My challenge to Robert Bowman on evolution of theology between Mark and Matthew

Apologist Dr. Robert Bowman indicated to me months ago that he did not intend for his blog to be a place where debates of monograph-level intensity should be held.  I took that as a compliment, and since that time his unwillingness to allow the public to see my responses at his blog is reasonably interpreted to mean that he would rather not deal with my arguments.

Regardless, in a July 2018 blog post Bowman hailed a book which he thought showed high Christology in the gospel that most think was the earliest, Mark:  Jesus the Divine Bridegroom: Michael Tait’s Case for a High Christology in Mark

I posted the following in reply, and since it didn't show up after posting, we'll have to wait and see whether this is because the system is slow, or because Bowman does not want me posting at his blog:

In Mark 6:5, Jesus "could not" do a miracle in his hometown due to the unbelief of the people.  In the parallel in Matthew, the "could not" becomes a "did not" (13:58).

Even inerrantist Christian scholars admit that Matthew here had "toned down" this Markan reference.  Brooks:

"Mark 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."

Brooks, J. A. (2001, c1991). Vol. 23: Mark (electronic ed.).
Logos Library System;The New American Commentary (Page 100).
Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 While inerrantist can forever trifle about this or that, the fact remains that if Matthew did not believe Mark's wording could reasonably support a low Christology, he would hardly have felt compelled to change "could not" to "did not".  That particular change doesn't look like it was pure coincidence, because by getting rid of the "could not", the phase no longer implies a limitation on Jesus' abilities. 

Regardless, Matthew often "corrects" Mark wherein the disciples or Jesus are portrayed in less than favorable light (e.g., Mark 4:38, this version of the disciples' complaint to Jesus during a storm at sea makes it easy to paint them as skeptical of Jesus' love ["Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?"], while in the parallel in Matthew 8:25, this is toned down to something that offers no support for the claim that the disciples were skeptical of Jesus' love ["Save us, Lord; we are perishing!").

Again, inerrantist Christian scholars admit the version of Christ's words "Where is your faith" in Luke 8:25 constitutes lessening the harshness of the earlier version in Mark 4:40 which said "Do you still have no faith?"---

"Luke 8:25 Where is your faith? Luke’s wording lessens the harshness of Mark’s, “Do you still have no faith?” (4:40)."

Stein, R. H. (2001, c1992). Vol. 24: Luke (electronic ed.).
Logos Library System;The New American Commentary (Page 253).
Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

And don't forget this doozy: Mark's version of Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi is short and clearly lacking in convenient theological baggage:

27 Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them, "Who do people say that I am?"

 28 They told Him, saying, "John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets."

 29 And He continued by questioning them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ."

 30 And He warned them to tell no one about Him. (Mk. 8:27-30 NAU)

But in Matthew's parallel, Peter's confession is more theologically sophisticated, and Matthew includes an entire theological exposition from Jesus on the origin and significance of this Petrine knowledge (the quotes are long to preserve contexts and prevent apologists from pretending that maybe Matthew and Mark are describing similar but different events.  Nope, it's one single event told in two different ways by two different authors):

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

 14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."

 15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

 16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

 17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

 18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

 19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."

 20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.

 (Matt. 16:13-20 NAU)

The point is that Mark's being the earliest gospel and having such signs of low Christology (i.e., the later gospel authors and their desire to change Markan statements in a way that just happens to create the benefit of making them less supportive of a low-Christology) prohibit apologists from pretending that that signs of high Christology they might find in Mark are the only evidence that counts in any discussion of christian theology "evolving" from low to high over the first few  decades after Jesus died.  The circumstances under which Mark was authored, how much or little he depended on Peter, how much or little he depended on other sources, etc, etc, are all topics of hot controversy even within conservative Christian scholarly circles.  Apologists must honestly admit that when Matthew and Luke change, delete or add to their Markan source, it usually results in the benefit of making a lower Christology harder to support.

Therefore, skeptics can and do have reasonable justification to conclude that the later gospel story from Matthew involves some degree of theological evolution from an earlier more primitive form, a form wherein the Markan writer apparently felt more comfortable than today's Trinitarians in making unqualified statements about Jesus' supernatural limitations.

