Unless they were just brick-stupid, one would expect that they would have seen so many real miracles and had so many late-night conversations with Jesus answering all of their detailed theological inquires, that they would have recognized within the first few weeks of being called by Jesus, that he was the real deal. But unfortunately, the gospels, especially Mark, portray the disciples as unbelievably thick-headed, so that they fail to get the message even when miracles are done to their dazzled delights...suggesting the author is making them dumber than they actually were (i.e., a gospel author lying about history), so as to make the disciples' late realization of the "truth" all the more dramatic of a conclusion for the reader.I often wonder precisely when the disciples of Jesus realized their important role in Christian History.
For example, although Jesus had just previously caused a few loaves of bread and fish to be enough to feed 4,000 and 5,000 people (so about 10,000 when women and children are included), Mark's gospel says the disciples learned nothing from that incident about Christ's true nature and purpose:
49 But when they saw Him walking on the sea, they supposed that it was a ghost, and cried out;This, despite God's having the magical ability to stir their hearts to believe whatever He wanted them to believe, as can be seen from God exercising this power in the case of pagan unbelievers like King Cyrus or King Pul or King Sihon, to cause them to do good or evil:
50 for they all saw Him and were terrified. But immediately He spoke with them and said to them, "Take courage; it is I, do not be afraid."
51 Then He got into the boat with them, and the wind stopped; and they were utterly astonished,
52 for they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened. (Mk. 6:49-52 NAU)
30 "But Sihon king of Heshbon was not willing for us to pass through his land; for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, in order to deliver him into your hand, as he is today. (Deut. 2:30 NAU)Wallace continues:
1 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying:
2 "Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, 'The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. (Ezr. 1:1-2 NAU)
26 So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of Assyria, even the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away into exile, namely the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara and to the river of Gozan, to this day. (1 Chr. 5:26 NAU)
As these men sat at the feat of Jesus and listened to everything He had to say, did they realize they would someday testify to everything He said and did?Assuming Jesus did real miracles, the answer favored by historical probabilities is "yes".
If my pastor suddenly started calming storms, walking on water, and magically causing one box of fish sticks and three loaves of bread to become enough to feed 10,000 people with 12 baskets leftover, and I could not think of any naturalistic explanation for such events, I'd have little difficulty accepting whatever claims he made about himself. So again, if the gospels are generally accurate about Jesus' miracle working ability, the gospel authors are more than likely making the disciples dumber than they actually were...which leaves us with gospel authors who are willing to lie about what happened in history for the sake of making the story more interesting. Us skeptics say "fuck you" to dishonest ancient historians. Perhaps because of this we are storing up divine wrath for ourselves? Let's just say I don't exactly lose sleep wondering "what if I'm wrong!?!", any more than Christians lose sleep wondering "what if the Muslim version of hell is true?"
Probably because they had never met some miracle worker claiming to initiate the kingdom of god into the world.Most eyewitnesses I’ve interviewed in my casework had no idea they would later be called into a jury trial to testify about what they heard or observed.
Not at all. You've apparently never read Mark 6:49-52, where the gospel author admits the disciples failed to infer the truth about Jesus from his prior miracle of magically multiplying a small amount of food into enough for 10,000 people, making the disciples a bit more thick-headed than historical probabilities would counsel.As a result, they sometimes regret not paying better attention when they had the opportunity. But the disciples of Jesus had a distinct advantage over modern eyewitnesses in this regard. They were students of Jesus. Unlike spontaneous, unprepared witnesses of a crime, the disciples were desperately attentive to the words and actions of Jesus, and I imagine their attention to detail became even more focused with each miraculous event.
