Byron wrote:Ichthus77 wrote:(oh, hey Byron--howdy! this is for you, too...)
Howdy!
It smacks of authenticity.
A common source isn't authenticity.
The 40-odd years between Jesus' execution and the authoring of G. Mark is more than enough time for inaccuracies to enter the narrative, inaccuracies transmitted, via G.Mark/Q/other sayings trad., through John and the synoptics.
If, for the sake of argument, these alleged " 'internal' coincidences" do somehow flag authenticity: so what? I don't doubt the existence of a historical Jesus. All this "authenticity" would show is that authors writing a generation after Jesus died worked history into their theological accounts. Getting
some details right doesn't mean they got
all details right.
This does nothing to advance Christianity's theological claims. History isn't theology.
Byron (like Shrunk...a real role-model) [...] I am resigning from this discussion.
I always equate that period to a long game of
telephone. 40-odd years of nothing but hearsay upon hearsay, perpetuated through the oral traditions of primitive, credulous, scared, naive fallible primates, thousands of them, who needed something/someone to believe in and find comfort in.
Also, it seems to me that the OP is
conveniently, or perhaps honestly, forgetting about the
contradictions in the gospels, and focuses only on the similarities, in order to claim that it is somehow a divine coincidence that somehow proves the validity of that Compilation of the Credulous.
But, yeah. Let's do imagine some conversations and motivations, but expand the time-line. Imagine what these stories would have read like if that 40-odd year gap had been a whole century, or several. All that time, with stories being passed on by people, some with agendas, some well-intentioned.
There is a quote from the movie,
The Man From Earth, that aptly describes that time-period. I just love it!
"History hates a vacuum. Improvisation, some of it very sincere, fills the gaps. It would have been easy to falsify a past back then. A few words, credulity. Time would do the rest." That there are similarities between the gospels, and many details that complement each-other, is no surprise. Neither is that there are contradictions, parts that don't complement each other or curiously/tellingly enough, omit (important) parts. It comes as no surprise given the authors. Not just the 4 gospel writers, but all the Bronze-Age, primitive, credulous, naive, fearful, ignorant peasants whose oral tradition kept these alleged miracles afloat long enough for four different people, with four different agendas, to record them, add to them their own views, and those from their own unsurprisingly unnamed sources, and practically piggy-back their story off of each other. As they had to do, in order to have something to satiate their and the people's appetite for something divine, something to believe in, to find comfort and purpose in, something to bow down before and glorify, as was, and still is, many people's nature.
Simple as that.
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