The historical Jesus predicted a first-century doomsday

IntroductionI have been challenged heavily and about as much as I expected in this debate, and I remain grateful to J.Maximus for humoring me with this.His statements are quoted in italics.More on multiple attestationMy opponent asserts that we have "multiple attestation" in which it is "implausible that [these] multiple traditions would independently commit the same false assertions". It is clear, however, that these 'attestations' are almost certainly all false; they refer to the gospel writers' time period and not the time period of the historical Jesus.It is true that the attestations of the prophecies refer to their own time periods. I certainly would not deny that the authors may have spun the prophecies in their own favor (i.e. by delaying the deadline). However, we still very much need to explain the multiple attestations of these same specific prophecies, not merely find reason to distrust them and leave it at that. If we are looking for an explanation and not just a lack of one, and all of the earliest sources have the same specific theme (Jesus as a prophet of the imminent apocalypse), then the winning theory has the better explanation for those relevant myths.Since we are dealing only with Mark's theology and not that of Jesus, we cannot count on Mark as one of our 'multiple' attestations. The question at hand is whether or not a relevant part of Mark's theology was original to Jesus. One of the ways to answer that question is with multiple attestation. There are all kinds of reasons not to trust Mark, as there are for Q and Paul. However, when many sources say the same thing, then the historical reliability of the claim is strongly magnified.Why? Because it is very implausible to propose that the same falsehood was developed by the same three sources independently. It matters little if each of the three sources spun the account in their own respective directions--the convergence on the same central theme demands an explanation all the same.Historical patterns and plausibilityMy opponent states that "doomsday cult doctrines are almost always attributable to the cult founder." While this may be true, it does not assist us much in the matter of determining the theology of the historical Jesus; we cannot apply this reasoning until we can assert with high confidence that Jesus viewed himself as the founder of the cult that later became Christianity.This argument is a non sequitur. We need to take the sociological patterns seriously as evidence to decide which historical theories are most plausible. It would certainly help to have very direct evidence of what Jesus, but we need to make the best sense of the evidence that remains, and Con needs to fulfill his obligation to formulate a better explanation than the one I have given.My opponent argues similarly that these "were minor shifts in doctrine". The shifts I mention, however, are anything but minor.More specifically, I claimed that the shifts in doctrine given as examples by Con were "relatively-minor shifts." As significant as they may seem to a different debate, they pale in comparison to the overhaul that would be required for a cult to go from non-doomsday to doomsday. A bathtub holds plenty of water, but not nearly as much as a lake bed. In order to show plausibility of an alternative explanation, an overhaul equally as drastic must be found in either Christianity or other cults. The doomsday doctrine was apparently present in Paul and a central theme in Mark and Q.Paul's JesusWe can also look to Paul who, despite being an apocalypticist himself, never indicates that the historical Jesus was an apocalypticist in any way. In fact, quite the opposite: Paul's Jesus does nothing apocalyptic; he merely dies. The apocalyptic Jesus, for Paul, is not the Jesus of history, but the Jesus of the future-the Jesus who is to come "from heaven with a cry of command" (1 Thess 4:16). Since Paul does not make any attestations to the effect of the historical Jesus being apocalyptic, we cannot count on him as one of our 'multiple' attestations.I grant to Con that Paul does not explicitly attest that Jesus predicted the apocalypse. Paul's explicit telling has Jesus as an agent of the apocalypse, not necessarily a prophet of the apocalypse. Not that the distinction is especially relevant--we don't know for sure what Paul believed about what Jesus preached with respect to the apocalypse, but we can take a very good guess based on Paul's belief in the absolute authority of Jesus (1 Thessalonians 4:2) and Paul's belief that Jesus would be the instigator of the apocalypse (1 Corinthians 15:24).Regardless, I would like to remind Con that I cited Paul as one of the three sources that "reflect a belief in an imminent deadline for the apocalypse." So, even in the unlikely case that Paul believed that Jesus was not an apocalyptic prophet, Paul shares an essential commonality with Mark and Q that demands an explanation, and the best explanation is that Jesus himself was the first Christian apocalyptic prophet.Relevance of Luke's Jesus?Con said some things that I agree with him about Luke's formulation of the apocalyptic prophecies, and Con said things that I disagree, but there is a much more important matter of relevance. Con pointed out that "We cannot count on Luke as one of our 'multiple' attestations," and, in fact, I didn't. Luke is a relatively late source, containing apologetics for the questionably-failed deadline of the apocalyptic prophecy, much like the still-later sources of the gospel of John and the Second Epistle of Peter. I did not cite Luke as a source. Instead, I cited the three earliest and most relevant--Paul, Q and Mark, which were all seemingly composed before the deadline (~80-90 CE). Con should justify his reason for why the material exclusive to Luke/Acts should be taken as a relevant source of the historical Jesus.ConclusionCon has expended excessive brain power addressing week or trivial criticisms, attempting to promote only uncertainty. But, the most effective means for the triumph of Con is to show the significant rivaling probability that all of the earliest leaders of Christianity in the early first century were doomsday cult leaders except for Jesus himself. Con has a wealth of scholarly literature to help him make his case--the many liberal Christian members of the Jesus Seminar primarily promoted a model of Jesus that was non-apocalypticist, attributing the embarrassing doomsdayism of all early sources onto the disciples of Jesus. I challenge Con to find many analogous historical examples of such a proposed cult development. One way or the other, I suggest that Con use his two remaining rounds to build firmly on the evidence a plausible alternative case for a Jesus who was not a doomsday cult leader, even if such a model is equally uncertain. Until then, I assert that all alternative models are fatally divorced from the evidence, leaving only the model of Jesus as a doomsday cult leader who followed the same sociological patterns as so many others.