Screenshot:




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That's all I posted, but I'll add here a table to graphically highlight exactly how Matthew changed Mark's version of Peter's confession to Jesus.  Once you read it, it will be hard to resist the conclusion that

------a) Matthew and Mark are not talking about two similar but different scenes, they are talking about a single scene in two different ways, and
------b) Matthew intended to evolve Mark's lower Christology into something higher by adding things not present in Mark's earlier account, things that the average expected first-century Christian reader of Mark, who didn't know about any other written gospel, would never have thought were implied by Mark's wording:

Mark 8

Matthew 16

27 Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them,  "Who do people say that I am?"  28 They told Him, saying, "John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets."   29 And He continued by questioning them,  "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said to Him,  "You are the Christ."  30 And He warned them to tell no one about Him.  31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.  32 And He was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him.

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"  14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets."  15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  16 Simon Peter answered,  "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  17 And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  18 "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.  19 "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."  20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.  21 From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.  22 Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You."

I don't know exactly to what degree Bowman or other apologists will try to milk Michael Tait's case for high Markan Christology, but regardless, they are dreaming if they think any Markan statements that sound like the Nicene Creed erase the above-cited cases where the later gospel authors are clearly dissatisfied with Mark's chosen wording and modify it in ways that not coincidentally make the statements less supportive of low Christology.   It will never happen.

At least not until inerrantist Christian scholars like Brooks, Stein and Blomberg stop admitting that Matthew and Luke often "toned down" Mark's chosen wording.  After all, the later author wanting to "tone down" the earlier statement is precisely the motive we'd expect in a later gospel author who wishes to update gospel theology.  If they didn't think Mark's wording could be reasonably employed to support low-Christology, then tell us, Mr. Apologist...what did motivate Matthew and Luke to "tone down" Mark's language?

Maybe because they thought Mark's gospel was inerrant?  Guess again.

Tough Questions Answered: Why Don’t the Synoptic Gospels Recount the Raising of Lazarus?

This is my reply to an article at "Tough Questions Answered" entitled

Tough Questions Answered

Why Don’t the Synoptic Gospels Recount the Raising of Lazarus? – #4 Post of 2017

Posted: 21 Dec 2017 06:00 AM PST

Some critics have cast doubt on the veracity of the raising of Lazarus in John’s Gospel because it is not recorded in the other three Gospels.

That's perfectly reasonable given that both historiography and rules of evidence in American courts have prescribed the conditions under which the argument from silence will have force.  Only stupid people insist that all arguments from silence are necessarily fallacious.  Though I admit that this particular argument from Synoptic silence isn't exactly forceful, which is precisely why I don't use it myself.

John’s Gospel is believed to be the last Gospel written, so the critics allege that John invented the story to further his particular agenda.

Because, among other reasons, Clement of Alexandria said John knew the Synoptic authors already published the "external facts", and not wishing to duplicate their efforts, instead wrote a "spiritual gospel".  The way Clement sets "external facts" apart from "spiritual gospel", certainly justifies the interpretation that he meant that John wished to give the reader something "deeper" than mere "external facts".

While that need not require that he invented the resurrection of Lazarus, rules of historiography don't require one interpretation to be "required" before one can be reasonable to hold it.  Otherwise, 99% of all Christians are unreasonable, given their differing views on all biblical matters, since the numbers of disagreements and willingness of Christians to change their minds seems to indicate they don't hold their current interpretations to be "required" except on basics.

Andreas Köstenberger, in The Gospels and Acts (The Holman Apologetics Commentary on the Bible), argues against this viewpoint. 

This critique is part of a larger argument against the historicity of John’s Gospel based on its omission of many events found in the Synoptics and its inclusion of material absent from the other Gospels. However, this critique is ultimately unconvincing. For no matter one’s theory as to how John composed his Gospel, it is apparent that he had a large amount of material from which to choose. If John was aware of the Synoptics as he was writing, which is probable (see Bauckham 1997a, esp. 147– 71; Köstenberger 2009, 553– 55), then he could reasonably be expected to assume much of the material they contain.

I don't see how imparting to John a knowledge of the prior Synoptic gospels, does anything to weaken the argument from silence that says the Synoptic authors didn't know Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, because they surely would have mentioned such a strong supporting proof for their theory that Jesus was God's Son, had they known about it, or believed the story to be true.

