Demolishing Triablogue: Significant Resurrection Narratives Did Not Come From Sources Who Were Named And Known

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue entitled

The Resurrection Narratives Came From Sources Who Were Named And Known

"All four Gospels are anonymous in the formal sense that the author's name does not appear in the text of the work itself, only in the title (which we will discuss below).

Which is a problem since most NT authors and 1st century historians did include their names in the text of their writings despite in most cases their intended audiences already knowing who they were.  So you can kiss your predictable "they didn't mention their names because they already knew their audiences" excuse goodbye.

Therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude that the gospel authors intentionally broke with standard practice, therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude they didn't want to be identified, therefore, we can be reasonable to conclude that desire to identify them only started with later generations.  We can therefore be reasonable to conclude that we cannot possibly go wrong in fulfilliing the author's desires, and refusing to discuss their identifies, if we so choose.

And if god inspired the gospel authors, then god also didn't want them to include their names in those works, which means God is less interested in proving the human authorship of the gospels than today's apologists are.  Hence it can be reasonable for the atheist to conclude that any "god" that might exist, wanted the written testimony to Jesus' resurrection to be of more dubious origin than as wished by today's apologists.  Whose wishes are more important to respect?

But this does not mean that they were intentionally anonymous. Many ancient works were anonymous in the same formal sense, and the name may not even appear in the surviving title of the work. For example, this is true of Lucian's Life of Demonax (Demonactos bios), which as a bios (ancient biography) is generically comparable with the Gospels. Yet Lucian speaks throughout in the first person and obviously expects his readers to know who he is.

And by speaking in the first person, that much is clear.  Unfortunately for you, none of the 4 gospels speaks in the first person.  They always characterize the apostles in the third-person. It doesn't matter how you can spin that, and it doesn't matter that eyewitnesses "can" use third person, this doesn't automatically mean "eyewitness who is choosing to use the third-person".  Third-person narrative usually automatically implies "the author was not one of the story characters", and the burden is rightfully on the fundie to overcome such presumption.  You certainly cannot seriously say skeptics are unreasonable to infer anonymous authorship from the third-person writing style.  Especially in light of the fact that we naturally and justifiably expect honest eyewitnesses to make it clear to the listeners that what they have to say is their own story, instead of asking the listeners to make imperfect judgment calls about how much tesitmony is "eyewitness" and how much is "later redactor modified this and modified that".

Such works would often have been circulated in the first instance among friends or acquaintances of the author who would know who the author was from the oral context in which the work was first read.

But that didn't stop apostle Paul and most other NT authors from identifying themselves.  You may not like the fact that the gospel authors bucked the trend, because of the skeptical inferences that can be justified therefrom, but that's tough shit.

Knowledge of authorship would be passed on when copies were made for other readers, and the name would be noted, with a brief title, on the outside of the scroll or on a label affixed to the scroll.

That would also be true even if the belief about the author were merely the earlier copyist's best guess.

In denying that the Gospels were originally anonymous, our intention is to deny that they were first presented as works without authors.

Then you aren't combating my specific type of gospel skepticism. I can allow for apostles authoring originals without putting myself under intellectual obligation to credit the final canonical form entirely to said apostles.  But if it is reasonable to say that various portions of the gospels originally came from later redactors, that is sufficient to justify skepticism toward their resurrection narratives, especially in light of the fact that scholars cannot agree on which portions of the gospels reveal redactional activity.

This idea that we have to show absolute anonymity before we can be reasonable to deny apostolic authorship, is total bullshit.  Life is far more complex than what you get walking into a church...or a preschool.

The clearest case is Luke because of the dedication of the work to Theophilus (1:3), probably a patron.

Which is also a point of unending debate, since Theophilus could also be a mere metaphor for the entire church.

But even assuming it was a real individual person, the reasonable assumption is that Luke intended to write for that guy, and the burden is on YOU to show that Luke intended for anybody else to read that work (by which argument scumbag apologists suddenly discover the infallibility of saying Theophilus was a metaphor for a large group of people).  As I've argued elsewhere, when you say the gospels were inspired by God, you are making reasonable those who attribute to god's own will any of the human author's discernible intent.  Unless you are a Calvinist and insist that just whatever happens is surely within the will of God, you cannot leap from "popular!" to "intended for the world!".  Luke appears intended for the church, as it makes no effort to rebut the kind of objections skeptics would have made in the 1st century (i.e., Jesus' miracles are just tricks employed by hundreds of other "faith-healers", sometimes involving dishonest assistants and third persons).

It is inconceivable that a work with a named dedicatee should have been anonymous.

Not "inconceivable" if the author already knew the dedicatee.

The author's name may have featured in an original title, but in any case would have been known to the dedicatee and other first readers because the author would have presented the book to the dedicatee....In the first century CE, most authors gave their books titles, but the practice was not universal....

In the first century, most authors also identified themselves in the text of their work, and most NT authors do so, therefore, we are reasonable to conclude that the gospel authors made a deliberate choice to avoid associating their names with their stories.  Not exactly the definition of "reliable".

Whether or not any of these titles originate from the authors themselves, the need for titles that distinguished one Gospel from another would arise as soon as any Christian community had copies of more than one in its library and was reading more than one in its worship meetings....In the case of codices, 'labels appeared on all possible surfaces: edges, covers, and spines.' In this sense also, therefore, Gospels would not have been anonymous when they first circulated around the churches.

Even if you are correct, the very fact that Jerome says "many" in the early church thought the Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew" shows how little usefulness there was in the original gospels naming their authors...unless you wish to credit Matthew as the author of that heretical work?

A church receiving its first copy of one such would have received with it information, at least in oral form, about its authorship and then used its author's name when labeling the book and when reading from it in worship....no evidence exists that these Gospels were ever known by other names." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 300-301, 303)

But you don't know if they ever did so "label", you don't know how long they waited before producing the copies that might motivate them to attach labels, and yet it is equally reasonable to suppose that the oral tradition about the author is all the individual church community thought was necessary for several decades.

But again, so what?  The fact that all church fathers never testify to a Greek Matthew but only Hebrew until Jerome makes it reasonable to assume they did not have any tradition that Matthew authored anything in Greek.  You don't make that reasonableness disappear merely by trifling that maybe they just miraculously chose to focus only on the Hebrew original.  Those were mostly Gentile churches, where the Greek Matthew would be used more had it been believed authored by Matthew.

"Nevertheless the fact remains that it is utterly improbable that in this dark period, at a particular place or through a person or through the decision of a group or institution unknown to us, the four superscriptions of the Gospels, which had hitherto been circulating anonymously, suddenly came into being and, without leaving behind traces of earlier divergent titles, became established throughout the church.

I'm not one of those who say the gospel titles suddenly came into being at a late stage.  And once again, Matthew likely authored a less detailed "sayings-source", and this + anonymous scribe creating a Greek edition is why Matthew's name now appears on canonical Greek Matthew.

None of these trifles increase the probability that the gospel resurrection narratives escaped scribal modification, and if they didn't, then the gospel resurrection narratives lose significant historical value, since we are forced to conclude that at least some resurrection testimony has also been modified by later scribes.

Nevermind that more and more conservative inerrantists are admitting to Matthew mingling history and fiction in his resurrection narrative (i.e. "fiction" = "apocalyptic imagery").

