(August 2, 2017 at 4:00 pm)SteveII Wrote: 4. It is your claim they were not eyewitnesses! They claimed they were. Competing claims...I go with them.
Most scholars believe that Mark was written by a second-generation Christian, around or shortly after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in year 70.
Luke admits, fairly directly that he wasn't an eyewitness.
Matthew used Mark as a source. Why would an eyewitness not use his own account?
There is no consensus about John, but the majority of scholars believe it was unlikely the anonymous author was an eyewitness.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.