by Farmer 77 » Thu Sep 21, 2017 1:46 pm
> 1.) Acts,
With you so far.
> 2.) The
Okay, still following
> 3.) The writer
This claim looks unsupported. You've failed to rule out causes like slow speed of hand-scribed illegal literature, and regional variations in belief (like proto-denominations).
> 4.) Many of the expressions in Acts
This could be due to other factors, such as regional variation.
> 5.) Acts deals with issues
Again, could just be a matter of different audiences. Jews would care about whether gentiles were allowed to be christian. Gentiles in a gentile church who have a guy ministering directly to them would take that for granted. Plus, remember that Paul said a lot of things face-to-face. His letters would not necessarily feel obligated to retread stuff that was part of his standard spiel.
> 6.)
ditto.
So, a lot of the links in your chain need support if you want them to be more than faith-based.
> The creed from 1 Cor. 15.3-7, for instance, is known to be from within 2-5 years of Jesus' death. There are other such creeds in circulation very early
I'll grant that specific creed. The fact that there are others is an unsupported hand-wave. But as long as we're on that topic, no one can demonstrate how widespread these stories were - just that one guy claims to have heard them, and we assume from some contextual hints that it was from another specific guy.
> The first century was a rhetorical culture, transitioning from oral to written as ours is transitioning from written to digital. Because some of the population were non-literate (different than illiterate), a premium was placed on the spoken word. Memory skills were well developed.
This is all irrelevant, it seems to be an argument against somebody who claimed that people back then were incapable of transmitting text accurately. I don't know who made that argument, it wasn't me. In fact, I think it's pretty well acknowledged that people are still capable of such a feat today, so fine. There were also people, then and now, who embellish stories, or who caulk the gaps of a skeletal outline with invented filler.
> There were rules, particularly for content that was deemed important or sacred.
Ah ha! This one addresses my specific criticism. Unfortunately, it's just a bald assertion. And double unfortunately, you can't possibly show that the people who transmitted these stories were from the human tape recorder school, instead of whatever school many of today's christian preachers go to, where you take important lessons and just make up stories or testimonies that illustrate it.
> The evidence we have points to Mt, Mk., Lk, and Jn as the authors. We have no evidence to the contrary.
Who the f*** cares whether there's any evidence contrary to your hypothesis? You have no idea if there's a teapot orbiting Jupiter, and you have no idea whether I'm left or right handed, and you have no idea if I've ever kissed Jane Goodall.
Quick, tell me, do I have an even or odd number of M&Ms left in this package? Both Yes and No would be irresponsible decisions based on lack of good evidence. But "I don't know" is not a conclusion. It's simply where you remain, when someone has done an insufficient job of trying support their favored conclusion. To quote a famous Isaac Asimov story, INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER. also known as, the null hypothesis.