Let those who deny the great age and therefore basically the originality of the Gospel superscriptions in order to preserve their 'good' critical conscience, give a better explanation of the completely unanimous and relatively early attestation of these titles, their origin and the names of authors associated with them.

I accept your challenge.  As far as Matthew, he likely authored a Hebrew sayings-source that was later reworked into Greek by a redactor who added substantial blocks of "narrative", so that Matthew's resurrection testimony is infected with hearsay of unknown extent, rendering the skeptic reasonable, if they choose, to disregard it.

As far as Mark, I can allow that a guy named Mark wrote it, and Mark's tendency to abandon the ministry to the point that Paul didn't deem him a worthy missionary (Acts 15:38) might help explain why he deserted his own gospel and made Jesus' resurrection one of the least important aspects.  The more Mark copied from Peter's preaching, the more "hearsay" it is, and since we cannot reasonably determine Mark's relation to Peter beyond debateable references in the NT, we have no reasonable way to gauge the reliability of such hearsay, thus justifying a skeptic, if they choose, to disregard it.

As far as Luke, if most Christian scholars are correct that Luke copies off Mark, then Luke was lying by omission in saying he consulted with eyewitnesses, since he leaves the impression that everything in his gospel about Jesus draws from eyewitness sources.  Mark was not an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry, especially if the fundies are correct that Mark is just a record of Peter's later preaching in Rome.

As far as John, enough Christian scholars admit much of what he puts in Jesus mouth was never actually mouthed by Jesus, to render reasonable the skeptic who says apostle John's authorship only hurts that gospel's reliability.

Such an explanation has yet to be given, and it never will be.

Bang on the pulpit, and yell "bless ma soul".

New Testament scholars persistently overlook basic facts and questions on the basis of old habits." (Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], p. 55)

Wow, if even NT scholars "persistently" get things wrong, one reasonable option for a skeptic to exercise is to simply toss all NT scholarship in the trash as too complicated and convoluted for them to reasonably believe they will ever be able to draw reasonably certain conclusions beyond what Jesus' gender was.

And since Triablogue says a lifetime of neutrality toward Jesus cannot protect the unbeliever from hell,  the skeptic who exercise the above-stated option may as well avoid neutrality and tell himself David Hume already proved that miracles are impossible. Life is more fun if you go around thinking you'll never be held accountable by an invisible man living in the sky.  It's also easier to sleep at night when you don't think there is a monster living under your bed.

Demolishing Triablogue: Matthew did not write the gospel attributed to him

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue, entitled

Did Matthew Write The Gospel Attributed To Him?

Saturday, May 25, 2013

This is a typical way of downplaying the significance of Matthew's gospel:

The arguments for such downlplaying that you now cite to, are often made by Christian scholars.  Just wanted to make sure your readers didn't get the false impression that its only atheists who argue that way.

When the reader is told that Matthew likely authored a Hebrew original and the Hebrew is the only one the church fathers refer to until 4th century Jerome, many of the "evidences" for "Matthean authorship" of canonical Greek Matthew lose force.  After all, its a bit more complex than just whether Matthew wrote something in Greek.  We can relate Matthew to canonical Greek Matthew in a way that does reasonable justice to the external evidence, but without thereby showing Matthew was the sole author.  If there is more than one person involved in the authorship of canonical Greek Matthew, then the historical value of 'Matthew's' resurrection testimony wanes somewhat accordingly.  You don't just say "some parts of my affidavit were updated and modified by anonymous third-parties and translated into a different language" and yet expect others to think the document correctly represents everything you alleged in your original.

"We do not know the name of its author: the title found in our English versions ('The Gospel according to Matthew') was added long after the document's original composition.

 The author's failure to do what most NT authors and 1st century historians did, and include his name despite his audience already knowing it, is significant, and justifies the skeptic to say such authorial intent likely also expresses the allegeldy 'divine' intent...which means you might be acting contrary to the will of God in pushing Matthew's authorship.

It is true that according to an old tradition the author was none other than Matthew, the tax collector mentioned in Matt 9:9. This tradition, however, arose some decades after the Gospel itself had been published, and scholars today have reasons to doubt its accuracy.

Exactly how "early" that gospel was attributed to Matthew, cannot be known.  All you can do is find an earliest church father from around 125 a.d. mentioning a gospel of Matthew or "memoirs of the apostles" and triumphantly conclude that an interval of 80 years between Jesus' crucifixion and such early patristic reference is too trivial to justify fear of the gospel titles being the result of rumors.  The more you speak that foolishly, the more you justify apostolic authorship of the earliest non-canonical gospels.

For one thing, the author never identifies himself as Matthew, either in 9:9 or anywhere else.

So that under your own theory that this gospel was inspired by God, the best theory to expalin why the author didn't identify himself is beause god didn't want him to. Wow, I guess it never occurred to you that pushing Matthew's authorship might be contrary to the will of god.

Also, certain features of this Gospel make it difficult to believe that this Matthew could have been the author. Why, for example, would someone who had spent so much time with Jesus rely on another author (Mark) for nearly two-thirds of his stories, often repeating them word for word (including the story of his own call to discipleship; 9:9-13)?

That's called the Markan priority theory, one that I adopt, along with the majority of Christian scholars, and that alone is sufficient to justify concluding that such theory is "reasonable" even if not "guaranteed truth".  That is, your trifles against Markan priority do not foist any intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to either refute your objections or admit Markan priority loses.  Under your stupid trifling demeanor, nobody could ever be reasonable to write a book defending any bible scholarly opinion, because the necessarily limit to the size of the book necessarily means they'd have to avoid dealing with certain objections.

And why would he never authenticate his account by indicating that he himself had seen these things take place?

Maybe because, like many Christian scholars explain about Paul's anonymous authorship of Hebrews...he was scared that putting his name on something would cause his intended audience to turn away?  It's what we call "provide things honest in the sight of all men" and "it is not you but god who giveth the increase".

…Since he produced his Gospel in Greek, presumably for a Greek-speaking community, he was probably located somewhere outside Palestine…

That's weak since Greek was spoken also in Palestine.

Matthew, an anonymous Jewish leader of the Christian community (assuming that his strong literary skills, indicative of a higher education, gave him a place of prominence there), penned a Gospel narrative to show that Jesus was in fact the Jewish messiah, who like Moses gave the law of God to his people." (Bart Ehrman, The New Testament [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], 114-115, 132) 

Ehrman doesn't know that the title of the gospel wasn't added until "long after" the document's composition. See, for example, Martin Hengel's discussion of the gospel titles in The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000). Hengel gives a series of reasons why the titles probably would have been included early on.

Except that even conservative inerrantist Christian scholars, despite how they could profit from such trifling, nevertheless stick with saying the gospel titles were probably added later.  For example, Craig Blomberg argues:

Strictly speaking, this Gospel, like all four canonical Gospels, is anonymous. The titles, “The Gospel according to X,” are almost certainly not original. It is doubtful that four early Christians would all choose this identical wording and far more probable that the documents were given these headings in order to distinguish one from the other only when they were first combined into a fourfold collection. The diversity of ways in which these titles are phrased among the existing manuscripts (“According to Matthew,” “The Gospel according to Matthew,” “The Gospel according to Matthew beginning with God,” “The Holy Gospel according to Matthew,” “From the [Gospel] according to Matthew”) reinforces this supposition.⁶¹ Probably these headings were first added some time in the late first or early second century. But apart from these ascriptions, nothing in the actual text of the Gospel ever specifically discloses its author.