For this reason, the authors of the gospels became excellent eyewitnesses and recognized the importance of their testimony very early.Not true. For although the risen Jesus is pictured as telling the disciples that THEY are to evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19-20, the "Great Commission"), according to Paul, after they had allegedly approved of his ministry, they allocated the entire gentile mission field to him, and intentionally limited their own preaching efforts solely to Jews, in direct defiance of the great commission:
9 and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. (Gal. 2:9 NAU)No, the disciples didn't learn the truth "early on". As late as the scene portrayed in Galatians 2:9 (Galatians 2:1 indicates 14 years had passed between Paul's conversion to Christianity, and his meeting with the Jerusalem apostles in Galatians 2:9), these Jerusalem disciples, according to v. 9, are concluding, 14 years after Paul's conversion, that they should limit their evangelism efforts to the Jews (i.e., "the circumcised"). That is, the disciples who allocate the entire Gentile mission field to Paul, are doing so 14 years after Jesus allegedly rose from the dead and gave the great commission. 14 years worth of disobedience to the great commission does not an amazingly transformed disciple make.
In Acts 11:1-3, the Jewish apostles castigate Peter for eating with a Gentile believer, and in 11:18, the Jewish church regards Gentile repentance unto salvation to be some new shocking unexpected theological development. And Acts 10-11, of course, doesn't prevent these visions to Peter as reminders of what he learned from the Gentile-loving Jesus from years back, it presents those visions as if this was the first time Peter found out that Gentiles could obtain salvation. So anti-Gentile sentiment was part and parcel in the original Jewish church.
Sorry, Wallace, but such disobedience to the risen Christ tells me the disciples were something less then "excellent" eyewitnesses.
And don't even get me started on the serious problem of how the New Testament is totally silent about the preaching efforts of most of the original 11 disciples and Matthias, when in fact, if they were "excellent eyewitnesses" as you say, we'd expect that Luke, the allegedly careful historian, author of Acts and somebody with a clear interest in telling the world about the divine approval of the nascent church's earliest preaching efforts, would have found it irresistible to tell just as many stories about Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthias, and other "excellent eyewitnesses" that he apparently did about Peter, James and Paul. The NT's silence about most of the original disciples strongly argues that nothing happened in their lives after the alleged resurrection of Jesus that the early church's most careful and reliable historian deemed worthy to be preserved for posterity, in turn suggesting many of the original 11 either lost faith entirely or started preaching what others felt was "heresy", and by sheer random historical accident and circumstance, it was Paul's version, not their version, that ended up becoming the official orthodoxy.
They were also far dumber in the story than reasonable probabilities would allow, Mark 6, supra.While Jesus walked here on earth, His followers studied and learned from His actions and words.
They probably can't be blamed for some of this, but their obtuseness persisting even after seeing Jesus repeatedly does allegedly genuinely supernatural miracles, suggests the gospel authors are lying about them, or else they were far from "excellent eyewitnesses". If your pastor for the next three years went around walking on water, raising the dead, feeding thousands of homeless people from just 10 or 15 cans of beans, etc, etc, how difficult would you find it to have full faith and trust in whatever he claims about himself and his mission?They were often mesmerized, confused and challenged by what they saw and heard.
Perhaps that explains why Matthew often corrects Mark, a gospel you think is based on apostle Peter's preaching. Where Mark says Jesus "could not" do a miracle, Matthew tones it down to "did not", thus getting rid of a phrase that most naturally implies a limitation on Jesus' power:In spite of this, Jesus taught them and occasionally sent them out on their own. They memorized His teaching and relied on his wisdom when they weren’t with Him.
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Mark 6
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Matthew 13
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4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own household." 5 And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He wondered at their unbelief. And He was going around the villages teaching. |
57 And they took offense at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household." 58 And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief. |
Inerrantist Commentators admit Matthew "toned down" Mark's language:
6:5 This statement about Jesus’ inability to do something is one of the most striking instances of Mark’s boldness and candor. It is omitted by Luke 4:16–30 and toned down by Matt 13:58. The statement should not trouble contemporary Christians. God and his Son could do anything, but they have chosen to limit themselves in accordance to human response.Sorry, Mr. Brooks, but if it is as easy as pie to reconcile Mark's Jesus of limited power, with the all-powerful Jesus of modern systematic Protestant theology, then why did Matthew "tone down" Mark's language?
