The Third Nova Terra of Scrin wrote:Farnhamia wrote:What can you test? That the Roman Empire existed and controlled Judea at the time Jesus is supposed to have lived? No one's disputing that. That the Gospels get the general environment of Jesus' ministry correct? No one's disputing that. Miracles and rising from the dead, now, those are different things.
It is not certain that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the disciple of that name. The book itself has no author's name in it, and "Matthew" was only added in the century after it was written. The Gospel of John says it was composed from testimony of "the disciple whom Jesus loved" but doesn't name him. The identification of the author of that gospel with the disciple John originates more than half a century after Jesus' death. And again, all the writings about Jesus come directly from his followers or from non-Christians writing about Christians and what they believed. There are no documents saying "On the 7th day before the Kalends of October a man called Iesus, from Nazareth in the Tetrarchy of Herod Antipas was arraigned before the Procurator Pontius Pilatus ..."
Look, believe what you like but don't tell me there is scientific evidence for it when there isn't.
Just because the miracles and the resurrection seem so odd dosen't mean they can be true.
The authorship of the Gospels are well-established fact.
Matthew did wrote Matthew-http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/mattdef.php
And John did wrote John- http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/johndef.php
There is well established evidence that the Matthew and John was indeed authored by the authors with the same names.
But, the amount of secular sources testifying Jesus is noteworthy, 4 sources, of course from the Bible and several secular sources. There is actually no doubt among modern scholars that Jesus existed.
Actually, the general scholarly agreement is that the books of the gospel were written well after the supposed events unfolded. The gospel authors are anonymous and most scholars disagree that they were written by the disciples. There is a bit of debate as to which came first. Mark is supposedly written during the time of Nero's persecution of the Christians, at least 30 years after the supposed events took place.