It his unlikely that they would have known and believed such story but yet "chose to exclude" it from their gospels nonetheless.  This whole idea that the gospel authors "chose to exclude" ANYTHING they believed God did on earth in the person of Jesus, just doesn't make sense.  If the gospel authors seriously believed Jesus was the divine Son of God, they would more than likely have found it best to record as many of his words and deeds as they could possibly remember.  Choosing to exclude some of these is what we'd expect only if they viewed Jesus as something less.

Other Christians agree that John's gospel is far more complicated than the "external facts" that average Christians think that gospel provides.  It is far from certain John is talking about real events when describing something Jesus said or did.

On the other hand, if John wrote without knowledge of the Synoptics, then it is likely that at least some of the differences can be attributed to the large amount of material from which he had to choose.

Since I late-date John, I need not worry about the possibility of John being ignorant of the Synoptics.

This corresponds with what John later writes: ‘Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book’ (20: 30).

The author felt compelled to admit he wasn't giving a full record.  Obviously, he was a truth-robot, incapable of lying. Please excuse me while I go consign the rest of my life to investigating biblical inerrancy.

Craig Blomberg rightly notes, ‘Any two ancient historians’ accounts of a given person or period of history differ from each other at least as much as John does from the Synoptics, when they do not rely on common sources for their information’ (Blomberg 2007, 207).

The issue is not John "differing" from the Synoptics, it is the Synoptic silence on the resurrection of Lazarus, and the argument that they surely would have mentioned it had they believed it true, that justifies skepticism toward John 11, even if such argument is not a "smack-down".  Christ knows apologists don't have any "smackdowns" themselves.

In addition, it stands to reason that John had his own theological emphases and unique perception of the significance of the events surrounding Jesus, not to mention his own individuality, style, interests, and distinctive eyewitness recollection from which to draw.

Doesn't matter, the resurrection of Lazarus ranks high on the scale of proofs that Jesus was the divine son of God, so it doesn't matter if it is true that the Synoptic authors believed it true but chose to exclude it for their own literary reasons from their own productions...the claim that John's gospel is historically reliable is a claim implicating historiography, which is an art implicating probability theory, which is a science implicating discussion of the argument from silence, which is an argument whose force depends on how likely it is that the author, whose silence is in question, would have mentioned a thing, had the author known of the thing.

The Synoptic authors' agenda was to provide literary evidence that Jesus was the divine son of God.  Sorry, but only stupid people "choose to exclude" the most dramatic evidence underscoring their case.  One has to wonder why the gospels authors picked and chose as they allegedly did, when in fact any Christian fool today can conceive of far more persuasive ways the gospel authors could have made their case.  Such as comprehensively indexing each and every miracle of Jesus, names of eyewitnesses, obtaining their testimony, and recording how Jesus' brothers answered the question of why they refused to believe in him during his earthly ministry (John 7:5, Mark 3:21).  It is to the gospel authors' detriment that far more efficient and accurate means of arguing gospel truth were available to them, than the sorry 4 productions we now call canonical.

And the more you attempt to trifle that the Synoptic authors wished to prove their case only implicitly, the more you get crushed under the wheels of the the Transfiguration; Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:2, Luke 9:29.  The Synoptic authors were not likely to hold back from giving the reader knowledge of the more dramatic proofs Jesus gave of his divinity.

If the raising of Lazarus really did occur, why would the other Gospel authors fail to include it in their biographies? Surely an event of this significance would necessitate inclusion, the critics argue.  Köstenberger disagrees:
 Why does an event require multiple attestations in the Gospels to be considered historical?

It doesn't.  The rule is the more attestation, the more likely true, the less attestation, the less likely true.  No, genius, we don't "just" believe singular testimony from ancient sources until a skeptic can prove it false, otherwise, since protestants cannot prove false the many allegations of Marian apparitions and healings in Fatima and Lourdes, they are obligated by their own reasoning to accept those accounts not just as true, but as also establishing the Catholic version of Christianity to be true.  

Throughout the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus performs a host of miracles, including raising people from the dead (an admittedly rare feature), so critics certainly cannot legitimately argue that Lazarus’ resurrection fails to comport with the general Synoptic portrait of Jesus.

The Synoptic evidence of Jesus raising people from the dead is scant and not very convincing:

They give a general report that Jesus raised people from the dead (Matthew 11:5 / Luke 7:22), but a detailed analysis justifies skepticism toward this generalization.

Jesus specifies that Jarius' daughter was not dead but rather asleep (Matthew 9:24).