Mark's language neither expressed nor implies anything about Jesus at variance with modern Protestant theology, remember? So there's no rational motive for Matthew to "tone down" perfectly acceptable orthodox language, correct?
No thank you. The obvious reason Matthew "tones down" Mark's "could not" to a "did not" is because it was Matthew's own judgment that Mark's language was inconsistent with a higher Christology that says Jesus is omnipotent.
And don't even get me started on how Matthew's changing of Mark's text necessarily implies that Matthew did not think Mark's gospel was 'inerrant', which, if true, flushes the inerrancy doctrine down the toilet. Doesn't matter if you can trifle some possible way to harmonize Matthew's changing of Mark, with a theory that Matthew thought Mark's text was inerrant. Your changing of a text usually doesn't imply you think the text is inerrant, it usually implies you think the text contains errors needing correction.
We don’t know how much (if anything) these eyewitnesses wrote down during this time. Did the disciples take notes? Did they keep a journal? While Jesus was alive, the disciples likely felt no need to write down his words. The Word was witnessed in these incredible days, as men and women stood in awe of the Master, watching Him perform miracles and listening carefully to what He taught about God and eternal life.
And according to Mark 6, being shockingly obtuse in their failure to infer the truth about Jesus from his allegedly genuine magic tricks. Sort of like you failing to get the message after two years of watching your pastor do authentically supernatural miracles such as raising the dead, multiplying food, healing illnesses, etc. Sorry, but it's just unbelievable.
And under your trusting assumptions, they would only have adhered to that view because it was Jesus himself who taught them he would return within their natural lifetimes.During the first years following Jesus’s ascension, the apostles still may not have written immediately about Jesus. Why not? A careful reading of the Scripture will reveal a common theme: Many of the early authors of the New Testament expected Jesus to return before there would ever be a need for a multi-generational eyewitness record.
Well, Wallace...did he? Or will you open Pandora's box by speculating that because Jesus couldn't teach anything incorrectly, surely some of these NT authors carried their misunderstandings into their canonical writings? Gee, i didn't know you denied biblical inerrancy, but it's a step in the right direction at least!
Don't think Preterism can save your ass at this point, it can't. Preterism avoids many problems of Jesus' promises to come back "quickly" (and the obvious fact that he didn't) by pretending Jesus in such instances was speaking about a "spiritual" and "invisible" second coming. But Preterism cannot reconcile it's invisible second coming of Christ with Acts 1:11, so:
a) the original disciples, by your own admission, believed Jesus would return so soon that they deemed authoring written gospels would be superfluous, and
b) you cannot use Preterism to explain away the problem of Jesus promising to return soon, and the obvious fact that he never did.
Since Preterism fails, your admission that the disciples expected Jesus to return within their natural lifetimes requires, upon the obvious fact that Jesus hasn't returned in 2,000 years in the way Acts 1:11 says he will, that either Jesus was wrong, or some of the original disciples of Jesus are still alive on earth. Yeah, go chase that shit down on Google. Then goto Netflix and rent "The Seventh Sign".
That's correct. Now where do you suppose they would have gotten that false notion? Under your trusting assumptions about the origin of Christianity, might it be that Jesus actually taught this false doctrine? If you insist some NT authors misunderstood the nature and timing of Jesus' second coming, you stop being an inerrantist, and you open the possibility that not even three years of Jesus drilling truth into their heads would prevent them from teaching error later.They worked urgently to tell the world about Jesus, believing He would return to judge the living and the dead within their lifetime.
Translation: "As time wore on, the church began to reluctantly realize that Jesus was wrong in promising to return within their natural lifetimes."In the days of the Apostles, the Word was heard, as the apostles preached to the world around them. But as the Apostles began to be martyred (and those who remained realized Jesus might not return in their lifetime), the need for a written account became clear.
