Aggrad08 said:
The reasons to attribute authorship in the first place are the same reasons authorship was attributed later on, it lends authority and authenticity. It's also very common place when writing a first hand account. The reason to not claim apostolic authority within the text or early on are obvious if it isn't true
TrailerTrash said:
There is the historian Josephus roman documents and the written antiquity of the bible.
My problem with Shapiro is he dismisses historical figures with the same because I said so as the left.
His arhuements are shallow.
Zobel said:
What evidence do you have of that?
Zobel said:
Why would anyone claim to be Matthew Mark Luke or John before those works were published? What evidence do you have for false attribution? Who was Mark or Matthew or Luke or John that you can say they didn't write the works you also admit you have no idea who wrote them?
Sapper Redux said:Zobel said:
What evidence do you have of that?
The earliest attestations of any gospels have no names attached to them. The names don't appear until 180 at the earliest.
Sapper Redux said:Zobel said:
Why would anyone claim to be Matthew Mark Luke or John before those works were published? What evidence do you have for false attribution? Who was Mark or Matthew or Luke or John that you can say they didn't write the works you also admit you have no idea who wrote them?
You can recognize that in a small community certain names and traditions carry more weight?
Zobel said:Sapper Redux said:Zobel said:
Why would anyone claim to be Matthew Mark Luke or John before those works were published? What evidence do you have for false attribution? Who was Mark or Matthew or Luke or John that you can say they didn't write the works you also admit you have no idea who wrote them?
You can recognize that in a small community certain names and traditions carry more weight?
You didn't answer the question.
Zobel said:Sapper Redux said:Zobel said:
What evidence do you have of that?
The earliest attestations of any gospels have no names attached to them. The names don't appear until 180 at the earliest.
Argument from silence. There is no evidence that they circulated without names, and every "attestation" incudes the affirmation that the gospels are the memoirs of the apostles. Can't have it both ways.
Don't use Ehrnan's arguments. They suck.
Zobel said:
So what attestation doesn't name them and also doesn't say they are memoirs of the apostles?
What historical source do you have that actually is affirmative evidence of an anonymous gospel?
Better yet what source - ever - attributes any other authorship to any of them?
Also - don't forget Papias.
Zobel said:
Its not guess what's I'm thinking. Answer the question. Prior to the publication of Mark, why would anyone use the name Mark? Who was Mark?
Zobel said:
Ooo ok. Which group produced the gospel using his name? What group would simultaneously know Mark well enough to give him authority and also not know him well enough to know he didn't write it? Do you have any evidence for this theory -at all-?
I'm the one making up claims out of whole cloth? Hahahah
Zobel said:
Except… except literally every source in antiquity, every single one, attributes that there are four gospels and only four gospels accepted by the church, and only ever assigns these four names to them. These four, these four names, and no others.
Your theory you literally just made up and have not a single solitary piece of evidence to support.
So yeah, they're basically the same.
Zobel said:Aggrad08 said:
The reasons to attribute authorship in the first place are the same reasons authorship was attributed later on, it lends authority and authenticity. It's also very common place when writing a first hand account. The reason to not claim apostolic authority within the text or early on are obvious if it isn't true
Ok. Let's start with Mark. Why was Mark famous? Meaning, why does the name "Mark" lend authority and authenticity?
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John mark would have reasonably been known among that community and I believe is considered the founder of the church at Alexandria.
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In what way does the use of a scribe address the issues that causes modern scholars to largely abandon traditional authorship?
because considered authentic by whom and when matters.Quote:
Why should we treat it as significant that there is no other claimed author of this work when that's true for plenty of other early Christian works universally considered inauthentic?
because they're boring and don't even hope to actually add value to the question.Quote:
This line of argument doesn't even try to address the criticisms of traditional authorship.
Zobel said:
Better supported and closer in proximity with a better manuscript record than literally any other works of antiquity.
On your side? Not a single shred of evidence. Argument from silence and arbitrary shifting standards. Womp womp. Losing sucks, not sure why you want to lose this argument again, in the exact same fashion.
Not a big problem as they alluding to this person is all that's required. You could say the same about the names matthew or peter or john. The appeal to authority is pretty reasonable.Zobel said:
Problem one. John Mark from the other scriptures is not absolutely known or attested to be Mark the Evangelist or the Mark who went to Alexandria.
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Problem two. What you just said is coming from the same sources you ignore that say that Mark wrote Mark.
So then we are clear that the use of an Amanuensis does not actually help the case for traditional authorship in any meaningful way and scholars are more than aware of the practice.Quote:
You jumped in to goaltend for your buddy sapper who made the idiotic statement that the gospels being written in Greek was evidence against apostolic authorship. Amanuensis has entered the chat.