61 For the Greek titles and manuscripts in which they occur, see Allison and Davies, Matthew, 1:129, n. 90.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 43). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

If Engwer chooses to disagree with Blomberg, that's fine but then the skeptic could correctly trivilaize Christianity by observing that NOT EVEN WHEN YOU ACCEPT JESUS, ADOPT INERRANCY AND EVENTUALLY BECOME A LEGITIMATELY CREDENTIALED RESPECTABLE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR WHO SPECIALIZES IN THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE GOSPELS, WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SEE GOSPEL TRUTH.

For example, after more than one gospel was circulating, the gospels would need to be distinguished from one another.

Not if they were originally written for separate communities, as most scholars believe was the case.  What you are talking about wouldn't be a concern until the church began to collectively desire to canonize several gospels.

When critics like Ehrman suggest that Matthew used Mark as a source, they don't seem to realize that their argument in that context works against their argument that Matthew wouldn't have had a title until "long after" its composition. If the author of Matthew knew of Mark and thought so highly of the document as to use so much of it, then he and his earliest readers would have wanted a way, probably multiple ways, to quickly and easily distinguish each gospel from other documents in general and from other gospels in particular.

Or maybe Matthew was intended to 'correct' Mark (which I've shown he usually does) and produce something better so as to allow for tossing Mark in the trash, in which case there can be no rational motive to carefully distinguish the authors.

A title would allow people to quickly and easily distinguish one gospel from another.

In the later period when some of the gospels started gaining authority beyond their originally intended audiences, yes.

That would be important, for instance, in church services in which gospels were being read, a context in which quickly and easily distinguishing among the gospels would be desirable.

Only by assuming the Matthew author intended for his people to use Mark alongside his own production, when in fact his corrections to Mark make it reasonable to suppose he intended to supplant Mark.  The church Matthew intended to write for is thus left with one single updated gospel.

Furthermore, both private and public libraries used titles to distinguish one work from another.

Yes.

And so on. If you read Hengel's book, you'll see that there are multiple reasons why the gospels probably would have had titles applied to them early, most likely during the first century, when apostles and their contemporaries were still alive.

Well gee, then why did Jerome say "many" in the early church thought Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew"?

“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”. [1]

[1] Commentary on Matthew 12:13, from Orr, J., M.A., D.D. (1999). The International standard Bible encyclopedia : 1915 edition (J. Orr, Ed.). Albany, OR: Ages Software.

Does the presence of the word "authentic" reasonably imply that those "many" knew of inauthentic gospels being credited to Matthew?  Does the word "authentic" reasonably imply those "many" did some type of investigation and concluded GoH was more likely authored by Matthew?  Or do your common-sense sounding arguments suddenly become Stupid of the Year whenever they can be used to support apostolic authorship of gospels that aren't in your favorite collection?

See my quotations of Richard Bauckham and Martin Hengel here, and read their books for further information.
How does Ehrman allegedly know that the tradition of Matthean authorship "arose some decades after the Gospel itself had been published"? The earliest extant report of that tradition is in Papias, writing in the early second century about information he attained at an unknown earlier date. But the timing of the earliest tradition report extant today need not be equivalent to the timing of the earliest tradition.

True, but that kind of trifle doesn't foist an intellectual obligation upon a skeptic.  All you are doing is bleating about possibiltiies.  If a skeptic doesn't accuse you of taking an illogical position, you have no business citing to bare possibilities.  You either show that your own preferred possibility has more probability than the skeptical theory, or you lose the debate.  FUCK YOU.

Think of the absurdity of the situation implied by Ehrman. Not only did people wait until "long after" Matthew's composition to give the work a title, but they also waited until "some decades" later to start claiming that Matthew wrote it.

There's nothing absurd about that under the other Christian theory that the Matthew-author wrote for a specific congregation.  We would expect such congregation to use his gospel for at least two decades, never seeing any need to place a title on it.

 Yet, attribution of the document to Matthew was universal and was corroborated by a diverse series of non-Christian sources from the second century onward.

It was also "universal" that Matthew wrote first, a theory now discredited by most Christian scholars, who hold to Markan priority.  It would also be reasonable for a skeptic to conclude the "universal" attribution to Matthew was little more than later church fathers blindly following Papias.

Is that sort of early and widespread acceptance of Matthean authorship better explained by Ehrman's scenario or a traditional Christian view?

Gee, what best explains the fact that "many" in the early church took GoH to be "authentic" Matthew?  Was it possible for "many" in the early church to be deceived about gospel authorship?  If so, how many wrongful opinions had to be held by "many" before one opinion wrongfully achieved the status of orthodoxy?

Why would a document that circulated anonymously for decades become universally accepted as Matthean, with corroboration from non-Christian sources, leaving no trace of dispute?

Fallacy of loaded question, Jerome documents the dispute by saying "many" viewed GoH as "authentic" Matthew.

To make matters worse for Ehrman, he claims that the author of the gospel was a "leader" with "prominence". But this prominent leader's work circulated anonymously? Why?

I don't have to answer that question, as I don't agree with Ehrman on the point.

And his identity was universally forgotten and universally replaced with Matthew's identity so early?

No, most likely Matthew wrote a sayings-source in Hebrew, and an anonymous scribe was later responsible for translating it into Greek and adding narrative.  That way, the work is called "Matthew", but only because Matthew had limited relation to the contents.

I'm reminded of Donald Guthrie's reference to "those modern schools of criticism which have peopled early Christian history with a whole army of unknown writers, whose works attained as great a prominence as their authors obtained obscurity." (The Logos Library System: Deluxe Collection [Oak Harbor, Washington: Logos Research Systems, 1997], New Testament Introduction)
Ehrman asks us to solve problems of his own creation. Reject his dubious assumptions, and you won't have to face his contrived problems.

I've done rather well justifying skepticism in light of your defense, even assuming Ehrman was wrong.

He suggests that if the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel, he would have identified himself as an eyewitness. Why think Matthew didn't identify himself by a document title or an oral report of authorship that accompanied the book's circulation, for example?

Because skeptics try to prioritize any theory that can be based on evidence, instead of on a theory that requires manufacturing evidence out of thin air.  There is no historical evidence that Matthew identified himself by document or "oral report" (gospel preaching doesn't require the preacher to give his name, only the gospel), nor that any such thing accompanied the book's circulation.

I've addressed the issue of Matthew's use of Mark's gospel here. Under my view, a "word for word" (as Ehrman puts it) repetition of Mark wouldn't be a problem.

But it remains reasonable to say we don't expect a person with their own first-hand experiences, to depend so heavily upon a non-eyewitness source for documenting these.

And I don't see how skepticism suffers in the least by admitting Matthew authored an original in Hebrew.  We can agree on that, except that I think the Hebrew original was mostly "sayings", not narrative, and I agree with inerrantist Christian scholar Craig Blomberg that an anonymous scribe later reworked the entire thing in Greek.

But if he wrote only an Aramaic precursor to the Gospel, then any Gentile Christian could have been responsible for Greek Matthew as well, though interestingly the tide of scholarship is again strongly returning to a Jewish Christian as the author of the final form of this Gospel, even if many remain reluctant to identify the apostle as the specific Jewish Christian, Matthew.