Mark and Luke are gospel authors, and they are not eyewitnesses. All the early church fathers who tell the reader what language Matthew wrote it, say it was Hebrew, they NEVER say Matthew wrote anything in Greek, yet today's canonical Matthew derives exclusively from GREEK manuscripts, strongly suggesting that an anonymous person or persons before the 4th century, not Matthew himself, are responsible for creation of the Greek form of Matthew's gospel, and god only knows to what extent apostle Matthew's words are preserved in this canonical Greek version or translation from Hebrew. None of the 4 gospel authors sign their names to their testimony, and none of them claim double-authorship, despite their presumed knowledge that Jesus approved of the church adhering to the OT rule about important matters being determined on the basis of at least 2 identifiable eyewitnesses:James, the brother of John was killed in 44AD (Stephen was killed even earlier), and not long afterward, the gospels began to emerge. The eyewitness gospel authors wrote down what they had seen so the world would have a record.
15 "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. (Matt. 18:15-16 NAU)
19 Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses. (1 Tim. 5:19 NAU)
28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Heb. 10:28 NAU)
Jesus didn't even think his uncorroborated testimony was worthy to be deemed true, he tried to show that his testimony comes to the Jews from at least two witnesses, himself and God the Father, a matter he felt was in fulfillment of the OT law requiring important matters be established on not less than two witnesses:
31 "If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true.The OT laws on the necessity of two witnesses are:
32 "There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true. (Jn. 5:31-32 NAU)
17 "Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true.
18 "I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me." (Jn. 8:17-18 NAU)
6 "On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. (Deut. 17:6 NAU)If the gospel authors were inspired by God, they'd likely have known their gospels would be used mostly by people they never met, and therefore, you cannot explain their failure to sign their names to them by saying their originally intended audiences already knew who they were.
15 "A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed. (Deut. 19:15 NAU)
That excuse falls flat anyway: the churches apostle Paul founded obviously knew who he was, yet Paul still clearly identified himself in the epistles he wrote to them. He even specifies that his own signature appears in every epistle:
17 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, and this is a distinguishing mark in every letter; this is the way I write. (2 Thess. 3:17 NAU)
So the failure of the gospel authors to sign their names and ascribe to the two-witness-minimum rule is a serious problem running afoul of the "identify yourself" rule of thumb, the "at least two must testify" OT law which Jesus apparently thought was a valid test that his own testimony had to pass, and their choice to remain anonymous runs afoul of Paul's own practice of signing his name to his epistles. We skeptics have good rational warrant to suspect that the gospel authors had personal reasons for refusing to directly link their writings with their identities. This cannot be good for those who think God inspired honest eyewitnesses to truthfully report what actually happened in history.
"most" of the early church also thought the Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew", so says 4th century church father Jerome:Following the deaths of the apostles, the early believers and leaders received the apostolic eyewitness accounts and regarded them as sacred.
International Standard Bible EncyclopediaNotice, Jerome is quoting this "authentic Matthew" or Gospel to the Hebrews,
Jerome, toward the end of the 4th century, is our chief authority for the circulation and use of the "Gospel according to the Hebrews," although his later statements on the subject do not always agree with the earlier. He was proud of being "trilinguis," acquainted with Hebrew as well as with Latin and Greek. "There is a Gospel," he says, "which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use, which I lately translated from the Hebrew tongue into Greek and which is called by many the authentic Gospel of Matthew" (Commentary on Matthew 12:13)
Jerome, Against the Pelagians, 3.2
In the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which is written in the Chaldee and Syrian language, but in Hebrew characters, and is used by the Nazarenes to this day (I mean the Gospel according to the Apostles, or, as is generally maintained, the Gospel according to Matthew, a copy of which is in the library at Caesarea), we find, “Behold, the mother of our Lord and His brethren said to Him, John Baptist baptizes for the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But He said to them, what sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless, haply, the very words which I have said are only ignorance.”
but his quotation of it does not refer to anything we have in canonical Matthew or any of the other 3 canonical gospels. Clearly the ancient church was confused about which gospels were truly apostolic.Behold, the mother of our Lord and His brethren said to Him, John Baptist baptizes for the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But He said to them, what sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless, haply, the very words which I have said are only ignorance.”
