ONCE AGAIN! Facts in the Bible is supported by archaeology.

[joelr]

How can you say it was a myth? Was Hannibal a myth? The Seige
of Troy a myth. Don't know, I wasn't there.

Bible says the whole world was flooded in Noah's time. But the
ancient writers did not know what the world was. In Jesus day
.

Because the flood myth is a common myth passed between cultures.
They knew the "world" was the local areas at least and the myth goes back to Sumer

"
Rather than being a historical figure who was the progenitor of three races, Noah is a fictitious character found in the mythologies of a number of different cultures globally, as opposed to being limited to one area and its specific peoples. The Bible story represents a rehash of other myths, changed to revolve around these particular peoples.

Like other biblical tales, the myth of Noah is found in India, Egypt, Babylon, Sumer and other places. The fact is that there have been floods and deluge stories in many different parts of the world, including but not limited to the Middle East. In the Sumerian tale, which predated the biblical by thousands of years, the ark was built by Ziusudra; in Akkad, he was Atrakhasis, and in Babylon, Uta-Napisthim. The Greek Noah was called Deucalion, "who repopulated the earth after the waters subsided" and after the ark landed on Mt. Parnassos. The Armenian flood hero was called Xisuthros, "whose ark landed on Mt. Ararat." Noah's "history" can likewise be found in India, where there is a "tomb of Nuh" near the river Gagra in the district of Oude or Oudh, which may be related to Judea and Judah. The "ark-preserved" Indian Noah was also called "Menu."

Like Noah, the Sumero-Armenian Ziusudra/Xisuthros had three sons, including one named "Japetosthes," essentially the same as Noah's son Japheth, also related to Pra-japati or Jvapeti, son of the Indian Menu, whose other sons possessed virtually the same names as those of Noah, i.e., Shem and Ham. As Oxford University Hebrew professor George Henry Bateson Wright says in Was Israel ever in Egypt? (51):

JAPHETH - Ewald...shows, with great probability, that this was a god of the north, as Ham was of the south, once again in imitation of Hindu mythology. Moreover, the fact, that in the Armenian legend, derived from "Assyrian or Babylonian documents," the three sons of Xisuthros, who corresponds to Noah, are Zervin, Titan, and Japetosthe, is very instructive, suggesting that the unknown foreign word was retained in its original form...

"Coincidentally," it was said that the Egyptian god Osiris was shut up in his ark on the very same day that Noah was likewise so disposed, as I relate in Suns of God (90):

When Osiris's enemies pursue him, he enters into his "boat" on precisely the same date recorded of "Noah's" entrance into his ark, Athyr 17th...long before the biblical tale was invented. Noah is not a Jewish "patriarch" but a sun god, and the tale of entering and exiting the Ark signifies the sun's death and resurrection. The story of the eight passengers in a boat is an astral myth, reflecting the solar system. These eight are equivalent to the Egyptian octet of gods, who sail the ocean in a ship.

Also of interest in this quest are the words attributed to the Babylonian priest Berossus, who described the Flood, giving it a much older date:

The Babylonian Flood itself predates the biblical by about 33,000 years, which demonstrates that the two inundations do not reflect one "historical" flood. Nevertheless, the story of Xisuthras or Ziusudra, the Babylonian Flood king, matches the later biblical account of Noah in important details, a common develoipment with myths. Berossus is even recorded as stating that Ziusudra's ship landed "in the mountains of the Korduaians of Armenia," possibly the Kurdistans, located in the same area where ark-hunters have claimed to have found pieces of "Noah's ark." This story, however, is not historical, and the creation of stone "arks" or ships upon hills was more common than is realized. Moreover, the Noah tale can be found in Mexican mythology: The Mexican Noah is named Nata, while his wife is Nena. In the Indian mythology, in the reign of the
"seventh Manu," Satyavrata, the "whole earth" is said to "have been destroyed by a flood, including all mankind, who had beome corrupt." The prince and seven rishis, along with their wives, survived by entering a "spacious vessel," "by command of Vishnu...accompanied by pairs of all animals. (Acharya, Suns of God, 43-44)

Rather than having happened on Earth - a cataclysmic event for which there is no solid, scientific evidence - the story of Noah's Ark actually takes place in the heavens, as Noah and his crew of seven represent the sun, moon, earth and five inner planets. Obviously, Noah's famous "ark," which misguided souls have sought upon the earth, is a motif found in other myths, representing the arc-shaped lower quarter of the moon."
D.M. Murdock

 

[joelr]

We say, ie "The Gospel according to Mark"
note, "according"
each writer saw Jesus in a different light,
ie as our elder brother, as fulfillment of
scripture, as the Messiah etc..
Each was drawing on their memory of
the man who changed the face of Western
history.

