The authors of the four gospels sourced from myths, not directly from eyewitnesses (debate #2)

His complaint is that it is “known” that the New Testament field is rife with religious bias…. Is this calling the kettle black or what? He cites unbelievers who are adamantly asserting viewpoints that support their now “non-belief” and asserting reinterpretations of scholarship to support their unbelief. It was a great laugh. Why would you not stop and think about this before posting? It is also presuming that our bias is clouding our judgment more than your bias is clouding yours. My opponent entirely missed the point it seems: My point on the minority opinion is not that they are opposing viewpoints with alternating levels of bias--- my point was the minority opinions are as factually based as the History channel’s critical minority scholars. These are not fact based assertions but reinterpretations of a miniscule amount of data. The minority critical scholars point to a pimple of data and state this should be used to interpret the mountains of data supporting the majority view. Example: I have one Egyptian glyph that appears to be a “light bulb” and claim super advance society and ignore the countless glyphs that showed a Bronze Age existence with Bronze Age tech. Concerning my positive arguments that show without a doubt of an early existence: Contention 1 - My opponent fails to understand the contention. Let me give a layout of what has occurred. My opponent creates a resolution that claims the Gospels are later generational myths and not eye witness accounts. - I prove that these documents did not change over time or “evolve”. - I prove they were early and within the lifetime of the Apostles - I prove there was no manuscripts claiming these Gospels were faked, by the “real” Apostles. - I show there are ZERO competing theological documents with as early a date as the Gospels and even Acts. My opponent states this contention is irrelevant. All I can do is lead a horse to water. Contention 2 – Evidence 1 - Luke Being Early – Acts not including the account of Paul’s Martyrdom: My opponent states: :“ Only a biography is strongly expected to account a character's death…” Martyrdom of Paul is an “act” and well within the purpose of the book of… “acts”. Has my opponent read the book to realize this? It is a book about the “acts” of the early church and its founders. Additionally, if Paul had died with a mundane death as my opponent suggests… My opponent is suggesting the author who wrote the book of Acts, who included the following “made up” details that “spiced up the mundane” never happened: - Paul resurrecting a dead man - Peter’s mere shadow healing - Angelic escapes from prison - Miracles galore Then ends the book while knowing Paul’s death to be mundane did not “invent” a similar scenario? After all the mundane “acts” already converted to supernatural ones, the author just misses this one? I could do one! “Paul was taken up to heaven by the chariots of fire just like Elijah! ” This is a monumental amount of special pleading from my opponent. Evidence 2 – The fall of Jerusalem not recorded. My opponent then states: : “This silence can be explained by the timeline of the narrative of Acts preceding 70 CE. Why should we expect events outside the timeline of the narrative? My opponent is suggesting a myth built way later than the first and second generation, way later than 70 A. D. --- So the Author that made up Luke, that included a prophecy about the fall of Jerusalem missed including it in the “acts” portion of his story? Oops? One of the most catastrophic occurances in Jewish History known throughout the empire and oops? Again extreme special pleading. The rest of the Evidence: My opponent appears to concede to the evidence and agree with a very early date and not respond to the rest of the factual data showing the dates for the gospels were well between 50-70 A. D. - the Rylands Papyri that was found in Egypt that contains a fragment of John, and dates to A. D. 130. From this fragment we can conclude that John was completed well before A. D. 130 because, not only did the gospel have to be written, it had to be hand copied and make its way down from Greece to Egypt. - Dead Sea Scrolls Cave 7. Jose Callahan discovered a fragment of the Gospel of Mark and dated it to have been written in A. D. 50. He also discovered fragments of Acts and other epistles and dated them to have been written slightly after A. D. 50. - Bishop of Antioch, wrote a letter before his martyrdom in Rome in A. D. 115, quoting all the Gospels and other N. T. letters Source (Ibid) Concerning My opponents Positive argument 1: To break this down: - My opponent appears to ignore the fact that his argument possessed two false dilemma fallacies in his line of argumentation. - He now continues to assert they must be bumpkins - I never conceded they were bumpkins but even if they were there is no problem with a scribal system in view. - The scribes could have listened to dictations in Aramaic and written them down in Greek. I showed proof of this from the Historical Record contained in the Book of Romans cited in the previous round. My opponent’s new twist is also largely humorous. My opponent points to a double “entendre” only possible in Greek. My opponent’s new assertion is the following: - Nicodemus believed Jesus said “born again” - Jesus really said “born above” (same Greek word means two different things) - This double entendre is only possible due to the Greek word. “Jesus only spoke Aramaic, Nicodemus only spoke Aramaic, this entendre is only a Greek speaking possibility thus myth” Wow, my opponent’s above concept is really rich with fallacious concepts. - Deductive fallacy presuming that the characters only spoke one language - Deductive fallacy ignoring that Greek was the common language of the day Nicodemus is even a Greek name again pointing to the “Hellenisation” of the area. To compound these deductive fallacies layered upon a false dilemma fallacy is the fact that this assertion is entirely presumptive upon his “new” interpretation of the scriptures being even remotely correct. The traditional interpretation: - Jesus said you must be “born again”. - Nicodemus thought Jesus was talking about a physical second birth. - Jesus was actually talking about being born again through the Spirit not the womb. This is not a double entendre. I reject my opponent’s interpretation. Pointing to a pimple: Despite the vast majority of the New Testament seemingly Aramaic, why cite this one possible Greek problem and conclude the opposite of all of the other amounts of overwhelming information pointing to Aramaic conversations? And still I do not concede that they ONLY spoke Aramaic. They all could have spoken Greek poorly/well. On top of that they could have spoken it and been able/not able to write it and had a scribe write it grammatically correct in the Greek. Concerning my opponent’s Point 3 - Miracles I believe my opponent missed how his assertion was addressed. I disagree that miracles were inserted after the fact within the secular records. I believe they were genuine records of the happenings. For my opponent’s assertion to have any bearing he must show that these miracles did not occur and were indeed inserted later as the myth developed in every single secular record. Concerning my opponent’s Point 4 – The Q Document For my opponent’s assertion that any proto-document existed he would have to provide the document. The Historical and majority view of historians that a direct shared witness can account for ALL of the similarities and BETTER accounts for ALL the dissimilarities.