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To: manwiththehands

Do you have a source for the four Gosples being eyewitness accounts? Some of us heathens are trying to keep up with the discussion.


74 posted on 01/02/2006 5:58:21 PM PST by bigsigh
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To: bigsigh
Do you have a source for the four Gosples being eyewitness accounts?

Well, there's plenty of internal evidence in the Gospels to that effect . . . e.g. John 19:35.

But C.S. Lewis has pointed out an interesting proof that does not depend upon the good faith (or cunning) of the authors of the Gospels. He points out that they are written in a colloquial, somewhat rough, reportorial style, and that they contain a lot of minutiae of the sort that you acquire by observation (e.g. Jesus "doodling" in the sand in John 8:6).

If somebody had set out to start a new religion by making it up out of whole cloth, they would have followed the more high-flown and rhetorical models of the classical authors, to give the account more credence (from their society's point of view.) In other words, if the Gospels are fiction and not factual reporting, they anticipated the style of the naturalistic 20th century novel by about 2000 years.

83 posted on 01/02/2006 6:08:42 PM PST by AnAmericanMother (Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment))
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To: bigsigh
"Do you have a source for the four Gosples being eyewitness accounts?"

Statements of the writers, or the apostles is a start. See Luke 1:1-3, 1 John 1:1-3, Acts 1:1-3. II Peter 1:16. The New Testament claims to be either be eyewitness, or compilations of eyewitness accounts. Eusibius' "Ecclesiastical history" contains information on their writing but I do not recall the specifics.

It is hard to do justice to this subject and condense it to a few comments on a thread. F.F. Bruce was the Rylands professor of biblical criticism at the University of Manchester in England. He wrote 2 very good books on the subject which would be much better to refer to than this thread. The first is:

"The New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable?"

It has a good discussion on the date of the writings, eyewitness source of the documents, comparison of content to history of the time and to the known archeology. There is a chapter on early references to Christ in the Mishna, or Jewish law code. The second book is:

"Jesus & Christian Origins outside the New Testament"

which includes early evidence from pagan and Jewish writers as well as from Christian apocrypha. The copies that I have were published by Wm B Eerdmans Publishing.
110 posted on 01/02/2006 7:14:03 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission
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