I was asked to come into a battle with some atheists on "im skeptocal's" site. The issue is eye witness in Gospels. My friend JB put up a link to my page on community as Author. This guy Merrill says there was no evidence on the page. That's because he didn't red it. Although page 1 is all cited from Book of Acts so he doesn't count that as evidence. The Bible is trash to them so they can't understand the concept of as an artifact. Page 2 has quotes from a dozen scholars on the veracity of the Hebrew Oral tradition. He says it doesn't. I put the quotes on the comment page, he says they doesn't say he is eye witness. The scholar says the way Luke wrote about the subject shows he's referring to a witness. The says unless it sys he is unless the guy himself says:i am an eye witness" it does't count. He even refused to accept the testimony of the elders of Ephesus in the back of John Because the BD doesn't;'t say" I am a witness."
I pointed out expert testimony he says they are Christians so they can't count as experts. So in other words the only scholars we can trust are people trying to destroy the Bible. This guy is not worth talking to He's a creton and he is playing a game. this is beyond incredulity.
- JBsptfnDelete
"....The upshot is that these communities, school/communizes, contained eye witnesses who bore witness to the original events of Jesus ministry and who could have check mistakes and embellishments upon the story....." your anonymous link
Nope.
Of course they were written by communities. They are little more than collections of things a group of people wished were true.
Eye witnesses don't say "we" saw this with our own eyes.
they say "I" saw this with my own eyes.
And the third person omnipotent viewpoint is certainly not an eye witness claim. 
Nope.Delete
yes.
Of course they were written by communities. They are little more than collections of things a group of people wished were true.
No, why don't you try actually try studying the field? they had an oral tradition they memorized the words of the teachers and spit them back. They were in the co munity telling the stories, hearing the witnesses and repeating the teaching to each other in a controlled way,. oral tradition is not just wild rumor. Of course you are afraid to read the link JB gave you because you learn the truth,
Eye witnesses don't say "we" saw this with our own eyes.
you have no idea what eye witnesses said in the first century in Palestine. you are imposing modern court standards upon another age. they would say that as s collective if it was important that the particular collective endorsed it. they are the elders of the church that means more than just regular people. as a group they encores in a document. yes they would use second person. you were right out the person, second person plural.
they say "I" saw this with my own eyes.
And the third person omnipotent viewpoint is certainly not an eye witness claim
no reason why it can't be. one switches person in the same sentence/ "I saw him do this: first and third.
You can be kind of childish, son. Not in the sense of child-like but in the sense of "petulant".
Oral traditions in religions function to reinforce belief, not to preserve factual history.
Also it is absurd to suggest that people in the ANE were assiduous and ardent fact checkers. Most testimony was accepted at face value since travel and time to interview witnesses was not as effortless as it is now. (LOL Speaking of the historical fallacy.)
Meta "...No, why don't you try actually try studying the field? "
LOL
Like you have, fool? (as a matter of fact I have assshole)
Here is someone who actually has and they don't agree with you:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html
another guy who can't make links
Meta"...you have no idea what eye witnesses said in the first century in Palestine. you are imposing modern court standards upon another age"
Merrill: BS.
It's actually you and the other biblical literalists imposing modern standards of fact checking on an age when they didn't exist. (That lying idiot J. P. Holding/Robert Turkel comes immediately to mind on this subject.)
Claims of miraculous "godmen" were so frequent and such a staple of religious dogma that most in that time didn't blink an eye when told of them.
And we can make a pretty good effort to define how eye witnesses spoke as opposed to how myth makers wrote in the ANE.
https://adversusapologetica.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/patterns-of-myth-making-between-the-lives-of-alexander-the-great-and-jesus-christ/#more-11842
Meta"...
"...they would say that as s collective if it was important that the particular collective endorsed it."
Of course. Religious myth binds communities together.
That has no bearing on veracity of truth claims in oral traditions.
Meta"...
".... they are the elders of the church that means more than just regular people. as a group they encores in a document."
Meta"...you have no idea what eye witnesses said in the first century in Palestine. you are imposing modern court standards upon another age"
Merrill: BS.
It's actually you and the other biblical literalists imposing modern standards of fact checking on an age when they didn't exist. (That lying idiot J. P. Holding/Robert Turkel comes immediately to mind on this subject.)
Claims of miraculous "godmen" were so frequent and such a staple of religious dogma that most in that time didn't blink an eye when told of them.
And we can make a pretty good effort to define how eye witnesses spoke as opposed to how myth makers wrote in the ANE.
https://adversusapologetica.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/patterns-of-myth-making-between-the-lives-of-alexander-the-great-and-jesus-christ/#more-11842
Meta"...
