Quote:You would look at the first copy and see if the additions at all conflict with its content. The reliability of the first copy doesn't change. I don't see what this has to do with the Gospels. There are what, three chapters in their entirety that were added a few years later? All the critical components are written within thirty years of Jesus' life--and supported by outside sources. An "addition" ten years after that point is hardly any more likely to be fictional.
I wasn't aware that the Gospels were supported by outside sources. Can you point to a single historian who documents a miracle worker causing an uproar to every town he went, who also had hundreds following him at times?
Quote:So one question: Say “Mark” was discovered to have been written in A.D.33. Would that make you consider it less likely to be fictional?
Unfortunately, your "outside sources" place the Gospel firmly at 70 A.D. or later. Therefore, your question is purely a hypothetical with no real bearing to reality (like the Gospels themselves coincidentally).
It's quite the romantic idea that we're supposedly reading genuine history in the Gospels. That was my mindset as a Christian, but sometimes we just have to wake up and smell the roses. The "outside sources" don't support the Gospels in any way. I don't know where you got that idea from.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