If that's the case why bring up the question at all? Your appeal then isn't to the claims in the text, but rather to the authority of the church some generations later.Quote:
because considered authentic by whom and when matters.
I think they are pretty interesting but that's neather here nor there, the second statement is boldy false. Not only do they add value, they lie at the foundation of modern scholarship, and even those who would attempt to argue for traditional authorship must grapple with these if they mean to do so in a thoughtful way.Quote:
because they're boring and don't even hope to actually add value to the question.
That's in incorrect characterization. "This document exhibits multiple areas of evidence that are to varying degrees inconsistent with the notion that the author of this work was an eyewitness to the events in question or otherwise had direct access to eyewitness accounts.Quote:
"We think there are issues with this so Mark didnt write it"
And? Admitted ignorance has long been deemed superior to false knowledge by the wise.Quote:
"Who wrote it?"
"We don't know"
"Who was Mark?"
"We don't know"
Sapper Redux said:
You keep twisting what's said. You have nothing before 180. You can't argue otherwise because you know it's true. Instead you play semantic games to get around that hard and fast reality. There's zero evidence for your claims that the names attached to the gospels reflect their actual authors until roughly a century after they were written. Given that we have early Christian writings from before 180, we aren't talking about silence in the historical record, we're talking about an absence of evidence for your position. And given that we know modifications were made to the gospels by different groups going into the third century, claiming the gospels were written by apostles and then preserved, only to have the actual names suddenly expressed in 180 is not a strong argument. It's not a good or logical argument. It's a hope and a prayer.
Zobel said:
If you don't know who Mark is how do you know what he should have known or how he should have written or what mistakes he should have made or not made?
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But Mark, Matthew, John are such minor characters in the gospels themselves it is silly to act like a person who is at best a minor character makes the claims stronger. It really doesn't make any sense.
It's a mainstream scholarship view.Zobel said:
This is a much more interesting question. For one, I think your general premise is extremely strongly overstated, and is driven by bias and agenda combined with a willingness to jettison historical understanding in an arbitrary way. But the second part is much more interesting.
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The authority question is confused. The gospels are referred to and quoted as authority in the same documents you claim prove their anonymity.
This simply doesn't follow.Quote:
Which means the writings themselves carried authority - and if you're correct, they carried authority while circulating anonymously. It is illogical then to put the name to the document to validate the document.
Explain the titles of much of the New Testament apocryphaQuote:
But Mark, Matthew, John are such minor characters in the gospels themselves it is silly to act like a person who is at best a minor character makes the claims stronger. It really doesn't make any sense.
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Irenaeus didn't name the authors of the documents to make the gospels themselves authoritative. In other words, he didn't say something like we know the gospel of Mark is true because of who Mark was. He quotes from them as authoritative, and his parenthetical comments about the authors are introductory side notes. The authority comes from the quote, from the status of the text as scripture - not from who Mark was.
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A work may be believed to be authentic, reliable and authoritative by someone and they or their religious community may still have reason to bolster or reinforce it's authority. They may also be more credulous towards claims that would support such authority. We see this with most of the new testament apocrypha. We see this with pauline epistles and depending on your views on authorship Paul's own words. Fogery was a practice at the time and for this reason. Once we have marcion start the trend of having a canon there becomes even more incentive to bolster the authority of certain works.
ignoring the fact that you find 1 Peter apocryphal.. this list is what you would expect if you were going to name something to draw authority. But there's an important distinction between those works and the gospels, which is the point I was making. Those all self-claim authorship to these famous people internally. Matthew and Mark do not. Mark isn't even in the gospel. Luke doesn't claim to be an apostle and only subtly injects himself in Acts. Only John makes kind of a bold claim, but the Johannine scholarship is the least challenged. Even then John doesn't claim to be any particular John and includes himself in a humble way, makes himself equal to Peter by structure and implication but not directly.Quote:
Explain the titles of much of the New Testament apocrypha
I didn't say they were mutually exclusive. I read Irenaeus, and looked at how he argues. If authorship is tied up with authority, you're going to make sure that claim is explored. Especially if it was not universally accepted in recent memory. I mean you're implying that Justin Martyr didn't have names on the gospels, and that was 30 years before Irenaeus wrote. But Irenaeus makes no effort or pains to defend his naming, they're thrown out casually. The gospels carry weight prima facie, not because of the authors - exactly like Justin uses them.Quote:
These are not mutually exclusive ideas. I don't know why you think this.
no one knows for sure. It is an intractable problem unless we make some new discovery.Quote:
Also, you didn't answer my question, which gospel was written first?