"...they would say that as s collective if it was important that the particular collective endorsed it."
Of course. Religious myth binds communities together.
That has no bearing on veracity of truth claims in oral traditions.
Meta"...
".... they are the elders of the church that means more than just regular people. as a group they encores in a document."
Oral traditions in religions function to reinforce belief, not to preserve factual history.
Not to brain wash them but they needed to know the teachings the net effect is they remembered regardless of why.
Also it is absurd to suggest that people in the ANE were assiduous and ardent fact checkers. Most testimony was accepted at face value since travel and time to interview witnesses was not as effortless as it is now. (LOL Speaking of the historical fallacy.)
No most testimony was not accepted at face value, you have no evidence that it was that is a mere assertion based upon atheist ideology not fact, they don't have to be fact checkers to assure they keep the story straight.
"...No, why don't you try actually try studying the field? "
LOL
Like you have, fool?
yes like I have butt hole
(1) Maasters in the feidl from major liberal seminary
(2) =ABD on Ph.D. in history
(3)read NT in Greek
Here is someone who actually has and they don't agree with you:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html
"...you have no idea what eye witnesses said in the first century in Palestine. you are imposing modern court standards upon another age"
ah yes the great man throws a tantrum when people criticize his bull shit. He has come credentials although not in Biblical scholarship, he's not using them like a scholar.
BS.
It's actually you and the other biblical literalists imposing modern standards of fact checking on an age when they didn't exist.
Can't you argue the facts from evidence? you have to go throwing names at people. why on earthy would anyone think i'm a literalist? so typical of little atheist bully boys,. you can't reason you can[t argue if someone stands up to you have to l,ibel their imntelligence..
(That lying idiot J. P. Holding/Robert Turkel comes immediately to mind on this subject.)
you are a liar and you are an idiot.
Claims of miraculous "godmen" were so frequent and such a staple of religious dogma that most in that time didn't blink an eye when told of them.
that is totally disproved.it also has nothing to do with the issue. the truth is you don't care what's true you have a core case against God and that's the issue and all nonsense about the bible s window dressing. you don't really care. you are starting to call the fail safes a sure sign you know can't stand up to my arguments. here's link to my page on dying rising savior4gods
here
And we can make a pretty good effort to define how eye witnesses spoke as opposed to how myth makers wrote in the ANE.
that is totally stupid. you are oblifiou8s to the whole process.
your argument that if it was true Bible scholars would say so if you saw the material JB linked to you would see they do. of course you are not interested in facts.
Notice he reports to an atheist fail safe when backed n a corner, can't answer the argument so shit to a totally different argument.
Meta"...
"Not to brain wash them but they needed to know the teachings the net effect is they remembered regardless of why."
Remembering is not the issue. Manufacturing agreement is.
"No most testimony was not accepted at face value...."
Yes it was, especially when delivered by friends, family or members of a community.
"...you have no evidence that it was that is a mere assertion based upon atheist ideology not fact..."
LOL
What part?
Are you denying that travel was more arduous?
That interviewing alleged witnesses without electronic media was more difficult and time consuming?
Get real.
".....they don't have to be fact checkers to assure they keep the story straight."
Way to miss the point.
We're not talking about "keeping the story straight" we're talking about verifying it.
You are a disgrace to your field and to your university if you've actually studied ANE history.
You can't write a coherent sentence and your every post is tainted with religious bias.
Butt hole.
he says this. he;s initiating rank name calling.
"ah yes the great man throws a tantrum when people criticize his bull shit. He has come credentials although not in Biblical scholarship, he's not using them like a scholar."
Oh, bite me.
He makes you look like a piker in terms of coherence, scholarship and use of logic (including Bayesian logic.)
"Can't you argue the facts from evidence?"
The only evidence required for my assertion is your own posts, fool.
"....you have to go throwing names at people."
right.
Remembering is not the issue. Manufacturing agreement is.
"No most testimony was not accepted at face value...."
Yes it was, especially when delivered by friends, family or members of a community.
"...you have no evidence that it was that is a mere assertion based upon atheist ideology not fact..."
LOL
What part?
Are you denying that travel was more arduous?
That interviewing alleged witnesses without electronic media was more difficult and time consuming?
Get real.
".....they don't have to be fact checkers to assure they keep the story straight."
Way to miss the point.
We're not talking about "keeping the story straight" we're talking about verifying it.
You are a disgrace to your field and to your university if you've actually studied ANE history.
