Thank you for the lengthy reply!
"...claims to be...", "...ascribed to...", "...said to have uttered...", "...said to have written down..."
I think that I understand. This can all be summed up under "legend has it."
And Joshua's alleged authorship of the last portion of Deuteronomy? I take it that it is "widely assumed" or "inferred."
You may take me to task for "splitting hairs," or accuse me of being argumentative, but I sincerely believe that it is useless to discuss the authenticity and thus legitimacy and credibility - let alone the validity and/or bindingness - of these writings if something as fundamental as their authorship is in dispute.
Thanks anyway!
Regards,
It all boils down to whether you believe what Jesus had to say, or you don’t.
“”...claims to be...”, “...ascribed to...”, “...said to have uttered...”, “...said to have written down...”
I think that I understand. This can all be summed up under “legend has it.””
This is historical scholarship. Analyze any document that is thousands of years old. What can you say about it? You have no video, no audio, no living eyewitness. So you look to other recorded history to corroborate, to archeaology, to ancient manuscripts, etc.
What does your disputation prove? Are you trying to assert that the Old Testament was written hundreds of years after the life of Jesus? Or that the New Testament was? No honest scholar, Christian or not, would take you seriously. We all know that the Bible was completed within a hundred years’ of Jesus’ resurrection. The last books were written by apostles who were His contemporaries. No credible scholar refutes that.
Now, whether this is the word of God or not, that has been disputed since the beginning of time. It was Satan himself who asked Adam, “Yea, hath God said?”