...When all the evidence is amassed, there appears no conclusive proof for the apostle Matthew as author but no particularly cogent reason to deny this uniform early church tradition. Were the Gospel not written by him, the church surely chose a rather strange individual (in light of his unscrupulous past by Jewish standards) as a candidate for authorship. Without any ancient traditions to the contrary, Matthew remains the most plausible choice for author. This author, at least of an original draft of this book (or one of its major sources), seems quite probably to have been the converted toll collector, also named Levi, who became one of Jesus’ twelve apostles (cf. 10:3; 9:9–13; Mark 2:14–17).
But again we present these conclusions tentatively.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 44). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Engwer continues:

But is Matthew 9:9-13, a passage Ehrman singles out, actually a word for word repetition of Mark 2:14-17? No.

Doesn't have to be word-for-word.  Under Markan priority, they are similarly worded because the Matthew author is copying off of Mark.  Since it would be absurd to suppose Matthew himself wished to depend upon a non-eyewitness to tell the reader about Matthew's own calling to discipleship, it's reasonable, even if not infallible, to say the Matthew-author is not Matthew himself.

In fact, scholars often point to differences among the parallel Synoptic accounts as evidence for Matthean authorship or as a potential explanation for how a mistaken Christian belief in authorship by Matthew arose. (E.g., Matthew 9:9 refers to "Matthew", whereas Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 refer to "Levi".

Some church fathers thought Levi and Matthew were separate apostles, so it might be reasonable to conclude that Mark's "Levi" was originally supposed to be somebody different than "Matthew", despite the tendency of most Christains to automatically equate them.

Matthew 9:9 humanizes the individual by referring to him as "a man" rather than more formally referring to his ancestry [Mark 2:14] or referring to his despised employment as a tax collector [Luke 5:27].

I'm not seeing the point.

Matthew 9:10 refers to "the house" rather than "his house" [Mark 2:15, Luke 5:29], and "the house" is more natural coming from the house's owner.)

Bauckham doesn't think the switch to "the house" implies Matthew is the author:

Mark sets this scene in “his house,” which some scholars take to mean Jesus’ house, but could certainly appropriately refer to Levi’s house. In Matthew’s Gospel, the same passage follows the narrative of the call of Matthew, but the scene is set simply in “the house” (Matt 9:10). Thus this Evangelist has appropriated Mark’s story of the call of Levi, making it a story of Matthew’s call instead, but has not continued this appropriation by setting the following story in Matthew’s house. He has appropriated for Matthew only as much as Mark’s story of Levi as he needed.
...If this explanation of the name Matthew in Matt 9:9 is correct, it has one significant implication: that the author of Matthew’s Gospel intended to associate the Gospel with the apostle Matthew but was not himself the apostle Matthew. Matthew himself could have described his own call without having to take over the way Mark described Levi’s call.

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 108-109

If conservatives of Dr. Bauckham’s caliber are not convinced by the way fundamentalists spin the evidence to make Matthew into a gospel author, it’s a pretty good argument that the evidence for Matthean authorship is weak at best. If there was any legitimate way to spin the evidence to favor authorship by an apostle, somebody with Dr. Bauckham’s great learning and fundamentalist assumptions about the gospels as eyewitness testimony would surely have done it.  This doesn't prove Bauckham is correct, only that the skeptics who choose to adopt his point here are not unreasonable to do so.

Engwer continues:

If Matthew 9 is distinctive enough to be part of the explanation of the authorship attribution of the document, as seems to be the case, then so much the worse for Ehrman's claim that Matthew just repeated Mark.

Nah, Markan priority is pretty solid, especially if Eta Lineman and W. Farmer are the best the fundies can offer in rebuttal.

And so much the worse for Ehrman's claim that the author of the document didn’t make any effort to identify himself.

Just not the level of effort we'd expect of a person who was "amazingly transformed" by viewing the resurrected Jesus.

The author makes a lot of references to financial matters, including some unique to his gospel (e.g., 17:24-27, 18:23-35). In a passage about taxes that the Synoptics have in common (Matthew 22:19, Mark 12:15, Luke 20:24), Matthew uses more precise terminology than what's used by Mark and Luke. Those characteristics would make sense if the author were a tax collector.

Correction, if the author OF THE HEBREW ORIGINAL were a tax-collector.  I'm more dangerous to fundies than the average skeptic, because I avoid the extreme position that Matthew is completely detached from the gospel and allow that his influence likely appears in the canonical greek version, being based as it was on the earlier shorter Hebrew version.

And a tax collector's work would give him reason to know Greek.

It would also give him a reason to know why it is important to state his name and testify to what he himself observed, something the Matthew author never does.

So would various cultural factors involved with living in first-century Israel and various factors involved with being a prominent leader in a messianic movement.

Yes, apostle Matthew had something to do with the canonical Greek version.  But that hardly justifies automatically insisting that denial of Matthew's authorship is unreasonable.  There were two authors, and Matthew had the least influence on the Greek version.

As an apostle, Matthew would have had good reason to travel outside of Israel, so his presence outside of the nation wouldn't be a significant problem for Matthean authorship.

Except that according to Paul, the original Jewish apostles wished to disobey the Great Commission and limit their evangelism efforts to Jews alone:

 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)

Engwer continues:

Along with those who hold a traditional view of Matthean authorship, Ehrman acknowledges that the author probably was a Jew and that his gospel is of a highly Jewish character. Whether the author was outside of Israel at the time when he wrote doesn't have much significance in the context of authorship. The author was a Jew, and a Jewish apostle would have had reason to travel outside of Israel.

A position that can be reasonably disputed on the basis of Galatians 2:9.

Demolishing Triablogue: Early interest in gospel authorship doesn't make skeptics unreasonable

Jason Engwer of Triablogue tries to make Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name more reasonable than the skeptical position that says the author is anonymous.  I respond to each of Engwers points.

There would have been early interest in who wrote the gospel.
It's common today to claim that the gospels initially circulated anonymously, even for as long as several decades.

And the fact that even conservative Christian apologists like Mike Licona aren't willing to make a case for Matthew's authorship (see here), nor consider his resurrection testimony "bedrock" (see here) is sufficient, standing alone, to render reasonable the skeptic who says apostle Matthew's connection to the gospel now bearing his name is tenuous at best, which is more than sufficient to justify asserting the author to be anonymous.

Here's something I recently wrote on the subject in the comments section of an old thread:

In that sort of atmosphere of concern for named authority figures, distinguishing among sources, and trying to discern who wrote documents like the gospels, it's far more likely that the gospels were circulating with authorial attributions than that they were circulating anonymously.

Except that the authors were allegedly Jews who lived in a religious climate that approved of anonymously and falsely authored scriptures.  See the OT Pseudepigrapha and Intertestamental literature.  They were quite capable of blindly trusting something merely because it was religious.

There would have been a high degree of interest in the gospels' authorship well before the second half of the second century.

Perhaps among Christians.  I don't see any non-Christians of that period would have cared.

And thank you for helping increase the probability that Matthew authored the heretical "Gospel to the Hebrews".

And early belief in their traditional authorship attributions provides a far better explanation for the prominence of the gospels and how little dispute there was about their authorship.

And thousands of early Christians could seriously believe false rumors about the apostles. See Acts 21:18-24.

In closing, I suggest that people think about the context of early Christianity and whether it was a setting in which the gospels are likely to have circulated anonymously for nearly a century.