You can't write a coherent sentence and your every post is tainted with religious bias.
Butt hole.
he says this. he;s initiating rank name calling.
"ah yes the great man throws a tantrum when people criticize his bull shit. He has come credentials although not in Biblical scholarship, he's not using them like a scholar."
Oh, bite me.
He makes you look like a piker in terms of coherence, scholarship and use of logic (including Bayesian logic.)
"Can't you argue the facts from evidence?"
The only evidence required for my assertion is your own posts, fool.
"....you have to go throwing names at people."
right.
Butt hole.
"ah yes the great man throws a tantrum when people criticize his bull shit. He has come credentials although not in Biblical scholarship, he's not using them like a scholar."
Oh, bite me.
He makes you look like a piker in terms of coherence, scholarship and use of logic (including Bayesian logic.)
"Can't you argue the facts from evidence?"
The only evidence required for my assertion is your own posts, fool.
"....you have to go throwing names at people."
right.
Butthole.
"...why on earthy would anyone think i'm a literalist?"
Does the NT describe an actual historical person called "jesus" or does it not?
Why don't you parse that and talk about what you consider literal and what you don't. (Puts elbows on table and reaches for the popcorn bowl.
".....so typical of little atheist bully boys,. "
Again with the name calling you decry, fool?
"....you can't reason..."
Says the clown who just tried to argue that fact checking trumped personal trust in the ANE?
Too funny.
"....you can[t argue if someone stands up to you...."
Really?
what am I doing right now?
"...have to l,ibel their imntelligence.."
Look who's talking, fool. The guy who can't even figure out how to turn on spell check.
(continued)
- continued)Delete
- (continued)
"you are a liar and you are an idiot."
Sorry, if you don't understand how mendacious Robert Turkel is you don't get to claim to be intelligent.
"that is totally disproved."
Really?
Not talking about "savior gods" here-just miracle workers.
If you deny they were common you don't know anything about the era.
"it also has nothing to do with the issue."
Really?
The common belief that gods could father children with mortals-fundamental to roman religion IIRC-is irrelevant to whether people would bother to fact check such claims?
Wow. that's quite an assertion.
"...the truth is you don't care what's true..."
Says the clown whose confirmation bias kicks in every time his religious views are questioned.
LOL
"....you have a core case against God...."
- Oral Tradition Trustworthy
Fewer changes if tradition is controlled
"No one is likely to deny that a tradition that is being handed on by word of mouth is likely to undergo modification. This is bound to happen, unless the tradition has been rigidly formulated and has been learned with careful safeguard against the intrusion of error" (Stephen Neil, The Interpretation of the New Testament: 1861-1961, London: University of Oxford Press, 1964, p.250)
Tradition was controled.
Neil adds in a fn: "This is exactly the way in which the tradition was handed on among the Jews. IT is precisely on this ground that Scandinavian scholar H. Risenfeld in an essay entitled "The Gospel Tradition and its Beginnings" (1957) has passed some rather severe strictures on the form cuticle method.
See also M. Dibelius... Neil goes on to say that there is some "flexibility" in the transmission, but nothing that would change the basic facts or the thrust of the teaching otherwise, "But there is a vast difference between recognition of this kind of flexibility, of this kind of creative working of the community on existing traditions, and the idea that the community simply invented and read back into the life of Jesus things that he had never done, and words that he had never said. When carried to its extreme this method suggests that the community had far greater creative power than the Jesus of Nazareth, faith in whom had called the community into being." (Ibid.).
Oral tradition in first-century Judaism was not uncontrolled as was/is often assumed, based on comparisons with non-Jewish models. B.D. Chilton and C.A. Evans* (eds.), Authenticating the Activities of Jesus(NTTS, 28.2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998):
"...[T]he early form criticism tied the theory of oral transmission to the conjecture that Gospel traditions were mediated like folk traditions, being freely altered and even created ad hoc by various and sundry wandering charismatic jackleg preachers. This view, however, was rooted more in the eighteenth century romanticism of J. G. Herder than in an understanding of the handling of religious tradition in first-century Judaism. As O. Cullmann, B. Gerhardsson, H. Riesenfeld and R. Riesner have demonstrated, [22] the Judaism of the period treated such traditions very carefully, and the New Testament writers in numerous passages applied to apostolic traditions the same technical terminology found elsewhere in Judaism for 'delivering', 'receiving', 'learning', 'holding', 'keeping', and 'guarding', the traditioned 'teaching'. [23] In this way they both identified their traditions as 'holy word' and showed their concern for a careful and ordered transmission of it. The word and work of Jesus were an important albeit distinct part of these apostolic traditions.*
""Luke used one of the same technical terms, speaking of eyewitnesses who 'delivered to us' the things contained in his Gospel and about which his patron Theophilus had been instructed. Similarly, the amanuenses or co-worker-secretaries who composed the Gospel of John speak of the Evangelist, the beloved disciple, 'who is witnessing concerning these things and who wrote these things', as an eyewitness and a member of the inner circle of Jesus' disciples.[24] In the same connection it is not insignificant that those to whom Jesus entrusted his teachings are not called 'preachers' but 'pupils' and 'apostles', semi-technical terms for those who represent and mediate the teachings and instructions of their mentor or principal.(53-55)(corrosponding fn for Childton and evans") "
All irrelevant since no writer claims to be an eye witness.
