Merged Topic - Historical Reliability of the Gospels

[Sargon The Grape]

Why is anyone responding to Randy's topics? Are we countering due to the chance there are some young historians out there who are on the fence? If you youngins are watching this parley, could you say "Hi!"?

Because even though we have an "ignore" button, no one is really interested in using it. The only place I've ever seen actually use it is a guitar forum my father used to frequent... ten years ago.

Despite the fact that perfectly good discussion forums like /r/DebateReligion are entirely dedicated to this discussion, atheist forums will often get used as religious debate platforms. Self-styled missionaries like Randy want to convince us that we're wrong, so they seek us out and badger us. Since many of the atheists on this site are here precisely because they hate dealing with this BS in real life, seeing folks like Randy barging in and preaching like he owns the place angers them to the point where they feel as though they must respond.

Or maybe people just like being assholes, I don't fucking know.

[leo]

Because even though we have an "ignore" button, no one is really interested in using it. The only place I've ever seen actually use it is a guitar forum my father used to frequent... ten years ago.

Despite the fact that perfectly good discussion forums like /r/DebateReligion are entirely dedicated to this discussion, atheist forums will often get used as religious debate platforms. Self-styled missionaries like Randy want to convince us that we're wrong, so they seek us out and badger us. Since many of the atheists on this site are here precisely because they hate dealing with this BS in real life, seeing folks like Randy barging in and preaching like he owns the place angers them to the point where they feel as though they must respond.

Or maybe people just like being assholes, I don't fucking know.

You are right . Even I responded to this catholic clown. and I'm mostly interested in winning the last person to posts thread.

[Randy Carson]

First of all, you are citing a mistranslated text. If you  want the correct translation, you should read the text in the Tanakh. Second of all , you are citing a text out of the context. The Isaiah 53 text isn't talking about the messiah. Isaiah 53 is part of the suffering servant songs in the book of Isaiah. If you read the previous chapters ,The people of  Israel is identified as the suffering servant many times. Seriously the Christianity claim that Jesus is the jewish Messiah is a big joke. Jesus never fulfill a single jewish prophecy apart of him being born a jew. The Messiah will be a 100 percent human being  and not a demi god. The Jewish messiah will be descended from David. Tribal affilation is determined by the father side and the new testament or church claims that Jesus  hasn't a human father. The Messiah will bring all the jewish tribes together and all the jews will return to Israel. That happened in the  Jesus time ? of course not . The opposite just happened.
The Messiah will bring world peace. That happened ? of course not . World peace don't happened in the first century and it seems world peace will not happen anytime soon. The Messiah will rebuild the jewish temple. It happened in the time of Jesus? of course not. The opposite happened , the second temple was destroyed ! The Messiah will bring full knowledge of god and all the world will acknowledge  the Hebrew god as the true god. That happened already ? of course not. Infact atheism is on rise and most people worldwide don't believe in the Hebrew god. And Christianity god doesn't count because your 3 head god or the trinity isn't the same god as the monotheist jewish god. Also the Messiah will get married and will have children.  Face it , your Catholic death cult and all Christianity isn't more than a Judaism heresy. Is ironic that the Catholic Church accused and killed many  " heretics" , when the church itself were the first heretics. Your cult is as false as Mormonism. The only difference is that your cult is way older. What a joke. Also forget  the second coming horseshit. The Messiah is supposed to accomplish everything in one coming.

I'm somewhat familiar with the alternative interpretations of Isaiah 53, and you have listed a number of interesting points for discussion.

This thread is about the dating of the NT gospels. If you'd like to explore Is. 53 in more detail, please start a new thread. I may or may not have time to participate.

Thanks.

[Randy Carson]

Catholic doctrine.  Yeah, I'm aware of it.  The deeper I delved into it the most disgusted I have become.  You have brought nothing new to discuss on this board.  All you have proven is that you are a dupe of the Catholic church--and a willing one.  You change words within the bible to suit your fancy.  And no, I am not ignorant.  You are willfully ignorant and most likely will remain such.  Visual aids! :))))))))))))))  What the hell are idols????   What a blind and faithful fool you are.

If you are not ignorant of Catholic doctrine, then you should know that Catholics do not worship idols.

Do you have anything more to add to the discussion of the OP concerning the accuracy of the NT texts?

[Randy Carson]

Because even though we have an "ignore" button, no one is really interested in using it. The only place I've ever seen actually use it is a guitar forum my father used to frequent... ten years ago.