The point is that J. Warner Wallace's confident assurances of how the early church "carefully preserved" and relied upon "apostolic eyewitness testimony" is not scholarly...unless he is willing to commit himself to the premise that the quote from Gospel of Hebrews, supra, accurately represents what the original of Matthew said (i.e., modern canonical Greek Matthew is a corruption of the original and is missing some of what Matthew originally wrote)? Not likely.
But Jesus never told them to write anything down, but only to preach, so it is a legitimate question whether the writing of the gospel constituted the prohibited "adding to the word of the Lord" (Proverbs 30:6, Deut. 4:2, 12:32, Revelation 22:18). Have fun emailing conservative Christian scholars and apologists to help you brainstorm plausible reasons to think Jesus intended for his followers to write down any of his teachings. yet if you claim this was done by the will of God and is a legitimate inference from anything taught in the NT, that is YOUR horrifically difficult burden to fulfill, the burden is not on the skeptic to show that writing down Jesus' teachings was against his will. YOU claim it was in harmony with his will, so prove it.They knew the original eyewitnesses had vanished from the scene and they wanted to retain a faithful record of their testimony.
And 4th century Eusebius preserves a quotation from 2nd century Clement of Alexandria, saying apostle Peter refused to encourage Mark's attempt to put Peter's preaching down in written form, which, if true, spells disaster for conservative apologists who think Peter 'approved' of Mark's literary effort:
Eusebius, Church History, book 6, ch. 14------If this quotation accurately represents Peter, this supports Wallace's own belief that the original apostles expected Jesus to come back so soon that they would have viewed the conversion of their oral preaching to written form, to be a waste of time. We are, again, left with historical evidence that Jesus got something wrong, here, he got wrong the time he would return.
Again, in the same books, Clement gives the tradition of the earliest presbyters, as to the order of the Gospels, in the following manner: The Gospels containing the genealogies, he says, were written first. The Gospel according to Marks had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.
Wallace continues:
If they "carefully protected" the Gospels, then you cannot explain Mark 16's failure to mention Jesus' resurrection appearances, on a theory that the last part of Mark's gospel was accidentally lost, and therefore, the reason Mark has no resurrection appearances (most Christian scholars agree that Mark's resurrection appearance story or his "long ending", i.e., 16:9-20, was only added by anonymous copyists), is because Mark did not know of any such stories, or he did not think any such stories were true. According to Mark the gospel ends with women leaving the tomb having been told by some anonymous man that Jesus rose (16:8), it does not end with stories of a risen Jesus appearing to anybody (the "long ending").From the earliest of times, these Christians coveted the New Testament writings. In the days of the early Church Fathers, the Word was read, as the sacred Gospels and letters were carefully protected.
Under your theory, the early church's "careful preservation" of the gospel texts makes it unlikely these would have underwent corruption. In that case, Mark's silence about a resurrection narrative is not due to textual corruption, but his never having written any such story in the first place.
That is, the gospel deemed by most scholars to be the earliest...did not have anything to tell the reader about a risen Christ being seen by eyewitnesses....
Wallace continues:
The earliest believers accepted the gospels and letters of the New Testament as eyewitness accounts because the authors of these texts considered their own writing to be authoritative, eyewitness Scripture:1 Peter 5:1Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed…
2 Peter 1:16-17For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
Peter's epistles do not claim he was an eyewitness to the risen Christ.
1 John 1:1-3What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life – and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us – what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us…
John's words here not claim he was an eyewitness to the risen Christ.
