely rare exceptions, or something close to a miracle claim.

But why so little? Why is there a total absence of any miracle stories in the Dead Sea Scrolls (the non-Tanach portions), and the Book of Enoch and other literature during this "intertestamental" period, before the N.T. writings appear?

The extreme scarcity of new miracle legends during this period shows that there was no "context" of miracle claims/superstitions leading up to the Jesus miracle stories. The latter occur suddenly with nothing in the culture to explain where they came from, as some debunker-crusaders (e.g. Richard Carrier) keep claiming. The period leading into the 1st century AD was one of conspicuously LOW occurrence of such beliefs, and the extremely few miracle legends there, such as they are, were decreasing rather than increasing at this time.

The best you can say is that you're not aware of many miracle claims, here, but the fact is, you're not an expert.

Dr. Carrier is an expert, isn't he? And yet he can't name any examples. Or rather, his only examples are from Herodotus -- nothing else, and those are laughable.

What are Carrier's "miracles" in Herodotus?

His best example is the text which says a horse gave birth to a rabbit. What Carrier omits is that along with this omen in Herodotus there's another one 2 or 3 lines down which says a mule gave birth to a deformed mule. (There are rare cases when a mule does give birth to a mule offspring -- exception to the rule.)

This is Carrier's best example. He obviously is DESPERATE to come up with some example to prove that the Jesus miracles are only typical miracle stories borrowed from the earlier pagan culture, and yet this is the best he has to offer. This proves the point that there are virtually no new miracle stories during this empty period.

The deformed mule omen gives us a clue what the Horse > Rabbit story is about -- i.e., a case of a deformed horse offspring got twisted into a tale of a horse giving birth to a rabbit. A weird birth was often taken as an omen of something. And weird births are not so rare.

We know how desperate Carrier is to come up with examples to prove his ideology that the Christ miracles were borrowed from the earlier culture. So then, why is it that this is the best he can come up with? This is your Jesus-Debunker expert/scholar who is supposed to have the answers. So tell us: Why is this the best he can offer?

Carrier is the "expert" if there is any, and he's practically telling you that there were no new miracle stories between 600 BC and 100 AD. His job description, as it were -- his calling for which he is paid, his very profession -- is to come up with examples of other miracle stories from the ancient world to explain where the Jesus miracle stories came from, to prove that there was nothing unique about Jesus because he was only a product of the earlier culture and that the miracle claims about him are only a result of earlier miracle legends which we can find many examples of in the earlier literature.

If Carrier was allowed to invent new manuscripts and make up his own pre-Christian miracle stories, he would certainly do it to fulfill his calling and fill the demand for such material. He obviously studies day and night trying to find examples of this, and yet, what is the best he can find? -- a horse gave birth to a rabbit. This is virtual proof that no new miracle legends appeared during the period leading up to the 1st century AD when the Jesus miracle stories appeared.

Over the course of this thread, you've been shown to be ignorant of many significant facts that have impact on your thesis.

Yes, but I ordered my black helicopters to those pages to shred them and destroy the evidence and any paper trail that would disprove me, so you can no longer cite them.

When you learn of these facts, usually offered as counter evidence against your favorite myth, you work hard to marginalize either the new facts or the person who provided them.

Or you ignore the whole thing.

No, I didn't ignore it -- I made sure to have my vigilantes and book-burning squads expunge all those facts and eliminate those who provided them. Don't accuse me of failing to do a thorough job of suppressing the Truth.

So, here, your theory rests on the lack of counter evidence.

Of course there's a lack of it, because my special agents suppressed it all. They've wiped clean all the historical documents and other evidence that would contradict my theories. You couldn't find anything, could you? See what a great job my terminators did!

But clearly, if someone were to provide that counter evidence, nothing would change, would it?

Can't happen. My agents have the latest paper-shredding and exterminating technology to eradicate all traces of any possible counter-evidence. That's why you can't find anything even though you've spent so many sleepless nights searching for it.

So clearly, you're not basing your belief on evidence, not really, you're filtering the evidence . . .

Mostly destroying it, like the evidence of all those other miracle-workers before Jesus, who served as the models for the later Jesus miracle stories, which evidence you somehow uncovered but can't reveal because my agents are threatening you to keep you silent.

. . . and pretending you're offering an argument.

Boring.

Not for you, with my agents and black helicopters intimidating you constantly to shut you up and prevent you from disclosing all those great facts you've discovered but are keeping hidden.

 

[Keith&Co.]

