(reply to #18)
5 sources (Count 'em! -- 5 FIVE sources) for the Jesus Resurrection
The bible is the only source for the resurrection.
There was no "the bible" in the 1st century, but only the particular writings, like the 4 Gospels and the Paul epistles, so these are 5 sources, not one. "The bible" did not exist until the 4th century when those writings were officially canonized. This 4th century development did not magically change these 5 sources into one only.
If there were really only one source for the resurrection, then there would be very little belief in this as a historical event and we'd not be having this debate.
funinspace: I see you are up to your usual wash, rinse, spin, and repeat thing again, along with . . .
That someone is offended by repetition is an indication that they are afraid of truth-seeking per se and are running away from the truth, which frequently requires repetition in order to be found. It's perfectly legitimate to repeat a correction when the same error continues to come up. So many debunkers keep falling back on the fallacy that "the Bible" is the only source for the Jesus miracle acts. They apparently don't know their 1st-century facts, so it's legitimate to repeat to them that "the Bible" -- even just the New Testament alone -- is a compilation of many different writings, from a multitude of different authors who did not always agree with each other and even contradicted each other at times. To incorrectly compress them all together into "one source" is obviously a mistake which should be corrected again and again every time it comes up.
If someone can show otherwise, let them explain how the 4 Gospels and the Apostle Paul can be any less than 5 separate sources. No one has shown such a thing. The Paul epistles and the 4 Gospels were written by 5 separate authors, who are therefore 5 sources, and there is no scholar who ever suggests that the 4 Gospels somehow originate from one source only. Those 4 writers (or redactors) were separate persons at different locations, each putting together his "Gospel" or his version of what Jesus Christ did and said. There was no "Church" directing them, or programming them, combining them into "one" writer or source or document such that these separate manuscripts can be treated as if they are really only one, or two, rather than four. No scholar has ever suggested such a combining of them into "one source" only. Theories how they obtained their information do not somehow cause them to magically become only 1 or 2 rather than 4.
. . . along with shifting goal posts as you try to build your edifice...
You want to rebut my beliefs? OK, but my aesthetically beautiful goal-post architecture is off-limits.
Most mainstream Christian theologians agree with the two source hypothesis for the synoptic Gospels, so those 'sources' dial back to 1 mystery/unknown Q source and Mark.
No, all the theologians and scholars/historians, Christian and non-Christian, agree that the 4 Gospels are 4 sources, 4 different identifiable documents, 4 sources of information for what happened in about 30 AD, not only 1 or 2 sources.
Nothing about "the two source hypothesis" changes the 4 Gospels into only 1 or 2. That one source quotes from another source does not magically change those 2 sources into only one. If anything, this makes 5 sources out of them, because we have the 5th source, the "unknown Q source" added to the other 4.
The Q source, if it exists, includes the following (quoted here in Matthew):
2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" 4 And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is he who takes no offense at me."
Luke 7:18-23 quotes this also, much of it word-for-word, meaning that this text is from the Q document, and so this document clearly includes reference to the Jesus healing miracles. So that gives us 5 sources, not only 4, for the Jesus healing miracles -- IF we assume the Q source really is a separate document from Matthew and Luke, as the "two source hypothesis" claims. This "two source hypothesis" never says the Synoptic Gospels are any less than 3 separate documents, or 3 separate sources. It only says there was still another document which is added to Mark in order to provide 2 identifiable sources from which Lk and Mt quote. But this hypothesis never says that Mark and Q are the only 2 sources. It says only that Mt and Lk quote from both Mark and Q, so these are 2 sources used in some of Mt and Lk, and Q is the source for those parts of Mt and Lk which use identical language but are not from Mark. But the vast majority of Mt and Lk are not quotations from either Mark or Q. And the "two source hypothesis" never says the 4 Gospels are any fewer than 4 sources for the historical Jesus. But rather, if anything, it increases these to 5 sources, with Q added to the 4.
That one document quotes from another hardly means these 2 documents somehow become less than 2. It's standard for one author to quote from another, but that doesn't mean the one quoting somehow ceases to exist as a source for the parts which are not quotes from the other, and this non-quoted part is the majority of both Matthew and Luke.
What is our "source" for the Maccabean Revolt? It's definite that Josephus is heavily dependent on I-II Maccabees, and yet Josephus is a source for this historical period. Just because he relies on earlier sources does not mean that Josephus suddenly ceases to be one of our sources for these events. If there is duplication, or overlap, of one with another, this only increases our confirmation of the events reported, even if the later source relies on the earlier, or quotes from it. It doesn't mean the 2 sources become any less than 2 in number.
In some cases of total reliance on the earlier source you could speculate that the verification or evidence is less persuasive than if there's less reliance or the later source is more independent. But in Mt and Lk there is obviously far more content that does NOT rely on the earlier Mark and Q, so Lk and Mt are mostly independent of Mark and Q.
Modified copies of independent sources really don't count for yet another source.
But the vast majority of both Mt and Lk are not "modified copies" of Mark or Q. They are separate sources for the large amount of their text not quoted from Q or Mark.
But they are more than just additional text added to the earlier Q or Mark. They are also confirmation of the earlier sources, adding credibility to these earlier sources. They confirm that these earlier sources are recognized as having some authority or status or reliability as sources of information on what happened. So they add confirmation to the general Jesus story circulating at the time, about the activities in Galilee and the trip to Jerusalem and the crucifixion-resurrection narrative.