The parallel from Mark 5:39, by having Jesus specifically wonder and inquire why the people would be so upset when she hasn't died, confirms that it was literally true that he hadn't died.

The parallel in Luke 8:52 also has Jesus specify that the girl wasn't actually dead, but only sleeping.

In Luke 7:11-18, it is specified several times that the person on the coffin whom Jesus raised back to life had actually been dead.  This weakens to some degree the skeptical argument that the Lazarus story in John 11 is fiction due to Synoptical silence on it.  But because this particular story is found only in Luke, Luke's credibility is at issue.  Luke's report of the Council of Jerusalem spends 98% of Acts 15 telling about the apostolic arguments, and about 2% recording short summary statements of the Judaizer opinion, so Luke's bias is sufficiently high in favor of his own party that skepticism of his honesty is justified.  Most scholars agree Luke depended to a significant degree on Mark, which makes Luke a liar for saying in his Preface that he drew from eyewitness testimony, leaving the false impression that eyewitness testimony is ALL he used.

But that Jesus' miracles during his earthly ministry were likely fake is justified on the basis the unbelief of his own family members in John 7:5, a point in time about a third of the way into his earthly ministry.

Matthew 11, John the Baptist sends from prison a question to Jesus about whether he is the messiah.  Jesus asks his disciples to answer John the Baptist by mentioning that among the miracles, raising people from the dead is something Jesus has already done at that point:

 1 When Jesus had finished giving instructions to His twelve disciples, He departed from there to teach and preach in their cities.
 2 Now when John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples
 3 and said to Him, "Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?"
 4 Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you hear and see:
 5 the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM. (Matt. 11:1-5 NAU)

Luke 7 is the parallel:

19 Summoning two of his disciples, John sent them to the Lord, saying, "Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?"
 20 When the men came to Him, they said, "John the Baptist has sent us to You, to ask, 'Are You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else?'"
 21 At that very time He cured many people of diseases and afflictions and evil spirits; and He gave sight to many who were blind.
 22 And He answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM. (Lk. 7:19-22 NAU)

It thus appears that about a third of the way through his earthly ministry, Jesus had raised people from the dead, and yet it is about a third of the way through his earthly ministry that John says is the point at which his "brothers" were still refusing to believe in him, John 7:5.

From this I deduce that his brothers likely had good reason to believe whatever miracles Jesus was doing, were not likely to be authentically supernatural.  John 7:5 passes the criteria of embarrassment, so that verse deserves our trust more than other parts of John.

And because the circumstances of how exactly the brothers of Jesus named James and John rose to positions of leadership in the post-resurrection church are never stated in the bible, we have justification to believe that they obtained those positions more because of their relation to Jesus and less because of any theory that they believed Jesus risen from the dead.

Indeed, there is no evidence Jesus' brothers did ever believe, until after Jesus died.  So his brothers apparently stayed in unbelief throughout the entirety of Jesus' earthly three year ministry...(!?)

You lose, no matter what theory you fantasize about.  If you say Jesus' brothers during his earthly ministry were just stupid idiots would couldn't get the point if they sat on it, then you lay a good ground for skeptics to say their resurrection testimony lacks credibility.  If you were falsely accused or murder and facing a prosecution witness on the stand whose credulity soared the same heights as those of Jesus' brothers during his earthly ministry, you'd be screaming your head off about how absurd it is to believe willfully blind idiots like this.

If you say Jesus' brothers didn't believe him in spite of the miracles because they had good reason to believe those miracles were fake, then such fakery justifies skepticism of Christianity in general.

The desire of John and James to allocate the entire Gentile ministry to Paul while they themselves would confine their ministry solely to Jews (Galatians 2:9), constitutes their disobedience to the resurrected Jesus' alleged mandate that they, and the original 11 disciples, evangelize the Gentiles (Matthew 28:19-20).

Therefore, we are justified to believe that if John and James got to high positions in the church after Jesus died, they likely did so through sheer politics in spite of their less-than-amazing experience with the allegedly resurrected Jesus, which means they carried around unbelief toward their messiah brother despite his alleged doing of miracles during their lifetimes where they could have checked the facts very easily.

This problem of the unbelief of Jesus' brothers during Jesus' earthly ministry either justifies rejection of Christianity in whole, or justifies viewing the resurrection testimony of these dolts as more credulous than believable.  God gave Adam and Eve freewill...it's your choice.