You are proving my point. That you are not giving any examples to show otherwise is evidence that there are no new miracle claims from 600 BC to 100 AD. You obviously have looked for an example and couldn't find any. .

What you completely fail to understand is that something is not 'evidence' if there's multiple ways to explain the observation.

For this observation, your constant claim that no one's providing counter[evidence, could also be because you dishonestly dismiss, mischaracterize, or just flat ignore counter-evidence, and then lie about it.
So people get tired of putting in the effort to type it up.

Same as your constant lying about having 4(5) independent sources that corroborate each other. We know you're wedded to that lie, so what's the point of explaining it over and over and over again?


The crux of your argument is that you have enough evidence to accept the healing miracles as history.

But you can't show any place that professional historians accept magic, miracles, deities, ghosts, or other supernatural elements as historical and factual. So you cannot demonstrate that your favorite myth ALSO reaches this level of historicity, based on the evidence that you lie about.

Meh.

 

[Lion IRC]

...something is not 'evidence' if there's multiple ways to explain the observation.

LOL
Keith&Co 'splains science to us uneducated folks.

This ones going into my quote mine vault.

 

[DBT]

Yet the explanation appears to be typically ignored when it comes to matters of faith.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yet the explanation appears to be typically ignored when it comes to matters of faith.

Well, it's hard to wield Occam's Razor properly when you simply MUST add exactly one entity...

 

[Lion IRC]

Entities do exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the entity is superior to human beings.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The Gospels do not even begin to tell the same tall tale when it comes to supposed accounts of the resurrection of Jesus and what happened then. Did Jesus arise to heaven from a house in Jerusalem on that same day, or from Bethel on that same day? (Mark and Luke) Or did Jesus leave for Galilee and no ascension to heaven? (Matthew). Or did Jesus meet his apostles in Jerusalem and then meet them again later in Galilee. No ascension. (John)

It is obvious that these are not eyewitnesses and didn't know anything about any of this. Why then would we take the miracle claims seriously?

Jesus makes claims of great miracle working abilities for his followers, Mark 11 & 16, John 14 et al, that do not work as promised and never did. Why are we supposed to take this pastiche of rumors and tall tales seriously?

 

[Kharakov]

Yet the explanation appears to be typically ignored when it comes to matters of faith.

Well, it's hard to wield Occam's Razor properly when you simply MUST add exactly one entity...

Yeah. I always loved the "non-conscious reactor" that atheists make up to explain how things react to one another without consciousness, when atheists themselves react due to some form of conscious awareness.

Atheist "The most reasonable explanation is that everything, until it is one specific form of organic (carbon based) matter, reacts to everything else without consciousness."

 

[sharon45]

Entities do exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the entity is superior to human beings.

No, it is entities without evidence.

 

[Learner]

Entities do exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the entity is superior to human beings.

Don't forget the entity must be materialistic.

 

[Kharakov]

Entities do exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the entity is superior to human beings.

Don't forget the entity must be materialistic.

Like corrupt Christians, who wage enslave the poor. The poor need to start killing Christians, instead of being fools. I need an assault rifle, and a church with rich Christians in it.

 

[funinspace]

Entities do exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the entity is superior to human beings.

Men with white beards exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the bearded man rides in a flying sleigh with reindeer pulling it, and hands out gifts around the world in one special night.

 

[Learner]

Like corrupt Christians, who wage enslave the poor. The poor need to start killing Christians, instead of being fools. I need an assault rifle, and a church with rich Christians in it.

Would you spare the poor Christians?

" The entity must be within the realm of materialism" (by atheist standards) - is what I should have said .

 

[Keith&Co.]

" The entity must be within the realm of materialism" (by atheist standards) - is what I should have said

So, is that a must? A requirement? Or just an observation about all the entities we actually find to exist?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Entities do exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the entity is superior to human beings.

Well ... ya.

That's like saying that people have arms is uncontroversial - unless you're saying that a person has four arms.

If you're going to make a controversial claim, that claim will be controversial and the onus is on you to back up that claim. The fact that it's somewhat related to a non-controversial claim isn't all that relevant. If someone disputes your claim, it's also not up to them to scour the internet for scientific literature about mutant babies born with four arms to see if they're correct about it being controversial when the nature of your claim indicates that you already know about said literature and can provide a link to it without any trouble.

 

[Kharakov]

Entities do exist.
This is uncontroversial - unless the entity is superior to human beings.

Well ... ya.