Despite the fact that perfectly good discussion forums like /r/DebateReligion are entirely dedicated to this discussion, atheist forums will often get used as religious debate platforms. Self-styled missionaries like Randy want to convince us that we're wrong, so they seek us out and badger us. Since many of the atheists on this site are here precisely because they hate dealing with this BS in real life, seeing folks like Randy barging in and preaching like he owns the place angers them to the point where they feel as though they must respond.

Or maybe people just like being assholes, I don't fucking know.

I'd like to point out that this IS the Christianity subforum of AtheistForums.com.

What were you expecting to discuss here?

[Blackleaf]

Except that there is actually almost nothing the the gospels about Matthew's growth in holiness.

That's besides the point. The author isn't supposed to get too much attention. You're supposed to focus on the stories, and don't think too much about who's telling them. The "author" is just an observer. That makes it easier to accept, despite a lack of evidence.

And here is the bigger problem:

Suppose you wrote a book about the current political and economic situation in the United States. In the book you laid out your vision for what steps we need to take as a nation in order to turn things around and get them moving in the right direction. Then you publish the book under the name of "Ted Cruz" and try to sell it at a Donald Trump rally? Do you see a potential problem here? Is there any reason to think that you might not sell too many copies of the book?

Your "problem" isn't a problem. You stated no problem. You just gave a weird example that you could use as a strawman. Every religion has been successful because of the gullibility of the masses. There's no reason a forgery of an eyewitness account of Jesus would be any less palatable than any other religious texts.

The Romans occupied Israel, and the Jews HATED them. They were pagans. They imposed taxes. And they openly mocked these unsophisticated, bronze-age, goat herders and their silly superstitions about "one god". The Jews also hated those who collaborated with the Romans - like the tax collectors. Every watch a documentary about what happened to people who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. When France was liberated, it did not go well for those women who had taken German lovers. The men who collaborated were shot.

So, if you're trying to sell a book about Jesus (who already had a bad rap having been hung on a tree which was proof of being cursed by God according to scripture), and you want to sell it in the greater Jerusalem metropolitan area, claiming that it was authored by a Roman collaborator on the dust jacket was not a smart marketing strategy.

I've already debunked this bullshit reasoning of yours. The bad guy converting into a good guy just makes the story more attractive. Just like you would like to claim an atheist convert for your side, the early Christians wouldn't have had any issues at all with a tax collector turning over a new leaf to follow Jesus. And he's not even the best example of this. Paul, formerly Saul, was killing Christians before his conversion. So of course, they made his conversion story the most dramatic and miraculous of any disciple.

Yes!

Which is why there are explicit statements to this effect from Luke, John and Peter. And why we need to verify these statements for ourselves.

Wrong again. Focus, Randy. Repeat after me: We do NOT have any documents written by Luke, John, or Peter. We have copies of copies of documents that are BELIEVED to have been written by Luke, John, and Peter. I don't care how much you'd like to think that these documents were written by who the authors say they were. We have no evidence of this, and no way to verify it. In fact, all signs point to the documents being written by someone else, long after the events written about.

Yes!

Provided you could prove that it was actually from Paul, of course.

Not necessary, as again, people are gullible. EVERY religion takes advantage of this. Religions don't grow because their leaders provide strong evidence for their claims; they grow because what they say sounds good to them.

Of course not. The existence of accurate texts means nothing. However, without accurate texts we have nothing to discuss. They are a pre-requisite.

And as this thread seeks to explain, the texts must have been written early enough to have been authored by eyewitnesses before they all died out.

The texts are reliable. They were written early.

No, they weren't. They were written in the second century, after the original authors were long dead, and all of the supposed "witnesses" they spoke of could not be found. You will never find a single document written anywhere near the lifetime of Jesus. And once again, you fail to understand the point. Even if we found indisputable original manuscripts from Jesus' disciples themselves, it wouldn't prove that their contents were true. As I said, and you didn't address, Christianity wouldn't be the first religion to grow based on a lie. Every religion does it. This impossible barrier of eyewitness testimony or bust is a Christian invention to try to make its claims seem more believable. The problem is, if we're to just accept your assumption that people would have called bullshit without real evidence, none of the other religions in the world would exist. And yet they do, which proves you wrong.

Really? You know this or you are assuming it because my beliefs differ from yours and it is convenient to dismiss me?

It's plain to see to everyone here aside from you that you've got your head firmly planted up your own ass.

Yeah, because no true atheist would ever convert, right?

Strawman. But such logical fallacies are to be expected from someone so hopelessly brainwashed and incapable of rational thought.