Although it is impossible to know for certain why a given author selects or omits particular material in his or her account, one possible reason for the omission of the story of Lazarus in the other Gospels is their focus on Galilee (the raising of Lazarus takes place in Judea). Also, in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Bauckham (2006, 184– 87) cites favorably G. Theissen’s theory of ‘protective anonymity,’ according to which the evangelists sought to shield individuals who were still living from persecution by not naming them.

So the gospel authors did not agree with the author of Acts, that suffering for the name of Christ was a blessed thing about which one should be happy.  Acts 5:41.  Another reason to think Acts has, at best, white-washed history.  Nobody said truth is required to create a spiritually edifying story.

If Lazarus was still alive when the Synoptic Gospels were written, but died in the interim between their publication and the composition of John’s Gospel,

Sorry, John 11 contains a shitload of evidence that Lazarus' raising was to teach "resurrection", not "reviving", and as such, if he was "resurrected", honesty requires that he was raised in a resurrection body that cannot die.  Skeptics have everything in John 11 on their side, Christians (who say Lazarus died again) have NOTHING in John 11 on their side to support their theory.  

this, likewise, may account for the Synoptic non-inclusion of the account and John’s inclusion of it. Lazarus’s death would have meant he no longer needed protection from persecution, so that John was free to include the account of his raising from the dead by Jesus.

Sure, skeptics who push the argument of the Synoptic silence on Lazarus, aren't giving the world's most powerful argument, but that criticism plagues Christian apologists equally well.

I believe that the argument from John 7:5 is conclusive against any trifles of gospel miracle details any apologist can bring up.

My reply to Apologist Dr. Robert Bowman on Gospel of John's historical reliability

The following is the reply I made to Dr. Bowman over at his blog.  My comments did not immediately appear, so I presume Bowman wishes to review replies to him before allowing them to actually post.

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Dr. Bowman,

I find that many conservative scholars have no difficulties with the Muratorian Fragment's listing of canonical NT books, and no problems with its testimony to the traditional authorship of the gospels, but when the MF specifies that John's first idea for gospel authorship was that the disciples first starve themselves for three days, then jot down what would be "revealed" to each disciples, then suddenly, conservatives are quite sure that this part of the MF is a later interpolation or an otherwise distorted view of how John reacted to the prospect of writing a gospel.  And suddenly, they aren't so sure that the MF really goes back to the 2nd century.

What would be wrong with an atheist saying the MF is truthful when it paints John as believing he should get his gospel material via more esoteric means than simply jotting down his eyewitness memories? 

Indeed, John 16:14 and the book of Revelation (if the author of those two books is the same guy), combined with Clement of Alexandria's explicit denial that John desired to write "external facts" about Jesus as the prior Synoptic authors had already done, would justify the historical conclusion that John was open to getting the truth about Jesus in more ways than just what he or others remembered Jesus saying, the method that most conservative Protestant scholars insist was the case.  Which then means that for any saying of Christ now exclusive to John's gospel, we cannot reach a reasonable degree of certainty on whether or to what extent these words of Jesus correctly represent in Greek the same information Jesus' hearers got when he spoke to them in Aramaic.

If such a case can be historically justified, then I don't see how the skeptic who makes such argument would be unreasonable to use it to further argue that the gospel of John contains an unknown mixture of historical truth and historical falsehood or theologizing which cannot be disentangled, and as such, he is disqualified from the list of independent witnesses of Jesus' resurrection.

So my questions to you would be:  If John is the only person saying Thomas' infamous doubting was cured by his touching of the risen Christ's crucifixion wounds (John 20), what makes you so sure this is based purely on eyewitness recall?  Shouldn't you remain open to what Clement said, and allow that John's unique material about the risen Christ was written for a "spiritual" reason that is not the same as writing out the "external facts"?

For what reason do you think skeptics are unreasonable to assert that the esoteric nature of the uniquely Johannine gospel material disqualifies it from the possibility of answering questions about literal history, such as whether Jesus rose from the dead?