That's like saying that people have arms is uncontroversial - unless you're saying that a person has four arms.

Everyone has 4 arms, it's only this branch of the internet that has people that don't. It's for people who have less arms than the Norm (who is this guy who can cheers four people at once). You do know how the internet works, downright?

 

[bilby]

Well ... ya.

That's like saying that people have arms is uncontroversial - unless you're saying that a person has four arms.

Everyone has 4 arms, it's only this branch of the internet that has people that don't. It's for people who have less arms than the Norm (who is this guy who can cheers four people at once). You do know how the internet works, downright?

He does now. And forewarned is four armed, as we all know.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Confirmed once again: We have better evidence for the Jesus miracle acts than we have for many (most) ancient historical events.

I don’t look at the Gospel Jesus miracle claims in a vacuum relative to the dozens of other foibles in the emergence of this new sect out of Judaism and its history.

We agree it should not be looked at in a vacuum. What else should we look at?

Some related factors to look at are the other miracle claims which were made during all these centuries. Leaving aside whether the claims are true -- whether the events really happened -- but just considering the miracle claims themselves, which are definitely there, there is a pattern of their occurrence in the chronology.

Virtually ALL the miracle claims occurred BEFORE 600 BC, and AFTER 100 AD (or maybe 70-100 AD) and into the Middle Ages. <noise>

Blah blah blah IT’S THE MHORC MIRACLES!!!! Yet here you are regurgitating the same miracle hobby horse shit over and over again . . .

It's better to repeat something coherent and that's important than to blurt out something new but scatterbrained.

It's important and worth repeating that the Jesus reported miracle acts cannot be explained as produced by any culture of miracle superstitions during that time period, i.e., leading into the 1st century AD. There was nothing happening, detectable from the literature of the period, for the centuries/decades leading into the 1st century AD which can explain the appearance of these miracle stories in the Gospel accounts.

There were virtually no other miracle traditions of the time having any resemblance to the Jesus miracle acts. Other time periods, much earlier and much later, had a far greater incidence of such reported miracle claims, giving a far greater cultural context in which we might expect such miracle stories to emerge. So there is no explanation what caused these miracle stories to appear at the wrong time like this, in such a vacuum of miracle claims.

So apparently you're agreeing that these miracle stories appear suddenly, without precedent, unexpectedly, totally out of context for their time period, and without any apparent explanation. Your "blah blah blah miracle hobby horse shit" outburst is your recognition that this is the case.

. . . get back to me when you publish your Mythical Hero’s Official Requirements Checklist (MHORC). You seemed to have lost track of the "what else" part.....

So with this non-challenge to my point, you're confirming the lack of any previous events or trends toward miracle stories like we see suddenly appearing in the mid-1st-century AD in the gospel accounts.

You can't explain how these miracle stories originated, though you've tried to find something in the culture of that time to explain it but can find nothing and are exasperated that there's no way to explain how they could have occurred within such a context so lacking in miracle superstitions which are more common to other historical periods.

That's what fills the VACUUM you refer to. I.e., when you don't look at it "in a vacuum" but fill in the related facts of the historical period.

No, you are completely distorting the VACUUM I refer to.

How can something imaginary be distorted?

There is only one vacuum here, not several we can choose between, unless you want to invent your own facts. And that real vacuum is the absence of virtually anything relating to miracle superstitions in the period leading up to the Jesus miracle stories which popped up in the 1st century AD. You can't name anything there which in any way set the stage for those Jesus miracle stories, because these are not preceded by anything connected to miracle claims going on during that period.

Again, the only possible trend going on was the dying Asclepius cult, which produced some inscriptions about miracle healing claims but was no longer active at the time prior to the new Jesus miracle stories popping up. This ancient healing cult had existed far back 1000 years or more and was decreasing (from its peak several centuries earlier), yet suddenly experienced a revival AFTER the Jesus miracle healing stories began circulating. The context for the revival of this cult was the new Jesus miracle legend which popped up some time after 30 AD, and which itself is unexplained, without any cultural context, unconnected to anything preceding it.

That's the only "vacuum" there was, or absence of a "vacuum" -- and any other "vacuum" or absence of a "vacuum" you refer to is a fiction.

I’ve said it enough, so I’ll just quote the vacuum that you wallow within as you ride your Jesus miracle hobby horse . . .

Hi-ho Silver!

. . . miracle hobby horse puzzle piece:

I don't know of anyone here who has said that only because the gospel accounts are "anonymous", they are not credible. That is just Lumpy's pretend punching bag he keeps attacking...