Your first point is absurd. We rely on eyewitnesses EVERY day. Your second point is irrelevant. We have indirect testimony from the eyewitnesses who wrote them. This type of evidence is just as valid in a court of law as direct evidence.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Eyewitness testimonies have long been understood to be unreliable. Eyewitnesses frequently get important details wrong, such as the skin color of the perpetrator. They're worth virtually nothing in a court of law. Our memories are not as reliable as we'd like to think.

And...once again...YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING FROM ANY EYEWITNESSES. Get that into your head. You're making huge assumptions based on what you were raised to believe. No one with a free mind would consider any books from the Bible to be eyewitness testimonies.

Yep. And using the methodology of textual criticism (discussed in another thread), we can reconstruct the original texts with a high degree of accuracy.

So you can accurately guess what the man claiming to be Luke wrote in the second century. How special.

So, now we come to the heart of the matter.

If we have accurate texts written by men who can be shown to be reliable by careful examination of the details included in their accounts and to have been corroborated by non-Christian sources, then we are faced with the question of what to do with their claims.

Which you don't have.

Were they lying? Did they actually believe what they wrote? What accounts for the fact that otherwise sober, honest men make an otherwise unbelievable claim of supernatural events?

John Smith, Mohammed, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard...

Mark and Luke did. Accurately. We can test this.

You mean other than two facts baseless assertions:

1. The earliest sources ascribe the books to the traditional authors, and

Nope.

2. There is no competing list of candidates who might have written them?

That's because they'd be claiming to be someone else, dumbass. Anyone alive at the time could have written them.

Really? What if Joseph had two fathers as a result of Levirate marriage requirements?

Oh the lengths Christians will go through to try to justify obvious problems in their holy book. Is this stated anywhere in either of these two books, or are you making shit up again? The point of the two genealogies was to show that Jesus was directly related to David by blood.

Oh...stump the apologist, eh?

Okay, but not in this thread. Start your own.

No. You asked for it. You got it.

[Blackleaf]

Because a real historical person started it.

Because a real, historical person started it.

Because two real, historical people started me.

Why does the Christian Church exist?

Turn on your brain for 60 seconds, Randy. You're making this guy look smart. You completely missed the fucking point. Here. Let me simplify it for you.

You: If the authors were lying, people would have figured it out, and Christianity wouldn't exist.

Me: By that same logic, Mormonism and Islam must be true, because people would have figured them out if they were lying.

You: Uh, well they were started by real people.

Me:

[trdsf]

Those two words are very important. When they actually apply. If you think they do in this case, then you have misunderstood my argument.

More doubletalk.  You assert something is true about your bible, and then you use your bible to "support" your argument, and then you squeal like a stuck pig when you get called on it.

This is the very essence of circular reasoning, and of being a dishonest debater -- since we can add your tactic of dodging questions you can't (or don't want to) answer by throwing up a smokescreen of counterquestions that you hope will obscure the fact that you haven't addressed the points made against you.

One last thing: thanks for destroying your own position.  If you really want to suggest that I don't have to accept the existence of the far side of the moon because I haven't seen it for myself, then I don't have to accept the existence of your god either, since I definitely haven't seen him.

Unlike your god, however, I have good observational reasons to think there is a far side of the moon, good enough for me to feel comfortable saying I know (within the limits of scientific accuracy) there's a far side, and even to accept the evidence of the photography, without having to just rely on a mystical "someone said so".

I can observe the libration of the moon, which demonstrates beyond question that the moon is a three-dimensional object, in which case it must have a far side.  Nearly 60% of the lunar surface is visible from the Earth, just not all at the same time.

I can -- and have -- observed other bodies in the solar system, all of which are three-dimensional bodies, and all of which have far sides and near sides.  This strongly corroborates the idea that there's a lunar far side.

With regard to the photographs of the lunar far side, Occam's razor strikes again.  In order to believe that the photos of the far side of the moon are falsified, I not only have to believe in a massive conspiracy of every space scientist, rocket designer, astronomer, and lunar geologist in the world, I have to believe that at the height of the Cold War, the United States government colluded with the Soviet Union with regard to the Luna 3 photos, the first ones ever taken from the Moon's far side.  That American politicians in 1959 were perfectly happy to connive at presenting a Soviet scientific fraud as true.  And that they are still maintaining that same conspiracy to this day, even through eleven American presidents, six Soviet premiers, and the collapse of the USSR.

That would be not only delusional, that would probably require medication.