Most historians that wrote in the 1st century named themselves, including most NT authors, so the Matthew-author's choice to leave his name out was deliberate, and under your own belief that this gospel is inspired by God, it is therefore God's intent to refuse to name Matthew.  For all you know, trying to prove Matthew's authorship would be against the divine will.  But if you discovered any such thing, no problems, just become a Calvinist.

Christianity wasn't a philosophical system of ideas that were being promoted independently of authority figures.

Then apparently you never heard of apostle Paul.  For all his talk about Jesus, he infamously shows so little interest in the historical Jesus' teachings and requirements that it is reasonable to conclude Paul was a heretic.

Rather, it was a system founded on the authority of named individuals, starting with Jesus and going on to the apostles and other individuals who were named (Matthew 10:1-3, Mark 3:13-19, Ephesians 2:20, etc.).

Except that from what's written, the authority consisted of a live person.  The whole notion that god intended for any of this crap to be written down, is missing from the bible. So for all you know, Christianity died out when the original apostles did.  If the Roman Catholic church can live strong fro 2,000 years while being heretical, so can any cult, including one started by Jesus.

Luke's gospel opens with a reference to the significance of eyewitnesses (1:2), a concept that requires distinguishing among sources (differentiating between those who were eyewitnesses and those who weren't), which would include distinguishing among the authors of written sources.

Except that he doesn't tell the reader that he also copied from Mark, a non-eyewitness.  Luke doesn't declare that he relied on anything other than eyewitnesses.

The fourth gospel expresses an interest in authorship, its own authorship with the implication of concern about authorship more widely (John 21:24).

Which justifies drawing conclusions about the fact that none of the synoptic authors express any such concern.  You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  You cannot simply say John's interest in authorship shows his objectivity, while the synoptic authors who do less can be equally objective.

Ferguson raises doubts about whether Papias was discussing the authorship of the canonical gospels or the authorship of other documents instead, but there was a concern about authorship of gospels or similar documents either way.

That's hardly relevant; the point is that there are good arguments for saying Papias wasn't testifying to the Matthean authorship of what we today call canonical Greek Matthew.

And Papias cited an earlier source (the elder, probably the apostle John), who likewise was interested in authorship issues.

Hearsay within hearsay, which is probably why most conservative Christian scholars refrain from pushing Matthew's authorship and allow liberality.

The same can be said about the authorship concerns expressed in the dispute between Marcionism and Christian orthodoxy. I've cited other sources in the same timeframe, prior to the late second century, with similar authorship interests.

Your general comments about authorship interest from the earliest period do a wonderful job of increasing the probability that other early gospels that didn't make it into the canon (GoH, Thomas) were authentically authored by apostles.  When you start in with your predictable trifling about how the non-canonical gospels are "different" and "worse", we yawn and wonder how much longer we'll have to wait for you to recognize that apostolic gospel authorship doesn't really mean anything if skepticism of Jesus' resurrection can shown reasonable.

Demolishing Triablogue: The Weakness Of The Evidence For Matthew's Authorship

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer at Triablogue entitled

The Strength Of The Evidence For Matthew's Authorship

Friday, December 20, 2019

If the gospel attributed to Matthew was written by him, then that's a good line of evidence for the historicity of what he reports about Jesus' childhood.

Which is like saying an eyewitness report is good evidence for the historicity of some alleged event.     That's not "good", that's merely "slightly better than hearsay".

But since objections to the arguments for Jesus' resurrection are weighty and powerful, it hardly matters whether Jesus was the son of God.  Failure is failure, no matter how bright your clothes are.  And failure justifies others to draw certain conclusions.

Matthew's gospel and other early sources (e.g., Acts 1:13-14) put the apostle in contact with people who knew a lot about Jesus' background, such as Jesus himself, his mother, his brothers, and the people of Nazareth.

And Jesus' own immediate family members did not find his miracles the least bit compelling. Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5.  I've seen how you Triablogue types jump around like fleas on a dog trying to "account for" these verses while trifling that Jesus' miracles were still real.  Keep dreaming.

You think the author of Mark got his material from Peter, who was associated with Mary and other apostles, yet Mark attributes no miracles to Jesus' birth.  Whatever people were wondering about in Mark 6:3, that verse doesn't equal "Jesus was magically conceived."  But Jason Engwer specializes in squeezing blood out of turnips.  So Mark's disinterest in a birth of Jesus that you think was legitimately miraculous and which also testified in favor of Mark's own theme of Jesus as Son of God, is YOUR problem.

What you aren't going to do is prove the unreasonableness of the skeptic who cites Mark's silence on the virgin birth as a justification to accuse Matthew and Luke of lying.

But even conservative scholars don't say much about the evidence for Matthean authorship of the gospel,

Probably because they recognize a trap when they see it.  After all, being conservatives, they would more than likely make a big deal out of Matthew's authorship if they thought doing so could come across as serious argument.

and the few arguments they bring forward don't get developed much.

Probably because they recognize that the evidence in their favor is not very strong and easily falsifiable.  Papias this, logia that, and let's move on.

Here's a collection of articles on the evidence for Matthew's authorship.

I'll start a new blog piece to answer those.

Why Triablogue's endlessly trifling bullshit cannot possibly matter

Triablogue's Jason Engwer puts a shitload of effort into trying to prove that the Enfield Poltergeist was real.

He does this so that he can then prove atheism wrong.

But as I've noted before, my skepticism of Jesus' resurrection renders the alleged wrongness of atheism irrelevant.

Even supposing atheism is wrong, that doesn't mean "atheist is in trouble with the Christian god".

All it means is that a god exists.

Since 

a) the apostle Paul said Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would turn Christians into false witnesses who are still in their sins (1st Cor. 15:15), and

b) I continue beating down the way Engwer, Hays, Licona, Habermas and W.L. Craig interpret the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, 

it really doesn't matter if a god exists, the fact that I am reasonable to deduce this god is not the Christian god creates the stark possibility that the Christians are in just as much trouble with this god for misrepresenting him, as they think atheists are for denying his basic existence.

Before you can leap from "you are wrong" to "you are unreasonable", you have to show that the being wrong is more likely to lead to some type of disaster.  But if the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is as unpersuasive and weak as I claim, the best the apologists could possibly be left with is that there is some "god" out there, so that atheists remain wrong even if it be reasonable to deny Jesus rose from the dead.

At that point, whether that god even cares whether anybody misrepresents him or denies him, would be forever open to blind speculation, except for trifling Christians who would automatically default to the OT god upon discovery that the NT is bullshit.

But according to Deut. 13, even when the prophet does a real miracle, he STILL might be leading people into error, and therefore, such miracle-worker would STILL suffer the wrath of this god.  

That is, according to the OT principle, Jesus' miracle of rising from the dead does NOT end the discussion of whether the OT god approves of him.  But I have yet to see any Christian argument that the OT YHWH approves of Jesus, they rather think his resurrection miracle is the end of the debate.

They also blindly insist that because Jesus uses the divine title, he IS YHWH, a contention that has kept the church divided since even before the Council of Nicaea.

Therefore, the Christians are getting precisely nowhere by wasting such enormous amounts of time trying to prove atheism wrong, or that a spiritual dimension exists, or that physicalism is false.  Atheists don't start becoming unreasonable unless their being in the wrong can be proven to have likely disastrous consequences.  Sure, I might be wrong to say Japan is located in Australia, but unless you could show that this wrongness will likely lead to harmful effects on myself, you are never going to "prove" that I "should" care about being wrong.  

