RE: Christ's birthday
December 12, 2009 at 2:32 am
(This post was last modified: December 12, 2009 at 2:44 am by Minimalist.)
Guys, if you have ever served on jury duty - and watched a defense attorney tear an "eye-witnesses" to shreds on cross examination - you'll know that most people are about as observant as a loaf of bread in the first place.
These books never even claim to be written by eye-witnesses. That is a later adaptation by the church to give them more authority along with the alleged "apostolic" authorship.
No, Void, but two different authors, writing for different audiences, could well have invented stories to appeal to those audiences. "Mark" written first, does not address the question at all. Is it so illogical to think that readers of "Mark" might not ask "well, if he was a man, where did he come from?" "Matthew" writing for an apparently Aramaic-speaking audience concocts a tale drawing liberally from Jewish folklore, i.e., the story of Herod and the slaughter of the innocents which is as thinly-disguised a rip off of the Moses story as one can find. "Luke" written for a Greco-Roman audience, deals with the question in terms of Roman civil administration, which he does not understand as far as it relates to early first-century Palestine but a few references to various emperors or governors is enough to get the point across.
It is clear that both had access to "Mark" but "Luke" seems to have also had access to Josephus and worked some of that into his tale, i.e. the Quirinius reference.
These books never even claim to be written by eye-witnesses. That is a later adaptation by the church to give them more authority along with the alleged "apostolic" authorship.
Quote:there is no way that multiple eye witnesses could have reported events so differently
No, Void, but two different authors, writing for different audiences, could well have invented stories to appeal to those audiences. "Mark" written first, does not address the question at all. Is it so illogical to think that readers of "Mark" might not ask "well, if he was a man, where did he come from?" "Matthew" writing for an apparently Aramaic-speaking audience concocts a tale drawing liberally from Jewish folklore, i.e., the story of Herod and the slaughter of the innocents which is as thinly-disguised a rip off of the Moses story as one can find. "Luke" written for a Greco-Roman audience, deals with the question in terms of Roman civil administration, which he does not understand as far as it relates to early first-century Palestine but a few references to various emperors or governors is enough to get the point across.
It is clear that both had access to "Mark" but "Luke" seems to have also had access to Josephus and worked some of that into his tale, i.e. the Quirinius reference.