Thanks anyway, I'll take the real world.

[SGOS]

I hate to say this, but Randy is starting to make sense to me.  This is especially hard for me since I've been such a dick to him.  While he makes unsupported claims, the shear volume of those claims is remarkable.  The law of probability tells us that it's possible that at least one of those claims stands a good chance of being true.  If one is true, then it's likely that the others could also be true.  In addition, Randy has cut and pasted from many notable authorities (all of whom, like Randy, have good grammar).  In addition, they are good spellers too.

Overall, I can't say that the Bible is really unreasonable.  Walking on water?  What's unreasonable about that?  A dead guy coming back to life, turning water in to wine, making the blind see?  These are all good things done out of the concern for others.  I dunno, they may have happened.  You can't prove they didn't.

You can say Catholicism is superstition, but most people are superstitious, so we shouldn't hold that against anyone.  And almost everyone knows there is a god.  With so many people assuming that Jesus was a real person, it really makes sense to go with the numbers.

As to which religion worships the real god, that's a little harder to say, but when you think about it, it's probably the Catholics.  They are the oldest religion of all.  The Protestants came so much later that they probably can't remember things from 2000 years ago as well as the Catholics, and none of the protestants even agree with each other.  Their hearts are in the right place, but intellectually, the Catholics tend to be smarter, so they probably don't make as many mistakes.

It just seems logical that Randy might know more than any of us and really wants what's best for people.

[Baruch]

Standard fare: apologetic, polemic, casuistry ... aka Sophists transferred from pagan Athens to catholic Rome.

[Randy Carson]

You: If the authors were lying, people would have figured it out, and Christianity wouldn't exist.

Me: By that same logic, Mormonism and Islam must be true, because people would have figured them out if they were lying.

You: Uh, well they were started by real people.

And this is where you have failed to follow the chain of logic. I have not attempted to prove that Christianity is true merely because it exists. As you rightly point out, Mormonism and Islam exist, but I would not concede that they are true because they exist.

NO, I have merely asserted that Christianity exists because someone started it, and that person must have existed, also.

So, Mohammed was a real, historical person. Joseph Smith was a real historical person. Jesus was a real historical person.

THAT was the purpose of my question "Why does the Christian Church exist?"

[Randy Carson]

I hate to say this, but Randy is starting to make sense to me.  This is especially hard for me since I've been such a dick to him.  While he makes unsupported claims, the shear volume of those claims is remarkable.  The law of probability tells us that it's possible that at least one of those claims stands a good chance of being true.  If one is true, then it's likely that the others could also be true.  In addition, Randy has cut and pasted from many notable authorities (all of whom, like Randy, have good grammar).  In addition, they are good spellers too.

I appreciate the sarcasm, but there is an important kernel or two of truth in your post.

1. Yes, the volume of evidence is significant, it is reasonable, and it is compelling.
2. Yes, the notable authorities are well-educated, and some are world-class scholars.

This is in stark contrast to the material that has been offered by atheists in reply.

Overall, I can't say that the Bible is really unreasonable.  Walking on water?  What's unreasonable about that?  A dead guy coming back to life, turning water in to wine, making the blind see?  These are all good things done out of the concern for others.  I dunno, they may have happened.  You can't prove they didn't.

1. No, you can't say the Bible is unreasonable. There are 73 individual books in the Bible, and each must be evaluated on its own merits or lack thereof.
2. No, you can't prove that they didn't happen, and you know this. Therefore, you employ mockery in an attempt to lower the perception of plausibility.
3. I can't prove that they did. However, I can offer evidence and let you determine for yourself whether that evidence is reasonable.

You can say Catholicism is superstition, but most people are superstitious, so we shouldn't hold that against anyone.  And almost everyone knows there is a god.  With so many people assuming that Jesus was a real person, it really makes sense to go with the numbers.

1. Catholicism is not a superstition. It is based upon historical events.
2. With so many PhD's acknowledging that Jesus was a historical figure, it makes sense to ignore the crap you read from ignorant athesist in low-brow forums such as this.

As to which religion worships the real god, that's a little harder to say, but when you think about it, it's probably the Catholics.  They are the oldest religion of all.  The Protestants came so much later that they probably can't remember things from 2000 years ago as well as the Catholics, and none of the protestants even agree with each other.  Their hearts are in the right place, but intellectually, the Catholics tend to be smarter, so they probably don't make as many mistakes.