Nothing in this wiki page suggests that the 4 Gospels are any less than 4 sources about the historical Jesus.
Paul never met this Jesus, so his letters regarding Jesus are by their very nature second hand.
The vast majority of our ancient history is from "second hand" sources (or even third- or fourth- or fifth-hand), or authors (e.g. historians) who never met the historical characters they report to us about. So our information about the Resurrection is essentially the same in nature as our information about most of the ancient history events, from indirect sources.
And Paul doesn't discuss the Jesus healing miracles.
He discusses only the events at the end, from the night of the arrest of Jesus. Everything prior to that is omitted by Paul. You could argue that Paul played down the healing miracles, just as almost all the later Christian writers played them down, choosing instead to focus on theology and on ancient Hebrew prophecy and some other traditions or symbols borrowed from pre-Christian culture. They chose to ignore the 1st-century healing miracles (or mostly ignore them) even though they knew of them.
The Gospel of John was probably written around 90-110 AD, running past your imagined requirement where sources are to be less trusted as they are so far removed.
There are degrees of trust. Plutarch is less trusted, being removed by 500 years or more from some of his reported history which is mostly believed anyway. If you toss out the Gospel of John as too late, then you have to toss out most of our known history of Alexander the Great, even much of our Julius Caesar history, based mostly on writings 100-200 years later and only very little on the earlier sources. The 70 or 80 or 90 years span between John and the Jesus events is a relatively short time span, or a normal time span, between the events and the later written accounts, for our ancient history events generally.
If we had only the Gospel of John and nothing else, the evidence for the Resurrection would be poor, for something that unusual.
In this case, the GoJ is hitting 60-80 years later. Never mind that the GoJ is radically different than the synoptic gospels.
All 4 Gospels differ from each other in their interpretation, and there are discrepancies between them. This is verification of the separate nature of the sources, not collaborating together but each doing their separate recording of what happened and separate explanation of it. It helps to confirm the part they agree on: the miracle healings and the final death and resurrection. The teachings are more questionable, with the wide differences, so that what we have real evidence for are the miracle healings and the final death-and-resurrection, while the rest is conjecture.
Secondly, the GoJ doesn't share in these imagined, oh so important healing miracles, with the synoptic Gospels.
It gives further confirmation to them, but the particular healing miracle events in GoJ are different ones than those in the Synoptics. They completely overlap in the nature of what happened, with John's miracles being given more individual attention in each case, and a total smaller number of them. It adds credibility to the healing miracles narrative in the Synoptics, showing a more widespread belief that such events happened.
And that the particular John healing miracles are different ones suggests that this author was unaware of the other Gospel accounts and did not rely on them as the source for his accounts. It means there were differing versions of Jesus the miracle-worker, with some discrepancies, as the stories were circulating around, but the part in common being the part that is most credible, which is that he performed such acts, whatever the different versions of it might be. This is how facts are determined in a court case or investigation involving many witnesses. The part they all agree on is the more credible part, while the contradictory parts are less credible.
John is less credible on some of the chronology, or other points of discrepancy, where he conflicts with the Synoptics, since John is later but also is outnumbered by the 3 Synoptics. I.e., the attack on the temple in Jerusalem probably occurred very late, just prior to the arrest of Jesus, and not very early in an early trip to Jerusalem, as John says. John is probably wrong to say that Jesus did several trips to and from Jerusalem. There was probably only the one trip at the end.
It's noteworthy that John omits any exorcism miracles. Why is that? It's probably because these stories had a negative tone about them, and John thought they were undignified, or displeasing aesthetically. A narrative of Jesus talking to the demons and casting them into the herd of swine has a negative tone to it, especially in view of the angry response of the farmers who lost their herd. But we need to ask what actually happened, and not what is aesthetically pleasing. It makes no sense to say that these exorcism stories are total fabrications. Facing reality forces us to admit that something must have happened, however one explains it. No Christian writer had any motivation to concoct stories like these. Something real must have happened, and then storytellers added the "demons" as some kind of superstitious explanation for it. But for GoJ it was too displeasing, too mundane and non-spiritual, to be included in his presentation of the exalted Cosmic Divine Logos.
This tells us that something real must have happened. There are
no exorcism healing stories in all the other ancient literature. Only descriptions of rituals to expel demons, with no cases of someone described as healed or recovered from these kinds of sickness. So, why do these appear so suddenly and abruptly in the Gospel accounts, with no precedent of such a thing? Something so unexplained is evidence that something unusual did happen in this one case, compared to other miracle traditions which evolved in the normal mythologizing process.
So, for the Jesus healing miracles, there are only the synoptic gospels . . .
No, ALL the early sources which report Jesus doing such acts are evidence for this. We can dismiss much later writings, after 200 AD, when many new Jesus stories evolved, from writers wanting to add more to the story or wanting to give various mystical interpretations. It's impossible to draw a line at exactly where the "sources" are no longer credible. A single source 100 years later would not by itself be good evidence for miracle acts. But in combination with other earlier sources, it adds further credibility.
. . . the synoptic gospels (aka the 2 source hypothesis) with 2 sources.
No, the "2 source hypothesis" does not say the 4 Gospels are only 2 sources. It says there are 2 sources (Q and Mark) from which two of the synoptic gospels quoted (using them as sources for a small part of their content), and so possibly adding still another source to the 4 (4 + 1 = 5 total sources) which are our evidence for the Jesus miracle healing acts. Which is more evidence than we have for 90% of our ancient history facts which are taught in history classes and history books.