I'm pretty sure that Bigfoot is a hoax and was never anything more than a fairy tale and a man in a monkey suit...but why should I care if that is wrong and the creature is a genuine cryptid?    Does Bigfoot denial have a history of causing skeptics to get the flu more often than the average person?

Because the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is poor, and because the NT doctrine of eternal conscious torment in the afterworld contradicts the OT concept of god's justice, the atheist has no reason to 'worry' about atheism being 'wrong', at worst they will experience nothing more than permanent extinction of consciousness, a fate they already accept.  Pissing off god is about as fearful as pissing off a puppy.

Therefore, trying to prove atheism is wrong is a fruitlessly and purely academic waste of time (i.e., has no serious application to anybody's actual life beyond mere idle intellectual curiosity, and is equal to trying to prove somebody else wrong about whether the Trojan War ever happened).

There's a possibility that angry space aliens will zap you...but how much effort should an atheist put into protecting herself from such disaster?  Maybe always wear a radar-deflecting hat?

There's a possibility that a wild animal will kill the atheist after they walk in the front door of their house, but how much effort should the atheist put into protecting herself from such possible disaster?  Maybe peek in every window before going in the house, or installing motion detectors?  FUCK YOU.

There's a possibility some "god" will roast atheists alive in hell forever, but how much effort should the atheist put into protecting herself from such disaster?  Maybe spend the next 50 years trying to figure out which view of God is correct so they don't end up joining the wrong cult and end up making things worse for themselves by adding the sin of heresy to their existing sin of unbelief?  FUCK YOU.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  in light of god's hiddenness on the one hand, and the Christian apologist's mouthiness on the other, it appears Christian apologists love atheists more than their own god does.  Irony never sucked quite as much as that.

James Patrick Holding doesn't specialize in a Christian's "authority"

In the comment section to one of James Patrick Holding's videos, somebody brought up an unrelated question that one would figure Mr. Holding would be able to provide some guidance on:

Primitive Cash2 weeks ago (edited)I’ve an unrelated question about Priesthood authority in this day vs in the times of the New Testament: Is it relevant to have authority from God in this age? If so, How does one know without question that a faith genuinely has said authority? I was LDS, and I once believed I had authority from Him to heal the sick, give blessings, and cast out demons, but I have found evidence that makes such assertions questionable at best.
tektontv2 weeks agoThat kind of question is not my bailiwick. Anyone else want to try?
Logician_Bones1 week agoWell, not sure what you mean by "authority" but the last bit reminds me of the findings I've mentioned before on here reported through CMI re: Alien Intrusion with modern evidence that Christians who call on Jesus to stop experiences faked by demons are indeed freed from the experience (evidently demons masquerading as alien abductors). The Bible does suggest this sort of thing. I don't see much else if you mean in the miraculous category and have talked about why miracles are normally reserved for credentialing authorship of new Scripture and the canon is now closed. The protection from demons makes sense as possibly a nearly sole exception since demons aren't supposed to be intervening in the first place so aren't part of the normal way the world works that God normally lets happen in the fallen world so that miracles can be reserved for credentials of the Bible. This doesn't necessarily include all healings; it's only publicly proveable miracles that have to be reserved normally, but I wouldn't say "authority." We request things of God; it's up to him, since he alone is omniscient, which to actually say yes to. (And be very careful with claims that a yes answer HAS been given in the sense of miracles of intervention versus timing; most humans aren't good at judging that kind of thing.) If you mean authority in some other sense not sure but you suggested the answer yourself; go by evidence.
Primitive Cash1 week agoLogician_Bones Thank you.
Leonel Huicho1 week agoBy Authority I Guess You mean authority to Interpret Scripture, It was always something Inherited, In Earlier Judaism for Example, God allowed scribes to modify certain passages as long as their teachings weren't altered. Regarding if Certain Religious Institution has the authority, It depends on a lot of factors, But One of them that I would be on how much they hold to the teachings of Christ, The early Apostles and the early Church.
Primitive Cash1 week ago (edited)Leonel Huicho By ‘authority’, I mean having genuine access to abilities that would be seen as supernatural and therefore only accessible to God, such as spiritual healing, casting out devils, the ability to speak a language you didn’t know previously, et cetera. The LDS faith appears to exhibit many factors that reflect what is shown in the Bible, yet I see evidence that they are NOT the religion with His authority.
Primitive Cash1 week agoStrange, no one has answered my leading question about the relevancy of having God’s authority this day.

Logician_Bones6 days ago​@Primitive Cash Not sure you've defined it clearly enough to see how my answer doesn't apply to your leading question. Why would it be relevant to have access in a sense called "authority" (versus requests and there being good reasons those requests probably normally shouldn't be granted today) to miracles? I would suggest that unbiblical religious views may go for that idea because they're sharing a bit of the concept of humanism -- wanting to be gods to some extent themselves, rather than admitting we're purely created by God and he has all the "authority" in the normal sense of the word). He gives us delegated authority with constraints and consequences if we behave immorally, but not inherently for miracles; why single out miracles? The only reason I can think of is for evidential purposes, but my answer covers this already. We already have sufficient evidence from the miraculous historical support for the Bible which stands for all time and all people. We shouldn't need more more more; that's actually a kind of mental unhealthiness to constantly need something new when the old is sufficient (along the lines of what James said about failing to do what the Bible says being like a person who looks in the mirror and walks away and immediately forgets what he looks like). It probably turns into a sort of circular-reasoning trap where they are so used to pushing the supposed importance of authority for no obvious reason other than self-serving ones that then all else becomes judged by this, kind of like "sovereignty" for Calvinists or "reason" (falsely so-called) for atheists or fundamentalism for fundies. I think it's reasonable simply to ask that those claiming such things are necessary provide sound, independant support for this claim, and if they can't, then we don't really need to disprove it per se, but have no reason to accept it either. (And it should also be enough that we do have sound support for the Bible!)

Since Holding claimed the question about priesthood authority did not implicate his "bailwick" (area of expertise) he didn't comment on it.  However, we can take PrimtiveCash's concerns one point at a time and provide what would qualify as a biblically justified response.  In doing so, we'll uncover certain bases for skepticism and therefore infer the real reason Mr. Holding retreated from what is otherwise a straightforward question with biblically straightforward answers:  You start trying to 'explain' why the authority of 1st centuy christians cannot be detected among 21st century Christians, and you run the risk of convincing yourself that the NT promises are nothing but empty idealism, and are accordingly reasonably rejected by non-Christians.

Primitive Cash2 weeks ago (edited)I’ve an unrelated question about Priesthood authority in this day vs in the times of the New Testament:

That's probably why Holding backed off...you are doomed to a land of necessary subjectivity if you try to "prove" that any biblical truth about 1st century Christians is applicable to 21st century Christians.  Jesus not coming back for 2,000 years doesn't sound like "quickly".  Holding will reply that he is a preterist and thus isn't bothered by the failure of Christ to float down from the clouds in literal fashion as expected by billions of Christians today. But the one bible verse that nukes Preterism is Acts 1:11...a verse that completely forbids spiritualizing the 2nd Coming the way Preterists necessarily do:

 6 So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"
 7 He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority;
 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."
 9 And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
 10 And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.
 11 They also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven."
 12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away.   (Acts 1:6-12 NAU)

By the words "in just the same way", the angels validate the traditional Christian view that Jesus would literally float down out of the clouds "in just the same way" that he allegeldy ascended into them.  There is no way to reconcile Acts 1:11 with the spiritualized interpretation of the 2nd Coming that Preterists hold.