So you agree that the anonymity of the gospel accounts has no relevancy. You agree that the anonymity is no reason to reject these accounts as reliable sources for the events, like we believe other written records of the time for the events. Including some other anonymous sources, and no one has shown how that casts any doubt on the credibility of them.

So you agree that repeating "anonymous" over and over again does nothing to debunk the gospel accounts as credible sources for the historical events. And there is something wrong with those who keep posting this "anonymous" rhetoric here as though it bears any relevance to whether these accounts are reliable, and as though some case has been made to show that "anonymous" documents are less credible.

Besides time and distance, it also includes discounting the conflicting birthing narratives of . . .

What "time and distance"? You mean that the gospel accounts were written too much later after the events happened, or too far away from those events? They were not.

time: Once again, the dates when these accounts were written were relatively CLOSE to the reported events, compared to most of our sources for the mainline history of that period. It was normal for the historical events we routinely believe to be reported 50 to 100 years after those events happened -- even 200 years later was common. The writings which were contemporary to the events, or which were from eye witnesses, are the rare exceptions.

So the 30-70 years delay of the gospel accounts, i.e., from when the events happened to when the final accounts were written, is closer than average for historical events of that time, in the sources we rely on.

distance: Only the gospel of Mark is thought by some to have been written from farther away than normal (Rome). The other 3 gospels were written relatively close to the Judea-Galilee scene of the events. And even if this one gospel account was written from that far away, still it contains much which connects it to the location of Judea-Galilee, such as extra Aramaic words, even if that content came from a source different than a final editor-redactor in Rome. So there is nothing about any long distance away which casts doubt on the credibility. And the other 3 (4) sources were written close to the location, if not in Judea-Galilee.

. . . it also includes discounting the conflicting birthing narratives of GMatt & GLuke and the forged ending of GMark (as Lumpy has acknowledged). It also includes . . .

You're misusing the term "forged" here. A forgery has to include a claim of authorship.

You can cite the above and other contents as being dubious in some way, perhaps being fictional -- like many documents contained dubious parts alongside the reliable part. This dubious element is a small percentage of the total accounts and does not diminish the general credibility of the accounts. You prove nothing by pouncing with glee on these dubious parts of the text having possible flaws or imperfections. Your obsession with the doctrine of infallibility of the scriptures is irrelevant to whether the Jesus miracle stories are credible, because their credibility is not based on the premise that the Scriptures are Divine and therefore must be absolutely true.

The gospel accounts give us evidence that these events happened, regardless whether they are divinely inspired/infallible or not. A document does not have to be divine or infallible in order to be a source for the events which happened. Other mainline documents also contain flaws and dubious elements, but are still believed for the general content.

Virtually all the examples you cite as flaws of some kind are found in only one document, not in all 3 Synoptics or all 4 gospels. Something peculiar to one account, like the Star over Bethlehem etc., has less credibility, because there is only the one source. But the miracle healings and the resurrection of Jesus are found in ALL 4 of these accounts, giving them much greater credibility.

Obviously more legends or stories got added to the original facts, as we see very clearly in the 2nd and 3rd centuries as many more Jesus stories emerged in the later "gospels" like those of the Gnostics and others. This process could easily have its beginnings in some parts of the 1st-century gospel accounts too, as later elements got added to the original story.

Pointing these out proves nothing about the general credibility.

. . . a bizarre forced march census' that never happened; Herod's killing of the babies that didn't happen; the earthquake and blood red sky that no one bothered to record;

There's no "blood red sky" anywhere.

In every case you're naming a dubious text or report found in ONLY ONE of the documents, not all 3 Synoptics or all 4 gospels. Any singular report like this, not consistent or in harmony with the others, has to be put in a less credible category. But this does not reflect against the credibility of the rest of the accounts. The dubious parts are a small fraction of the total content. Or rather, if we set aside the miracle claims into a doubtful category, then all the rest which remains is mostly in the non-dubious category.

The dubious parts are there, such as the census and the killing of babies in Bethlehem, etc., but these are a small percent of the total contents, and not uncharacteristic in comparison to the mainline historical sources which also contain dubious elements.

Jesus' quoted attachment to the old Jewish fables as if they were real;

Josephus also shows attachment to them. So therefore the history of Josephus is not really history? All his writings are disqualified as a source for historical events? The integrity and credibility of a source is not undermined because it contains citations from the ancient cultural traditions. Even if some of those traditions are fictional or non-literal.