Update: October 16, 2017

Dr. Bowman responded as follows:

robbowman says:
October 16, 2017 at 11:22 am
Barry,
 WordPress mistakenly treated your comment as spam, but happily I found it and was able to approve it.
 I tend to privilege internal evidence from the text itself as well as evidence from roughly contemporaneous sources over evidence from much later secondary sources. Both the Muratorian Fragment and Clement of Alexandria are much later than John’s Gospel and so their statements need to be assessed in the light of the more directly relevant evidence. Where those later secondary sources appear to confirm conclusions based on the text itself or secondary sources closer to the time of the Gospel’s composition, naturally I will agree with them.
 I don’t see anything in John 16:14 or the Book of Revelation that would support the claim that the Gospel of John is not providing biographical material about Jesus.
Reply

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I replied as follows:

Dr. Bowman, thanks for rescuing me from the spam heap. 

So I guess I got "saved"...?

If a case can be made that some sayings of Jesus in the canonical gospels did not exist until after Jesus died, then it would seem it is hopeless to try and disentangle these sayings of late esoteric origin from those which the historical/biological Jesus actually mouthed...which might provide rational academic justification to the unbeliever to simply throw up their hands and say the gospel of John is disqualified by reason of ambiguity from being viewed as the written recollections of eyewitnesses who heard the historical Jesus talk.

The reason I say John 16:14 indicates some of the Johannine material on Jesus isn't biographical or historical, is because the author makes it clear that Jesus would continue giving "sayings" to the church beyond the grave, by means of the Paraclete.

 12 "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

 13 "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

 14 "He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.

 15 "All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.   (Jn. 16:12-15 NAS)

Notes:

a - The things the disciples cannot now (i.e., 30 a.d.) bear, are things Jesus has to "say".

b - So when v. 13 asserts the Spirit, who will be speaking later won't speak on his own but rather convey only what he "hears", the author clearly intends the reader to believe that the Spirit will, sometime after Jesus dies, continue to convey what Jesus has to literally "say" to the church, this cannot be watered down to mere "guidance".  Inerrantist scholars appear to agree:

"This spiritual guide’s task then is pointedly summarized as receiving that which comes directly from Jesus and passing it on or messaging it (cf. vv. 13–15 for a communication triad) directly to the disciples. This type of passing on of significant information reminds me of the rabbinic concept of the passing on of tradition and assuming that such tradition has been unaltered in the process."

Borchert, G. L. (2002). Vol. 25B: John 12-21. The new American commentary, New International Version (Page 170). Nashville: Broadman & Holman.

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c - "things to come" (v. 13), ok, so when the gospels have Jesus describing future events or "things to come" (i.e., Matthew 24), this statement in John would justify the view that Jesus' eschatological statements were provided to the church by the Paraclete after he died, despite the fact that they present them in the gospels as if they were things he said before the crucifixion.  These sayings of Jesus conveyed by the Spirit are a case of him taking them FROM Jesus (v. 14-15), reinforcing the above-cited conclusion that the Spirit is not merely "guiding" the church but conveying what Jesus actually has to "say" beyond the grave (v. 12).

The point is that when you apologists assert the gospel of John constitutes eyewitness testimony obtained by typical memory or "recollection" of what the historically Jesus said and did before he died, you are giving the impression to the unbeliever that the person who wrote that gospel drew upon nothing other than his own and possibly other's eyewitness memories, the same way that anybody normally does when writing down a description of an event years after it took place.

That impression conflicts with John's own testimony that Jesus would continue giving his sayings to the church from beyond the grave, naturally raising the question as to whether some of the Christ-sayings in John were things the apostles never heard Jesus say until after he died.

This then raises the problem as to which Johannine sayings of Christ were those that the biological/historical Jesus actually mouthed, and which sayings of Christ were those that the church never knew until the Spirit conveyed them to the post-crucifixion church.

Without a convincing alternative interpretation of John 16, and without coming up with a miracle to help us disentangle in John the pre-crucifixion sayings of Christ from the sayings he gave from beyond the grave, it would seem unbelievers have here a reasonable academic justification to consider the question of JOhn's eyewitness nature to be hopelessly confused and to thus disqualify John's gospel from the list of resurrection witnesses apologists typically depend on.

And all this is to say nothing of the equally significant objection that if Matthew, Mark or Luke or their sources (Peter?) had remembered Jesus talking in the high-Christological way he does in John's gospel, they would not likely have "chosen to omit" such powerful theological teachings anymore than a modern day author of a book entitled "Sexual Scandals of the Clinton Presidency" would be likely to "chose to omit" all mention of the Monica Lewinsky affair.  So the Synoptic failure to echo Christ-sayings now exclusively limited to John's gospel, is a rational reason to suspect that John's Christ-sayings originated in circumstances far more complex/esoteric than simply what somebody remembered the biological/historical Jesus actually mouthing before he died.