Anyway, back to Primitive Cash:

Is it relevant to have authority from God in this age?

As long as you believe Matthew the apostle authored the gospel now bearing his name, the answer is "yes":

First,  in Matthew 10, Jesus authorizes the original disciples to go around doing miracles, vv. 1-16.

Second, Jesus then follows up immediately with statements that apply to equally well to future generations of Christians, vv. 16-28.

Third, Jesus follows up with statements that most Christians today apply to their own modern situation vv 29-42

Fourth, the allegedly risen Christ specifies that his disciples are to take ALL the teachings they received and pass them on to future Gentile converts.  It's the part of the Great Commission most people miss:

 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matt. 28:18-20 NAU)

Since Matthew 10 is clearly part of the "all that I commanded you", this Great Commission was also telling the apostles to convey to future Gentile converts those comments Jesus made in Matthew 10...which would mean commissioning and exhorting new Gentile converts to perform miracles by the authority of God:

1 Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. (Matt. 10:1 NAU)

Since it is only dispentationalists who have any prayer of trying to delimit the "all" of Matthew 28:20, I suppose Mr. Holding will, upon reading this, suddenly discover the blessed assurance of dispensationalism, then protect his pride by the childish thing he does best...hurling insulting epithets at anybody who differs.  As if to disagree with Holding's bible bullshit placed one on the level of those who deny the existence of trees.

The gospels have more of the same.  For example, all scholars are agreed that John is the latest of the 4 gospels, which means he wrote likely around 80 a.d. when the original apostles had mostly died off, yet as long as you insist it was apostle John who wrote it, then it must have been apostle John who was encouraging just any reader to not only believe upon the basis of his words (20:31), but that Christians in future generations would do even greater miracles than Christ did:

 10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.
 11 "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.
 12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.
 13 "Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
 14 "If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.
 15 "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
 16 "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;   (Jn. 14:10-16 NAU)

If John was writing these things around 80 or 90 a.d., its pretty clear that he was assuring even the new Christians of the same decades that they could do 'greater' works than what Jesus himself did. 

Holding will try to escape the obvious falsehood of the promise by spiritualizing "greater works" and then pretend that these only refer to canonizing the NT, or successfully evangelizing Gentiles, or anything else that can easily escape positive falsification, but the immediate context requires the "greater works" to be "anything" the converts ask (v. 14).  Later NT authors did not allow any exegetical room for the possibility that god might not want to heal the person you ask god to heal:

 13 Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises.
 14 Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord;
 15 and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.
 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.   (Jas. 5:13-16 NAU)

Holding will say God's sovereign right to say "no" to such prayers is assured by other bible verses, but

a) bible inerrancy is an obviously false doctrine that not even inerrantists can agree on, despite more than 50 years of trying. Just ask Holding how stupid and obstinate people like Norman Geisler are.  Then watch him change his tune when you ask whether Mike Licona's openeness to error in the bible make him worthy of equally insulting invective.  Therefore, the doctrine does not deserve to be exalted in anybody's mind to the status of governing hermeneutic, forcing the reader to believe that the only interpretation of a bible verse that can be correct is one that can be harmonized with the rest of the bible, and;

b) because bible inerrancy is so unsettled and controversial, we can only do good things by refusing to use it as a check on the accuracy of an interpretation of a bible verse, remain open to the possibility that the NT author spoke in contradiction to something else in the bible, and demand that one's interpretation be based on the author's own assertions.  As soon as you start using outside data (bible inerrancy, social sciences, whatever) to help interpret the bile verse, you are imposing things on the text that could just as easily be wrong as right.

Therefore, we have a reasonable rational basis to say "fuck you" to bible inerrancy, reject using it as a hermeneutic, and insist that limiting ourselves to the text as much as possible is probably going to yield a more objective interpretation. Thus it cannot be unreasonable to say James intended this promise to be unqualified, and therefore, to charge him with error since the promise is obviously empty.  Therefore, we are not "ureasonable" to say that Jesus and others in the NT promised the unqualified future generations of Christians the authority to do miraculous healings, etc.  The fact that such things obviously never happen today, does not mean this interpretation is false, it means the NT authors were giving the readers empty promises. 

 Back to Primitive Cash:

If so, How does one know without question that a faith genuinely has said authority?

That's a good question since there is no particular denomination or group in the history of Christianity that can show they have any more ability than the others to fulfill Jesus' promise to effect miracle healings.

I was LDS, and I once believed I had authority from Him to heal the sick, give blessings, and cast out demons, but I have found evidence that makes such assertions questionable at best.

The dilemma here is whether Christian apologists can convincingly mitigate the failure of such biblical promises by pretending that such promises were so limited to certain early groups that the apologist can reconcile the "truth" of such promises with the obvious fact that the promises do not hold up for today's Christians.

For the fuckhead who thinks I blindly presume the biblical promise of miraculous healing never happens when I cannot possibly claim to have such extensive knowledge of world history, they are advised that I posted a direct challenge to Craig Keener to back up his claim that ANY miracle has happened within the last 100 years.  He has never responded to the challenge.  See here and here.

Then let such fuckhead Christians remember that many of their own are "cessationists" who are Christian in faith, but who insist the age of miracles died out with the apostles, and thus such Christians are no more impressed by "modern accounts of miracles"  than I am.  Richard B. Gaffin writes such an article for the Christian apologetics site "whitehoseinn", see here.  He is a Calvinist, which means he disagrees with Calvinist Steve Hays of Triablogue, who believes miracles still happen today.  Apparently, not even joining the right church and believing the right theology does anything to guard against your falling into error. 

It's almost as if there's no god guiding this bullshit, where people end up after serious bible study is determined by nothing more than their ability to learn and their circumstances.  The idea that god is "guiding" them is total dogshit.

Let's continue responding.  Next item up for bids is LogicianBones, who seems to think excess verbiage might hoodwink the more gullible into thinking he has anything to say that remotely scares off skeptics:

Logician_Bones1 week agoWell, not sure what you mean by "authority"

The right or power from God to cause miraculous healing.

but the last bit reminds me of the findings I've mentioned before on here reported through CMI re: Alien Intrusion with modern evidence that Christians who call on Jesus to stop experiences faked by demons are indeed freed from the experience (evidently demons masquerading as alien abductors).

But this avoids the real question. The issue is not whether demons take form as space aliens to divert Christians away from important subjects, but how we can know which Christians today have authority from god to perform any type of miracle. 

The Bible does suggest this sort of thing.

hence, the problem created for you and your inability to point to any miracle in the last 100 years that you think is the most impervious to falsification.  You don't dare suggest an example without running the risk of having it shoved back in your face with empirically justified contempt. 

I don't see much else if you mean in the miraculous category and have talked about why miracles are normally reserved for credentialing authorship of new Scripture and the canon is now closed.

Sorry, I've never heard of any "miracles" being done to "credential" any scripture authorship, whether the bible or otherwise, nor am I aware of any "miracle" done to demonstrate that the "canon" ever became "closed"...unless you equate mere historical happenstance and unwillingness of some of the church to expand on the canon after the 4th century, to be a "miracle"?