The Dead Sea Scrolls give scholars much historical information about the Essene community, and yet they also contain attachment to the earlier legends. Such attachment to earlier traditions (fictions?) does not undermine the value of the historical information given.

Herodotus shows attachment to earlier dubious legends, but this does not undermine the credibility of his accounts. Likewise Livy and many others.

fake Davidian genealogies;

We don't know those are "fake" -- your use of this word is impulsive and emotion-based, not objective or anything of substance. Do you have to use (and misapply) such buzz-words in order to make your point? The genealogies in Matthew and Luke could be very accurate -- no one has proved otherwise.

Perhaps the genealogies don't really establish, logically, the principle intended by the authors, and perhaps they contain error, but they're not "fake" any more than The Sumerian King List is "fake" because it contains dubious elements.

Such lists served a purpose and are still useful, containing a mixture of fact and fiction, like most historical sources, and they don't undermine the overall credibility of the documents containing them. One can reasonably dismiss the obsession the ancients had with such lists -- but nothing about them undermines the general credibility of these sources.

. . . and one Roman reference to Pilate, where he was recalled back to Rome as he was too brutal even for their tastes...not quite the patsy of the gospels.

This demonstrates your shot-gun scatter assault on the gospel accounts, as if a possible flaw in the depiction of Pilate somehow debunks the gospel accounts generally as accurate, or as if you can toss out a possible text problem here and there and somehow thus debunk all Christ belief or theology. Why not toss in the where-did-Cain-get-his-wife? cliché for good measure? and so on? You could go on forever showing little problem questions throughout the Bible, but these don't tell us that the Jesus miracle events didn't really happen or that the accounts have less credibility.

The depiction of Pilate is best explained by his general annoyance with Jews: he probably resisted, at first, the Judaeans who brought Jesus before him, because he saw these Jews as mostly troublemakers he wanted nothing to do with. So it's likely he at first was partial toward Jesus and the Galileans, not out of sympathy toward them, but in his animosity against the Judaean accusers. And the gospel writers picked up on this anti-Judaean bias of his to depict him as sympathetic to Jesus and his Galilean followers.

There's nothing about the gospel depiction of Pilate which casts doubt on the credibility of these accounts generally.

It doesn’t matter whether King Egbert of Wessex drove Wiglaf, the king of Mercia, into exile or if the Vikings killed Wiglaf. But one of those options is far more likely than the other. I know George Washington existed and I accept much of the history about him. Yet I don’t buy the cherry tree or wooden teeth myths. People regularly set aside the BS injected into history, even if we don’t always know when made-up shit gets thru simply because it reasonably could be true.

You want the synoptic gospels to be 3 sources along with Paul’s letters.

The number of sources is fact, regardless what someone wants.

We don't choose what the sources are. We have 4 sources about the healing miracles, or 5 about the resurrection. The scholars/experts/researchers have turned up these separate documents. Just because there is content which overlaps them does not mean they are less than 4 (5) sources.

Yes, these Gospels exist. Yes, they are sources of information, just as the Marcion attempt at a single Gospel is also a source of information; as is the Gospel of Thomas. However, that does not establish that they are independent sources.

There are NO "independent sources" in all the ancient history literature. Even Thucydides and Julius Caesar were reliant on others for their information for their first-hand accounts of contemporary events. Every historian you can name relied on other sources (usually earlier), whether they named the sources or not.

The term "independent" source is very subjective. But the term "source" has a clear objective meaning, and the 4 gospel accounts and Paul epistles are genuine sources for the events just as the mainline historians are genuine sources, despite their dependency on other (earlier) sources. And there is much dispute about how much a particular writer was dependent on others before him. There is no established agreement that this one historian was "independent" while another was not. Such claims are very dubious and opinionated.

Hey, look some Christian blowhard thinks 5,800 NT manuscripts means something, why not run with that?
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/sources-for-caesar-and-jesus-compared

No, hundreds of manuscripts from centuries later do not increase the number of sources. Each separate document is a separate source, but not copies of earlier documents. In a very few cases you could dispute whether this discovered manuscript is a COPY of an earlier document or is a totally NEW DOCUMENT. E.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls documents containing virtually the entire Hebrew Bible might be called totally new "documents" or just additional "copies" of the ancient earlier documents (probably closer to the latter, but it's ambiguous).

