The written records as evidence

[Aractus]

I think it's a safe assumption to say the order is Mark -> Matthew/Luke -> John. Mark is the crudest of them all while John seems to be the most polished.

No that isn't a safe assumption. I think that Peter dies before Paul - what do you say to that? If Peter and Paul both died c. 64 AD, then John has to be written after that, but if Peter dies c. 54 AD then John could have been written anytime from 54 AD and then you could have Mark > John > Matthew > Luke or Mark > Matthew > John > Luke.

The other question that you have to ask, if you doubt that the Apostle John wrote the Gospel of John is - if it wasn't written by the apostle why didn't the author make use of Mark/Matthew/Luke/"Q"/etc?

And as I pointed out before, it still remains possible that Mark used Matthew. Unlikely, but possible.

My apologies. I do have to admit I'm not sure where we're heading in our discussion. I'm just answering you a sentence for a sentence.

Ok, that's an example of consistency. *shrugs* it would be rather silly of me to assert that the Gospels have 0% consistency. I'm not going to that extreme.

Well, consistency isn't my agenda, it's historical reliability. I'll grant you that not everything can be corroborated, but that never automatically means that it's wrong, it simply means we don't have enough pieces of the puzzle to see the big picture.

If you say it could be dated anywhere between 50AD and 90AD, then I'd say there's a lot of goddamn speculation going on!

Well if you look at most ancient writings from these times, we don't know exactly when they're written either. We do have examples of NT books which strongly support early dates (earlier than 70 AD) and we have John who's date is fairly ambiguous. And no, if you said that John was written between 50-90AD that's not speculating, that's based on the evidence - narrowing it down further requires some degree of speculation, but you never know we may some day figure out the exact day that the book was written.

I think it's a damn good argument. The author's intent: to write an account of the events that have unfolded. Naturally, what would be your approach? To retell what you've experienced? But of course. Thus, if "Matthew" has had to rely on a second-hand document, then what's that telling you?

If we knew for 100% certain that Matthew wrote the gospel of Matthew then it would tell us that he believed Mark's account to be a genuine and reliable order of events, that's all it would tell you. You could speculate that it means Matthew and Peter were very close and developed a shared narrative to Evangelize.

That he didn't have any experiences to share? Almost certainly. Then why even entertain the idea he was a witness? Do away with the tradition that the Gospel of Matthew was indeed written by the Apostle Matthew.

I think that "Matthew" did make use of Mark's gospel, and furthermore I think Luke made use of them both. As for John, he didn't make use of them, that doesn't automatically mean that he didn't know about them (since he is an eyewitness after all), however it also doesn't mean that he did know about them.

You can't speculate that an eyewitness can't use the narrative of somebody else. If you give a written statement to police, you give it independently of somebody else, and there are almost always anomalies. The police may then come to you later and say "this is the statement we got from another witness, could you tell us if you agree or disagree with the following statements" and then clarify some more of the events that both witnesses saw and attest to.

Alternatively, if the police simply handed you the written statement from the other witness to begin with and said "is this right", it's a no-brainer that you would just say "yes" and then possibly add to the account if questioned more.

So no, it's not solid evidence of anything, all it proves is that the author of Matthew, whoever that was, trusted Mark's Gospel the same way that Luke trusted it.