Lee Strobel Coming to Visit

[Learner]

So we've gone from "Mathew is believed by Christians to be written first" to "Mathew is believed by one scholar to be written first."

And how do we conclude which Gospel was written first?

There's no advantage here for either of us by saying "I'm going from 'Christians believe' and 'one scholar' believes". I brought up the one scholar because I only discovered him recently... although I don't understand why he would be the "only" one scholar in your mind to think this.

Based on everything we know about synoptic Gospels, it is easier to postulate that Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark while writing their narratives about the life of Jesus. Scholars call this line of evidence an argument from Mark’s redaction profile. Redaction means the author’s changes to their source while composing a new story version.It is contradictory to suggest that Mark wrote after Matthew and Luke, as the redaction profile of his Gospel implies otherwise.

Scholars can translate scriptures well and we are gratefully indebted to the great work they do, but it doesn't make them necessarily better detectives than detectives or make them better psychologists than psychologists, so to speak.
Everyone can have access and analyse what is written in their works.

If Matthew and Luke were indeed written first, and then Mark read them and decided to write his own Gospel--deliberately leaving out the birth and post-resurrection narratives--then Mark wrote an inferior gospel. Half a loaf may be better than no loaf, but it is far inferior to two whole loaves.

It doesn't matter at all if Mark wrote a book with lesser pages than the others, theres no conflict caused between the writers or gospels.

One of several things I would wonder then about your theory from your perspective is to ask: why would they leave Marks writings in the 'New Testament' if knowing that his writings having less pages could cause such doubt like the one you're having - when the idea in the first place is for the Church to bring people in the fold?

I mean... from your theory perspective, and if the Church was really concerned in the conflict of "no resurrection" in Mark, in the way you're seeing it. The Church would have simply left it out like the apocrypha and other books. And of course... deviously "hiding" Marks gospel would be quite counterproductive to the objective of the Church.

Your arguments are not very compelling.

Fair enough... I am not compelled by yours either.

 

[Politesse]

Lee Strobel? What a blast from the past! What is he, 80? Leave the poor man alone, he's probably just now realizing that he won't live to see the Rapture.

 

[Jarhyn]

Lee Strobel? What a blast from the past! What is he, 80? Leave the poor man alone, he's probably just now realizing that he won't live to see the Rapture.

Hey now, we're may be a year off from the simultaneous event of humanoid robots driven by AI, a civil war in a militarily powerful nuclear nation, a storm of fascism aligning all over the world around someone well known to be an infamous liar amid false prophecy that said liar is God born unto flesh, a disease that has killed hundreds of millions of people and made pretty much everyone it impacts "dumber", disproportionately hardening the brains of those who are infected against reason.

I think he might have already lived to have missed it, if we are to believe such fairy tales.

 

[ideologyhunter]

So, anyway, we're past March 2. How inspirational was the visit from good ole Lee?

 

[SLD]

So, anyway, we're past March 2. How inspirational was the visit from good ole Lee?

So I didn't go. I actually got invited to another social event that was going to be far more fun. So my wife and I did that. I mean when you can spend an evening eating dinner for free at a fancy restaurant and enjoy a really great band with great dancing music, or you can go to listen to some old evangelical talk bullshit about Jebus - well what the fuck would you do?