Why did you bother to cut and paste this?
Have you forgotten what the original assertion was.....again?
"Also, there wasn't an necessarily a long period of solely oral transmission as has been assumed:
"Under the influence of R. Bultmann and M. Dibelius the classical form criticism raised many doubts about the historicity of the Synoptic Gospels, but it was shaped by a number of literary and historical assumptions which themselves are increasingly seen to have a doubtful historical basis. It assumed, first of all, that the Gospel traditions were transmitted for decades exclusively in oral form and began to be fixed in writing only when the early Christian anticipation of a soon end of the world faded. This theory foundered with the discovery in 1947 of the library of the Qumran sect, a group contemporaneous with the ministry of Jesus and the early church which combined intense expectation of the End with prolific writing. Qumran shows that such expectations did not inhibit writing but actually were a spur to it. Also, the widespread literacy in first-century Palestinian Judaism [18], together with the different language backgrounds of Jesus' followers--some Greek, some Aramaic, some bilingual--would have facilitated the rapid written formulations and transmission of at least some of Jesus' teaching.[19]" (p. 53-54)"
LOL
The 'widespread literacy in first-century Palestinian Judaism'?
Seriously?
Then what need for an oral tradition?
"...together with the different language backgrounds of Jesus' followers--some Greek, some Aramaic, some bilingual--would have facilitated the rapid written formulations and transmission of at least some of Jesus' teaching"
Oh FFS.
That the NT was written in Greek is not an argument for it's authenticity nor earlier dating than the consensus of textual analysis by scholars has established. And it certainly isn't a good argument for the absence of an oral tradition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_New_Testament
You seem to confuse cutting and pasting the opinions of christians whose opinions coincide with yours as argument.
All irrelevant since no writer claims to be an eye witness.
Why did you bother to cut and paste this?
Have you forgotten what the original assertion was.....again?
"Also, there wasn't an necessarily a long period of solely oral transmission as has been assumed:
"Under the influence of R. Bultmann and M. Dibelius the classical form criticism raised many doubts about the historicity of the Synoptic Gospels, but it was shaped by a number of literary and historical assumptions which themselves are increasingly seen to have a doubtful historical basis. It assumed, first of all, that the Gospel traditions were transmitted for decades exclusively in oral form and began to be fixed in writing only when the early Christian anticipation of a soon end of the world faded. This theory foundered with the discovery in 1947 of the library of the Qumran sect, a group contemporaneous with the ministry of Jesus and the early church which combined intense expectation of the End with prolific writing. Qumran shows that such expectations did not inhibit writing but actually were a spur to it. Also, the widespread literacy in first-century Palestinian Judaism [18], together with the different language backgrounds of Jesus' followers--some Greek, some Aramaic, some bilingual--would have facilitated the rapid written formulations and transmission of at least some of Jesus' teaching.[19]" (p. 53-54)"
LOL
The 'widespread literacy in first-century Palestinian Judaism'?
Seriously?
Then what need for an oral tradition?
"...together with the different language backgrounds of Jesus' followers--some Greek, some Aramaic, some bilingual--would have facilitated the rapid written formulations and transmission of at least some of Jesus' teaching"
Oh FFS.
That the NT was written in Greek is not an argument for it's authenticity nor earlier dating than the consensus of textual analysis by scholars has established. And it certainly isn't a good argument for the absence of an oral tradition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_New_Testament
You seem to confuse cutting and pasting the opinions of christians whose opinions coincide with yours as argument.
This guy is really a prime example. He has no idea what research is about. am I supposed the the stuff in the text box what would that accomplish? would that mean it's more than quoting opinion? He thinks of the expert scholars as just more doufous Christians because nothing can ever count against his opinion. that's because his views are hatred driven. reason and facts are nothing to him
