(January 8, 2014 at 12:36 pm)Minimalist Wrote: ... we only have one original story. "Mark" (or whoever) that wrote the original tale. ...
Most of the early, fragmentary, manuscripts we have date to the 2d century. ... What if there are no first century "originals" because this shit started in the 2d century?
That requires a simple, charming faith that seems somehow alien to you, in the sense that you have to shelve your critical skills and just accept the assertion of utter, whole-cloth fabrication.
Asserting as evidence of absence that Justin does not mention other "authors" seems a stretch. There's too much stuff from the 2nd C to have all been invented just then. So there is something that goes back farther, and it seems far more more likely that something actually happened to somebody and to some people, than that several authors (all four gospels were supposedly composed in span of maybe 50 yrs, plus Acts, plus arguably those letters not asserted to be pseudepigraphic) not all in the same place came up with that much stuff from nothing at all -- now THAT's a creation myth!