The protection from demons makes sense as possibly a nearly sole exception since demons aren't supposed to be intervening in the first place so aren't part of the normal way the world works that God normally lets happen in the fallen world so that miracles can be reserved for credentials of the Bible.

Hurry up and give us one modern-day miracle that you think is the most impervious to falsification.

This doesn't necessarily include all healings; it's only publicly proveable miracles that have to be reserved normally, but I wouldn't say "authority."

Oh, name a "publicly provable" miracle.

We request things of God; it's up to him, since he alone is omniscient, which to actually say yes to.

No, you simply mistake systematic theology for the Holy Spirit, and then you use the rest of the bible as the rose-colored glasses by which to interpret otherwise unqualified biblical promises that believers will do miracles.  Read James 5:15, the context does not permit reading a "but maybe God for sovereign reasons might not do a particular healing" into it.  And I already showed the reasonableness of skeptics and others to reject using bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic.  So you are stuck with an interpretation of a biblical promise in James 5 that normative and non-controversial rules of interpretation shows to be reasonable, despite the fact that the promise thus proves to be empty.  That is, the bible's assurances of how "authority" manifests itself in the life of Christians, are nothing but unrealistic idealism gone to seed.  FUCK YOU.

(And be very careful with claims that a yes answer HAS been given in the sense of miracles of intervention versus timing; most humans aren't good at judging that kind of thing.) If you mean authority in some other sense not sure but you suggested the answer yourself; go by evidence.
Primitive Cash1 week agoLogician_Bones Thank you.
Leonel Huicho1 week agoBy Authority I Guess You mean authority to Interpret Scripture, It was always something Inherited, In Earlier Judaism for Example, God allowed scribes to modify certain passages as long as their teachings weren't altered. Regarding if Certain Religious Institution has the authority, It depends on a lot of factors, But One of them that I would be on how much they hold to the teachings of Christ, The early Apostles and the early Church.

But the dichotomy between one's interpretations and the "teachings of Christ" is false, as you don't know any teaching of Christ apart from interpretation.  Fundies are constantly talking about how something in the bible doesn't need interpretation, but they are sadly mistaken, the very act of discerning what the text means, constitutes "interpretation".  Even if reading the front page of yesterdays New York Times headline involves using less controversial assumptions in the interpretive process.

Primitive Cash1 week ago (edited)Leonel Huicho By ‘authority’, I mean having genuine access to abilities that would be seen as supernatural and therefore only accessible to God, such as spiritual healing, casting out devils, the ability to speak a language you didn’t know previously, et cetera.

Thanks for clarifying.  Might be nice if the Christian believers in modern-day miracles actually produced the one they think most impervious to falsification, and accordingly stick their necks out, instead of ceaselessly hiding behind a subterfuge of methodological disagreement.  See how I steamrolled Steve Hays and his attempt to pretend that skepticism of miracles is unreasonable, here.  How does Hays keep the door open to miracles happening to day?  By using absurdly low standards of evidence, then accusing skeptics of being unreasonable when they demand that such miracle evidence meet the same level of criteria used in most criminal investigations.

The LDS faith appears to exhibit many factors that reflect what is shown in the Bible, yet I see evidence that they are NOT the religion with His authority.
Primitive Cash1 week agoStrange, no one has answered my leading question about the relevancy of having God’s authority this day.

From what I wrote above, you can see why:  They start trying to answer your question in any serious way, and a brick wall of "why is there no serious evidence for the perpetuity of any spiritual gift today" will hit them at about 184 mph.  So by pretending "that's not my bailwick" one can escape such certain embarrassment.  Now leave Mr. Holding alone so he can fly 1000 miles to give his next "bible doesn't teach a flat earth" lecture to the next group of 25 people.

Logician_Bones6 days ago​@Primitive Cash Not sure you've defined it clearly enough to see how my answer doesn't apply to your leading question. Why would it be relevant to have access in a sense called "authority" (versus requests and there being good reasons those requests probably normally shouldn't be granted today) to miracles?

Because the bible promises all believers the ability to work miracles, which means it sucks to be you, an inerrantist who never sees any contradiction between bible promises and reality.  you aren't going to make a reasonable case that spiritual gifts were restricted to the 1st century, so if they fail to manifest today, its because the bible promises otherwise are empty.

I would suggest that unbiblical religious views may go for that idea because they're sharing a bit of the concept of humanism -- wanting to be gods to some extent themselves, rather than admitting we're purely created by God and he has all the "authority" in the normal sense of the word). He gives us delegated authority with constraints and consequences if we behave immorally, but not inherently for miracles; why single out miracles?

Ahhh, you are backtracking already.  You BETTER try to think of some way to exempt the miraculous from this discussion, otherwise, you'll have to explain why modern Christians cannot produce any evidence that they ever perform any of the healings or miracles which the NT promises to all future generations of believers.

The only reason I can think of is for evidential purposes, but my answer covers this already. We already have sufficient evidence from the miraculous historical support for the Bible which stands for all time and all people.

You are also high on crack:  I've been asking apologists to hit me with whatever argument for Christianity they think the most impervious to falsification, whether historicity of Jesus' resurrection, of fulfillment of messianic prophecy, or proof of bible inerrancy, or whatever.  So far, nobody from Mr. Holding's gang has dared confront me with any such thing.  Getting their ass kicked all over hell and back probably doesn't help promote their agenda of confident dogmatism, so naturally, they bow out.  This is true also for Hays, Engwer and the fools at Triablogue, who clearly know about my challenges, but don't do jack shit about it.

We shouldn't need more more more; that's actually a kind of mental unhealthiness to constantly need something new when the old is sufficient (along the lines of what James said about failing to do what the Bible says being like a person who looks in the mirror and walks away and immediately forgets what he looks like).

Then count me out: i'm only asking for one solid pro-Christian argument that actually works.  So far, you lose.   I've already answered the Josh McDowell' bullshit, and I constantly answer Triablogue and other apologists.  If you think you have anything more powerful than they have, feel free to drop by, and let's get started with the one argument you think is most impervious to falsification.  Otherwise, take your confident rhetorical posturing and shove it up your loquacious ass.

It probably turns into a sort of circular-reasoning trap where they are so used to pushing the supposed importance of authority for no obvious reason other than self-serving ones that then all else becomes judged by this, kind of like "sovereignty" for Calvinists or "reason" (falsely so-called) for atheists or fundamentalism for fundies.

Wow, you mean even after you accept christ, there's no guarantee of being transformed into Christ's image?  Then apparently the promise of salvation is empty, since any change you made to your sinful self since you "got saved" can just as easily be explained in purely naturalistic terms. 

I think it's reasonable simply to ask that those claiming such things are necessary provide sound, independant support for this claim,

Ok, I see nothing in the present world that indicates ANY part of the NT is still valid today.  Any truths about today's Christians are easily explainable in purely naturalistic terms, which means it is reasonable for the skeptic to reject the notion that today's Christians have experienced ANY type of "miracle". For the last time, if you think that's wrong, take the one miracle you believe is most impervious to falsification, and let's get started.

and if they can't, then we don't really need to disprove it per se, but have no reason to accept it either. (And it should also be enough that we do have sound support for the Bible!)

Since you are preaching to the choir, I no more need to "refute" this than I "need" to refute the Brownsville Revival.