1. The age of a religion is not evidence of whether it is true.
2. Catholicism is the truest form of Christianity.
3. Protestantism tends to ignore the Early Church Fathers because their writings reveal their belief in doctrines which the Protestants have rejected due to Luther's errors.

It just seems logical that Randy might know more than any of us and really wants what's best for people.

1. The latter portion of the sentence is true enough.
2. An atheist wrote the following to me yesterday in another forum:

I know the Rabid Atheist mindset very well.

Why do you think the most rabid ones are always arguing with you and trying to show you you are incorrect? They want you(the believer) to prove them wrong. They desperately want you to prove them wrong.

They are furious with you that you cannot do this.

All the time, you remind them of what they do not have. The only answer for them is to destroy your faith, so they do not have to be constantly reminded. They hate you because you believe and have something they do not IE Hope. They envy you.

They are aware of none of this.

He is on the path to becoming a believer. I hope you are as well.

[SGOS]

He is on the path to becoming a believer. I hope you are as well.

Oh, I do, I do.  I'm seeing the light!

[Randy Carson]

I've already debunked this bullshit reasoning of yours. The bad guy converting into a good guy just makes the story more attractive. Just like you would like to claim an atheist convert for your side, the early Christians wouldn't have had any issues at all with a tax collector turning over a new leaf to follow Jesus. And he's not even the best example of this. Paul, formerly Saul, was killing Christians before his conversion. So of course, they made his conversion story the most dramatic and miraculous of any disciple.

Let me get this straight: You think that Jews would find it heartwarming to see a Jew become a Christian? Clearly, you are unfamiliar with the animosity and contempt that the Jews had for the fledgling Church. And who is going to be the most popular figure in these stories, Blackleaf?

Paul, the most celebrated student of the greatest rabbi of his day, Gamaliel, who became a traitor by leaving Judaism and becoming a Christian? Or Matthew, who was a hated collaborator and also became a Christian? How would either of these stories play in Jerusalem?

Not well. And that's why the Criterion of Embarrassment is so powerful. Because even though this information would NOT make Christianity more palatable to the Jews, it was nonetheless recorded because it was true.

Wrong again. Focus, Randy. Repeat after me: We do NOT have any documents written by Luke, John, or Peter. We have copies of copies of documents that are BELIEVED to have been written by Luke, John, and Peter.

Listen to me carefully, Blackleaf. Focus. We do NOT have any documents written by Luke, John or Peter. We have copies of copies of documents that are BELIEVED to have been written by Luke, John, and Peter.

DID YOU HEAR ME? Good, because it's what I have been saying all along in my thread on the Accuracy of the Texts.

The copies we have today are so numerous that we can easily reconstruct a reliable text even without the existence of the autographs. Further, the REASON we believe them to have been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, etc, is because 1) the documents claim to have been written by the authors whose names we know and/or 2) no other competing list of candidates has EVER been proposed are accepted.

The early Christians were just as hard-nosed and skeptical as you are, Blackleaf. They would have required proof of authorship before accepting any letter or gospel as scripture. As much as atheists want to throw around silly words like "fan-fiction" and "gullible", the plain fact is that these folks were no different than us. They would have demanded proof. Thomas refused to believe in the resurrection without being able to put his fingers into the nail wounds. A simple reading of the book of Acts will show you how hard Paul had to work at convincing the Gentiles in Antioch and Corinth and other cities of the truth of the Gospels. Some accepted and some did not. But his task was not an easy one because people in his day demanded evidence just as much as you do.

I don't care how much you'd like to think that these documents were written by who the authors say they were. We have no evidence of this, and no way to verify it. In fact, all signs point to the documents being written by someone else, long after the events written about.

This is your opinion, but it is not the opinion of scholars who have the education and credentials to speak authoritatively on the subject. So, either you know this and you're just being stubborn or you are kidding yourself about your own credentials or you are simply completely ignorant and talking out of your ass.

Not necessary, as again, people are gullible. EVERY religion takes advantage of this. Religions don't grow because their leaders provide strong evidence for their claims; they grow because what they say sounds good to them.

So, the smart religious leaders are simply lying in order to take advantage of the stupid ones.? Does that apply to smart atheists who write books to take money from gullible atheists who want to believe what they say?

No, they weren't. They were written in the second century, after the original authors were long dead, and all of the supposed "witnesses" they spoke of could not be found. You will never find a single document written anywhere near the lifetime of Jesus.

The gospels themselves were ALL composed before the end of the first century. If you disagree, then please provide an argument explaining why my OP is incorrect.