Update: October 24, 2017:  Dr. Bowman has indicated he would like to have the last word on the matters I raised, and that my messages will not be allowed until I more directly address his main post:

robbowman says:

October 16, 2017 at 5:52 pm
Barry,

Your argument from John 16:14 fails to support the crucial aspect of your claim, namely, that what the Holy Spirit would tell the apostles after he came would then be written in the Gospels as though they were pre-Crucifixion sayings of Jesus. There is no reason not to take John 16:14 to mean that the apostles were going to receive revelation from the Holy Spirit that would be presented as such. It does not present Jesus as saying that he will continue to give “sayings” through the Holy Spirit that were then to be reported as though they were given before the Holy Spirit came.
I’ve allowed the discussion up to this point, but any further comments will need to address one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece.

Update November 2, 2017:  Bowman allow me one more post, as follows:

Barry Jones says:
October 24, 2017 at 8:06 pm
Dr. Bowman,
 Not sure why you are implying with your last sentence that I wasn’t addressing “one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece”
 You say in your blog piece “In short, we ought to be somewhat skeptical when we are told that the “Johannine” Jesus speaks about himself in ways radically different from the Jesus of the Synoptics. The burden of proof should be assigned to those who make this claim in order to depreciate the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the Gospel of John.”
 Thus you argued that skeptics should be required to give argument why they deprecate the historical reliability of John’s gospel. Were my first two posts here not directly relevant to the task of deprecating the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the gospel of John”, even if you thought my arguments unpersuasive thereto?
 First, my comments about the Muratorian Fragment directly speak to what kind of person John was and whether his ideas about gospel history are similar to those held by modern conservative Christians. John was prone to obtaining his gospel material from visions induced by starvation. That surely is relevant to your first argument “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”, unless you now clarify that when you say “eyewitness”, you also mean those people who get their material by vision?
 For example, my question to you from my first post: “What would be wrong with an atheist saying the MF is truthful when it paints John as believing he should get his gospel material via more esoteric means than simply jotting down his eyewitness memories?” Isn’t answering that question relevant to the proposition “The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”?
 If the MF is telling the truth about how John desired to obtain his gospel material, then the more you paint him as an eyewitness, the more he becomes an eyewitness who wishes to mix material obtained by vision with material from his own eyewitness memories, to obtain gospel material…a point that surely is relevant to your attempt to paint John as an “eyewitness” and that “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus.”
 Second, if you wish me to rebut with new argument, well, one of your premises was
“#2: The Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness.”, but you didn’t make any specific arguments thereto, instead, you simply a) cited the chapter and verses references in John which you believe show eyewitness authorship, then b) assured the reader that rebuttals to skeptical attempts to explain away this claim could be found in the works of Andreas Köstenberger, and that Richard Bauckham “offers a variety of independent lines of evidence in support.”
 Did you intend to make argument to support the premise?
 Of critical importance is your allowing as possibly true the view of Bauckman that the author of John’s gospel was a “John the Elder”, when you say:
 “Note that the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the author was an eyewitness even if there remains some uncertainty about who he was. Bauckham, for example, does not think the author was John the son of Zebedee but another disciple called John the Elder.”
 How do you propose a modern person can make an assessment of John the Elder’s general credibility, when in fact conservative Christian scholars disagree on whether he even existed? For example Dr. Monte Shanks argues in “Papias and the New Testament” (Wipf & Stock Pub, July 8, 2013) that it is only from Eusebius’ chiliast-biased “misunderstanding” of Papias, that such a figure as John the elder arises. Jerome in De Viris Illustribus admits the confusion problem in the church and denies that the Elder and Apostle are the same man.

Bowman replied, making even more clear his desire that the discussion be concluded:

robbowman says:
October 24, 2017 at 10:20 pm
Barry,
 You wrote: 

Not sure why you are implying with your last sentence that I wasn’t addressing “one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece[.]” You say in your blog piece “In short, we ought to be somewhat skeptical when we are told that the “Johannine” Jesus speaks about himself in ways radically different from the Jesus of the Synoptics. The burden of proof should be assigned to those who make this claim in order to depreciate the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the Gospel of John.” Thus you argued that skeptics should be required to give argument why they deprecate the historical reliability of John’s gospel. Were my first two posts here not directly relevant to the task of deprecating the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the gospel of John”, even if you thought my arguments unpersuasive thereto? 