Benny Hinn also calls for his followers to have faith that he can do miracles by God's hand. Big fucking deal.The apostles understood their experiences as eyewitnesses were unique, and they called for these eyewitness accounts to be read by all believers.
But not even some conservative "inerrantist" Christian scholars are willing to say Paul there was referring to Luke's gospel as scripture:Paul recognized both the Old Testament writings and the New Testament writings were sacred and God-given. He considered both to be Scripture:1 Timothy 5:17-18The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and ‘The worker deserves his wages.’In this passage, Paul quoted both Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7 (“The worker deserves his wages”). He referred to both passages as Scripture. It’s clear the New Testament Gospels were already in place at the time of this writing, and it’s also clear that believers were reading these Gospels as Scripture.
5:18 In this verse Paul supported his directive to reward worthy elders. His statements assume that financial remuneration was at least a part of the “honor” to which he referred in 5:17. First, he quoted Deut 25:4 to justify proper treatment for the pastor. Paul reasoned that if God could show concern for the laboring ox, the congregation needed to show proper concern for its pastor.131 The original intention of refusing to muzzle the ox was to allow the animal an occasional bite as it moved about the threshing floor. Paul saw expressed in this command a principle that is broader than a mere statement about care for animals. The second reference resembles the words of Christ in Luke 10:7.132 It is not likely that Paul was quoting the Gospel of Luke, a document whose date of writing is uncertain. Paul may have been referring to a collection of Jesus’ sayings, some of which appear in Luke’s Gospel. It is notable that Paul called both statements Scripture, and it becomes clear that such a collection of Jesus’ sayings “was placed on an equality with the Old Testament.”133
131 In 1 Cor 9:8–12, 14 Paul made this deduction from Deut 25:4. His inspired interpretation in both passages indicates that God’s purpose in the inclusion of the command in Scripture is broader in intent than merely urging care for animals.132 Paul’s description of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor 11:24–25 is similar to that in Luke 22:19–20. This similarity gives evidence of a close link between Paul and Luke, a point this present passage further supports.133 Guthrie, Pastoral Epistles, 105. Spicq supports the view that the reference of the formula “the Scripture says” is to both quotations and that Paul was designating another portion of the New Testament as Scripture (Saint Paul, 176–77). Both Kelly and Fee question this interpretation. Kelly (Pastoral Epistles, 126) says that the formula may refer only to the first of the two quotations or that the second quote may be to “some apocryphal writing which counted as Scripture in the Apostle’s eyes.” Fee (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 93) prefers to emphasize that the quotation formula applies only to the first of the references. He hesitates to say that Paul was calling the second reference “Scripture” because he sees the term used only in reference to the OT by Christians until the end of the second century.
Yet Wallace immediate concludes, contrary to actual scholars, that the similar wording between the epistle and Luke 10:7 pretty much guarantees that Paul was calling Luke's gospel "scripture".
Wallace continues:
Peter also attested to Paul’s writings as Scripture when writing his own letters to the early Church:2 Peter 3:14-16Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
But most scholars deny Petrine authorship of 2nd Peter, and supporting that view is the unlikelihood that that apostle Peter, while writing under alleged divine inspiration, would admit some of apostle Paul's writings are "hard to understand" (v. 16). It's more likely, under conservative assumptions, that whoever wrote 2nd Peter wasn't inspired by God to do so, as nobody inspired by God would find Paul's writings hard to understand, that is, assuming Paul's writings were also inspired by God, lest you trifle that being inspired by God doesn't give you infallible ability to understand all biblical matters...in which case a belief that the NT authors were divinely inspired doesn't necessarily tell you that they understood matters correctly.
In addition to this, it is clear the New Testament letters were being read and circulated among the churches as authoritative eyewitness Scripture and revelation from God:Colossians 4:16After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.1 Thessalonians 5:27I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.
