Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Jenny A]

Q
M
L
Mark
Matthew
Luke
John
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Peter

plus all of the Jewish and Roman sources that I have cited previously in this thread.

We don't have Q, M, or L.  We infer them from Mark, Matthew and Luke.  Actually Q, M, L, Mark, Matthew, and Luke are not independent sources.  Independent means not dependent on each other.  The theory goes something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-document_hypothesis

It's an alternative to the two source hypothesis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-source_hypothesis

In neither case do we actually have the independent sources.  Instead we have Mark plus two sources dependent on Mark: Luke and Matthew and hypothesized other source material (which we don't actually have and can only infer).  And if we infer it, and I do, we entirely undercut the theory that Mathew or Mark were the authors the church has since assigned to the gospels. 

The Gospel of Thomas is not a historical document at all, it's a collection of sayings of Jesus, not a biography or history of his life.  Many of the sayings are in the synoptic gospels, and it's been suggested that Thomas is Q.  Because it is a collection of saying and little more and we only have one copy, dating it is hard.   Serious scholars have suggested everything from 40-140.  Obviously it would have to be at the earlier end of the scale to be Q.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Peterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas  Regardless of it's date it says nothing about the life of Jesus.

John appears relatively independent of the synoptic gospels, but it describes rather different teachings than the synoptic.   And as a later work, probably written by several authors as several different times, is probably even less trustworthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John


The Gospel of Peter Dates from the 2nd half of the 2nd century.  It was condemned by the early church as the forgery of Peter that it is. It's also a bit of an anti-Jewish screed.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Peter  It's an obvious reworking of the story to absolve Romans particularly Pontius Pilate, of all guilt.

Your Roman sources say no more than that there were Christians and they believed some stuff.  What we don't have is Romans who investigated Christian claims or even cared much about them. Certainly we don't have Roman witnesses to Jesus.

So no we don't have a bunch of independent sources.  We have the synoptic family and John.

But supposing we did, under what circumstances could a historical document prove a supernatural event?  I agree there was a rabbi known as Jesus, later called Christ who was crucified.  He probably said, or said something like a number of things in the snyoptics and Thomas.  But that does nothing to show he was raised from the dead let alone that he's god.