Your quotation from my post came from the conclusion of my fifth point, which was that Jesus sometimes speaks in the Synoptics in ways that are usually considered “Johannine.” Yet you did not address this point. Nor did you address any of the arguments presented in any of the other nine points of my article.
 You wrote: 

John was prone to obtaining his gospel material from visions induced by starvation. That surely is relevant to your first argument “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”, unless you now clarify that when you say “eyewitness”, you also mean those people who get their material by vision?

 I gave three arguments in defense of that point. The Muratorian Fragment was not relevant to any of those three arguments.
 Your assertion in any case distorts what the Fragment states. It claims that Andrew, John, and others fasted for three days (not that they “starved themselves”; a three-day fast was not at all unusual in their culture) while they sought divine guidance as to which of them should write, and that Andrew — not John — received a revelation that John should write the whole text while the others reviewed it. Here is what the Fragment says:
 The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, [one] of the disciples. To his fellow disciples and bishops, who had been urging him [to write], he said, ‘Fast with me from today to three days, and what will be revealed to each one let us tell it to one another.’ In the same night it was revealed to Andrew, [one] of the apostles, that John should write down all things in his own name while all of them should review it.
 Do you see it? The Fragment says absolutely nothing whatsoever about John receiving any sort of revelation through the three-day fast. Only Andrew is said to have had a revelation. And it was a revelation concerning how they should proceed with producing a new Gospel text, not “visions” that supplied the actual content of the new Gospel.
 As to why I didn’t offer a detailed defense of my second point, which was that the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness, there are two obvious reasons. First, it’s a blog, not a periodical article or a monograph. Second, this blog post addresses the issue of the historicity of the “I am” sayings in the context of evangelical scholarship on the Gospels (note the opening paragraphs). You might just as irrelevantly ask why I didn’t defend the existence of Jesus as why I didn’t defend in detail the view that the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness. So I referred to some good work on the subject that most evangelical scholars would acknowledge as at least important and relevant work on the subject.
 Finally, whether the author was John the apostle, son of Zebedee, or another man named John the Elder, ultimately has no bearing on the cogency of the internal evidence that the author (whoever he was) was an eyewitness.

robbowman says:
October 24, 2017 at 10:22 pm
Barry, please be advised that we will not be engaging in any protracted discussion here. As far as I am concerned, this exchange should be considered to have come to a conclusion.
Reply

I wrote one more reply as follows, but for right now it sits waiting to be approved:

Dr. Bowman,
Are you willing to defend your theory of John's historical reliability, in a formal or informal written debate (or series of formal or informal written debates) online, at any location of your choosing, where I set forth the full panoply of reasons, one at a time, to justify viewing John's gospel as historically unreliable?  I am quite aware of, and have studied, conservative Christianity's best defenses on the matter from "An Introduction To the New Testament", D.A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, Leon Morris, Zondervan Publishing House, © 1992, as well as those of Guthrie in his Introduction, and various online defenses by other evangelical Christians. 

The only reason I don't attempt to justify my use of the MF evidence is because you have now requested, immediately after accusing me of distorting the MF, that the matter be considered closed.  You clearly do not wish to allow me to defend my interpretation of the MF testimony HERE, so since that is your idea of scholarship, I'll comply.  But I provide point by point rebuttal to your latest over at my own blog, since apparently you and I don't agree on what constitutes serious academic discussion.  No, your blog wasn't a monograph, but then again, exactly how much a blogger will allow discussion of his controversial ideas at his own blog, is a very subjective thing.  That's why I offer you the challenge, supra.  If "blog" is the hangup, then pick whatever other internet forum you wish so we can launch all out war on this matter.

Surely you have to admit, there's at least one belief John had that I've disproven.  John 3:20.    

If the Jehovah Witnesses would be abusing John 3:20 in applying it to you, because of your willingness to debate their denials of Christ's deity, then under the same logic, you'd be abusing John 3:20 the same way in applying it to me, because of my willingness to debate your views about John's historical reliability.  Yet if you admit I'm free from the condemnation described in that verse, you part ways with pretty much all over theologically conservative evangelicals.