The early church fathers routinely accused Marcion of adding to and subtracting from the content of the canonical gospels, yet Marcion attained a large following sufficient to scare Ireanaeus, Tertullian and others into spending considerable amounts of ink, paper and time warning their churches on where exactly it is that Marcion goes wrong. Apparently, during Christianity's first three of centuries, there really wasn't any reliable way for the average pew-warmer to check on whether the Christian loudmouth trying to draw attention to himself with this Jesus-stuff, was honestly or dishonestly presenting the gospel. You either laughed and moved on, or you believed and joined his cult.
So it really doesn't matter how popular the NT writings were in the early church...you may as well talk about how popular Marcion's form of the gospel was with his large crowd of followers, and his tendency to persuade orthodox Christians to come over to his particular teaching. Proves nothing except perhaps that large crowds of people can be shockingly gullible and concerned more with joining a group than in whether the group's claims are true, not a happy day for apologists who tout the "explosion" of Christianity in its first few centuries as some argument that it must be true.
Paul was an author of about 13 "letters" in the NT. Nothing in the three accounts in Acts about Paul's experience of Christ on the road to Damascus, justify the inference that he was an "eyewitness" of a risen Jesus. His traveling companions couldn't see the person Paul was speaking too (9:7), and Paul himself characterizes the experience as a "heavenly vision" or heaven-based vision, using the Greek word optasia, the same word he uses in 2nd Cor. 12:1 to characterize an absurdly esoteric experience that left him, 14 years after the fact, unable to tell whether he flew to heaven bodily or only spiritually (12:2-4).The eyewitness authors of the New Testament gospels and letters understood the power of their testimony.
Wallace, if you were charged with murder and the prosecution's only eyewitness admitted that it was during a blinding flash of heavenly light that he saw you pull the trigger, despite the fact that his traveling companions standing near him testified that at the time they could not see you, would you insist that the judge provide the jury an instructing allow them to infer a supernatural basis to suppose the eyewitness is telling the truth?
Or would you scream your head off that blinding flashes of heavenly light call for the witness to be excused and the case to be dismissed for lack of evidence?
Sometimes, you don't discover how much it sucks to be an apologist, until you dialogue with an extremely smart skeptic...like me. Call it the sin of pride.
Again, Wallace, why are you so certain the apostles were "wrong" to expect Jesus to return in their natural lifetimes? Doesn't your trusting attitude toward the historical reliability of the gospels tell you it is more probable that the apostles held to this view because Jesus taught it?They witnessed the Word in the days when a written record was unnecessary, spoke the Word when they thought Jesus would return imminently,
Sure, to say Jesus taught falsely about how soon he would come back, destroys the purpose for which you currently live, but that shouldn't be a problem for you, as you wish to be known to the world as a cold-case detective whose subjective biases rarely influence his analysis of historical probabilities.
Well then, do you have a subjective bias that prevents you from entertaining the notion that Jesus made false promises to the apostles? yes, you do. You are a worshiper of Jesus. You are no more likely to admit significant fault with Jesus than Mormons are likely to find significant fault with their first prophet Joseph Smith.
And as we learn from Eusebius/Clement of Alexandria, supra, some of them refused to endorse the conversion of their preaching into written form, such as was the case with Peter's attitude toward Mark's literary effort, a bit of patristic testimony that passes the criteria of embarrassment and is therefore a bit more reliable than other patristic testimony saying Peter approved of this literary effort.and wrote the Word when they realized their eyewitness record would become Scripture for those who followed them.
I await the day when J. Warner Wallace reconciles his trust in Mark's accuracy, with Peter's refusal to support Mark's work. Doesn't matter if it is possible that Peter had reasons other than suspicion Mark was telling lies, to refuse to support that effort...it is more probable, absent evidence to the contrary, that an apostle refuses to endorse the conversion of his oral preaching into written form, because he finds something wrong with the end product or the person doing the converting.