But Matthew and Luke are not just COPIES of Mark, but are new documents containing much of Mark in them. That doesn't make them the same as Mark. No, they are SEPARATE DOCUMENTS than Mark, and it is idiotic to say otherwise. Even though they used Mark also as their own source. The later document is also a separate source despite being dependent on an earlier source for some of its content.

What about the manuscripts? Here the New Testament is far superior to its classical companions. Our earliest manuscripts start appearing within decades of the writing. The fragment p52 is dated around AD 125. It only has a few portions of John 18, but it starts a trail that has full manuscripts of the Gospels appearing by the fourth century. The number of Greek manuscripts we have of the New Testament up to the time of the printing press is more than 5,800. The wording of the New Testament, including the Gospels, is extremely solid. Unclear spots often appear with an “or” note in Bible margins that record such differences.

This quote is not claiming that the extra copies or manuscripts are additional sources. It's only pointing out that the exact wording of the text is pretty well fixed, i.e., that the text variants are not of great significance, as we can see how the copyists over many centuries did not make major alterations in the text. The quote is not saying that "5,800 NT manuscripts means something" other than to indicate how the particular Bible text, the Greek, has not been tampered with significantly over so many centuries of re-copying.

Or maybe take the word of the dozens of esteemed Christian theologians involved with the development and release of the New Oxford Annotated Bible:

I also like what the forward to GMark in The New Oxford Annotated Bible; NRSV with the Apocrypha; an Ecumenical Study Bible says: "Mark is by far the shortest of the four canonical Gospels and is generally thought to be the earliest, and to have been used in the composition of both Matthew and Luke".

So? Nothing about this means that these 3 gospel accounts are therefore not 3 separate sources. That a later source used an earlier one in its composition does not somehow change it into a NON-source. Mt and Lk are both separate sources, despite using the earlier Mark in their composition. Just as Josephus is a separate source, even though he used the Hebrew Bible as a source for much of his history.

Or the well known 2-source-hypothesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis

The Two-source hypothesis (or 2SH) is an explanation for the synoptic problem, the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were based on the Gospel of Mark and a hypothetical sayings collection from the Christian oral tradition called Q.
<snip>
The Two-Source Hypothesis was first articulated in 1838 by Christian Hermann Weisse, but it did not gain wide acceptance among German critics until Heinrich Julius Holtzmann endorsed it in 1863.

Nothing about this shows that the synoptic gospels are anything other than 3 separate sources, even if this "2-source hypothesis" is totally accurate. Anymore than H. G. Wells' Outline of History is anything other than a separate source than Gibbon's Decline and Fall from which it quotes extensively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Hermann_Weisse

Weisse was the first theologian to propose the two-source hypothesis (1838), which is still held by a majority of biblical scholars today. In the two-source hypothesis, the Gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written and was one of two sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, the other source being the Q document, a lost collection of Jesus's sayings.

What's your point? None of this is saying that the 4 gospels are not 4 separate sources. Many/most/all sources or documents relied on earlier sources, even quoting from them.

I see one source gradually exaggerated and expanded into what we now know as the synoptic gospels.

If it makes you feel good to "see" or pretend the number of sources is fewer than the 4 or 5 (the correct number), then no one can force the facts into you to contradict your visions. But you are fantasizing and inventing your own set of facts to suit your ideological commitment in artificially reducing the number of sources.

You are funny….pretend…LOL Yeah, Dr. Feel Good…

I feel good about pretending to agree with the 2-source hypothesis (Q & Mark) that most theologians ascribe to.

None of them is saying the 4 gospels are fewer than 4 separate sources. Identifying an earlier source for a later document does not make the later document into a NON-source.

Then we have Paul’s letters, from a guy who never met this Jesus;

Once again, virtually all our sources for ancient history were written by someone who never met the persons they wrote about. Even someone who was NON-contemporary to those historical persons. Whereas Paul was a contemporary to Jesus, making him a closer source to the historical person than most of our sources for the historical figures they wrote about.

. . . and the psychedelic Gospel of John that is said to have been written circa 80-90 CE per the same New Oxford Annotated Bible.

There are numerous examples of sources farther removed than this from the persons and events written about.

So it's not clear what your point is. The fact still remains that our sources for the Jesus miracle acts are better than average for ancient historical events and historical figures. If these 4 (5) sources are not reliable, for the reasons you've given, then 90% of our ancient history has to be tossed out the window.

 

[DBT]

Confirmed once again: We have better evidence for the Jesus miracle acts than we have for many (most) ancient historical events.

Correction; we have no evidence for the Jesus miracle acts. We only have claims.