But never? You need to keep up with what archaeology is doing. When the King James Version was produced, it was based on seven manuscripts and the oldest of these was from the 11th century. When modern translations today are produced, they are based on 5000+ manucripts, and the oldest of these is from the second century. IOW, as time goes by, we're not getting further from the originals, we're getting CLOSER!

And there is one papyrus which has been dated to the first century...but I don't want to overplay my hand. Let's wait and see on that.

And once again, you fail to understand the point. Even if we found indisputable original manuscripts from Jesus' disciples themselves, it wouldn't prove that their contents were true.

Focus. I agree.

Shocked? You shouldn't be...I've been saying this over and over and over. Having an accurate text is simply the first link in a chain of evidence. There are many more links to be discussed before you will be able to deliberate on my case in its entirety.

As I said, and you didn't address, Christianity wouldn't be the first religion to grow based on a lie. Every religion does it.

So, it is your opinion that the disciples LIED about the resurrection? Because that is really the heart of Christianity, isn't it?

This impossible barrier of eyewitness testimony or bust is a Christian invention to try to make its claims seem more believable. The problem is, if we're to just accept your assumption that people would have called bullshit without real evidence, none of the other religions in the world would exist. And yet they do, which proves you wrong.

Christianity is unique in that it hinges upon one fact: the historical event of the resurrection. It is not a belief system, a set of principles to live by or a philosophy. Either Jesus was raised from the dead or he was not.

Prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the resurrection is the best explanations of all of the facts that objective people agree occurred, and the case is made. Conversely, prove that belief in the resurrection is unreasonable in light of all the evidence, and Christianity is busted.

I think I can do the former. Do you believe you can do the latter?

Then, let's go.

It's plain to see to everyone here aside from you that you've got your head firmly planted up your own ass.

Gee, if I appealed to numbers, I would be laughed at (and rightly so). But if you were to come to MY home forum, your views would be challenged beyond what you even think possible. Isn't that called "home court advantage". So, everyone here is a "fan-boy" of atheism. So what?

Strawman. But such logical fallacies are to be expected from someone so hopelessly brainwashed and incapable of rational thought.

My point was simply this: Atheists LOVE to talk about how they left Christianity once they began to think for themselves and about how stupid believers are for not leaving the faith. But when it's pointed out that some cradle atheists who are also top drawer members of the scientific community have converted to Christianity, that means nothing.

It's a double-standard that no one here likes to acknowledge.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Eyewitness testimonies have long been understood to be unreliable. Eyewitnesses frequently get important details wrong, such as the skin color of the perpetrator. They're worth virtually nothing in a court of law. Our memories are not as reliable as we'd like to think.

Eyewitnesses give testimony in court every day. And our judicial system accepts their testimony as valid. This does not mean that eyewitnesses don't make mistakes in their testimonies and they may even get some details wrong. Maybe Matthew got some details wrong, too. But this does not invalidate the entire testimony of the eyewitnesses in court nor in the gospels.

And this drives you crazy because you know that this means the gospels must be dealt with more seriously than you have been willing to accept.

And...once again...YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING FROM ANY EYEWITNESSES. Get that into your head. You're making huge assumptions based on what you were raised to believe. No one with a free mind would consider any books from the Bible to be eyewitness testimonies.

The gospels tell us that they were written by eyewitnesses or by those who interviewed eyewitnesses. Can you prove otherwise? Nope.

The gospels were written early enough to have been written by people still alive at the time. Can you prove otherwise? Nope.

The gospels were written by authors who intended to write accurate accounts of Jesus. Can you prove otherwise? Nope.

The gospels are corroborated by unintended internal consistencies. Can you prove otherwise? Nope.

The gospels are corroborated by archaeological and sociological evidence and research. Can you prove otherwise? Nope.

The gospels are corroborated by Jewish and Roman accounts. Can you prove otherwise? Nope.

In summary, the gospels were written by honest men who were eyewitnesses and intended to write accurate accounts of what they saw.

So you can accurately guess what the man claiming to be Luke wrote in the second century. How special.

Focus. Read the OP again. Luke wrote well before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, before the deaths of Peter and Paul in AD 64-65, and before the martyrdom of James in AD 62-63. Not the second century. And we know it was Luke because of the interconnections between Luke, the book of Acts, and the epistles of Paul.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Sure. Someone else asked me this once, so I put some thoughts together.

We can take a look at what Jesus said, how he acted, what others said and how they responded, etc.

The Divinity of Jesus Christ Proved from Scripture

Fucking circular logic? Good luck with that.