Each gospel was copied from Mark. There are passages of Greek including historical mistakes and other errors copied verbatim.
Matthew and Luke share some unique passages verbatim so one of those was copying some parts.
Each new gospel story added different elements and attempted to make the story more and more fantastic.
Marc just wanted to use the fiction to teach some parables about the new Israel and update the Moses and Elija/Elisha story for a younger generation.

Marks theme throughout is the "least shall be first" Even at the end he has women at the tomb so the unexpected or "least" will tell the story.
His stories revolve around traditional role-reversal.

It only changed Western history because it was forced on people and all counter information and opposing cults were eventually destroyed.

When Rome adopted Christianity as the state religion it was 4% of Rome.
Hardly a "revolutionary movement". It was just a small cult but it had churches set up and was making money.
After Nicea it became the law and was forced militantly on people. Once the Roman Catholic Church came into power there was a systematic wiping out of anything outside of the canon.

Luckily the Nag Hamandi survived in a cave which gives us a look into early Christianity. What we think of as orthodox were bishops who wanted power - only they could teach and read scripture, they wanted a system of priests, bishops who would interpret scripture.
The other half were different groups, some said the resurrection was an obvious metaphor and not real among many other belief systems.
We do not know what the first official canon was (Marcionites) because their scripture was destroyed.

But the idea that the 4 gospels are actually people writing down events is hilarious. Besides that it's written in mythic structure and copied from Mark, there were many wildly different versions of Jesus being worshipped.
The power hungry bishops won out, Ignacieus established a canon that matched their needs for a power structure.
Elaine Pagels has a good book about this period of Christianity called the Lost Gospels.

 

[PruePhillip]

But the idea that the 4 gospels are actually people writing down events is hilarious. Besides that it's written in mythic structure and copied from Mark, there were many wildly different versions of Jesus being worshipped.
The power hungry bishops won out, Ignacieus established a canon that matched their needs for a power structure.
Elaine Pagels has a good book about this period of Christianity called the Lost Gospels.

Whenever you want to know something as contentious and important
as details about the bible then it's good to look at material from both
pro and anti-Christian scholarship. Or, "minimalists" and "maximalists."

So you would read this
anti - the earliest surviving NT manuscript comes from the 2nd Century AD.
pro - scripture writers did not record Nero's persecution and the destruction
of the temple. Acts cuts off about 64 AD.

I just read both now in looking up Matthew's Gospel. Matthew would have
used a form of writing called tachygraphy. One account I read suggests
his Gospel shows signs of this legal shorthand - it being written originally
in Hebrew, not Greek.
Its clear that Mark quoted Luke in the Sermon on the Mount. And Luke
ceased writing suddenly in 64AD.

We know the dates of Paul's missions quite well.
By the time of the rise of the Roman Catholic Church the NT was already
established as cannon. The Catholics wrote their own scripture and made
their own saints, but there's no evidence they tampered with the cannon.
Certainly this is why Catholics are not really encouraged to read the bible:
it doesn't support their position on anything that well.

 

[gnostic]

I just read both now in looking up Matthew's Gospel. Matthew would have
used a form of writing called tachygraphy. One account I read suggests his Gospel shows signs of this legal shorthand - it being written originally in Hebrew, not Greek

You are basing your claim that the gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew on a very old church tradition, but the evidences are not there.

None of the evidences of early fragments found and survived to this day, were written in Hebrew. Every single ones of them in Greek.

Now, unless you can present a text in Hebrew dated to the 1st century, that are clearly written, edited or copied from the gospel of Matthew, then you are merely making baseless claim of Hebrew-written Matthew’s.

Whoever originally wrote the four gospels, they were clearly all written in Greek, not Hebrew.

Second. Some of the (OT) quotes of the gospel (of Matthew) clearly come from the Greek Septuagint, eg Matthew 1:23 from the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14.

If the Matthew’s gospel was written in Hebrew, then why did the author used a Greek source(eg Septuagint) instead of Hebrew sources?

You wouldn’t write the gospel in one language (eg hypothetically Matthew), but quote some passages (eg hypothetically Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc) from another language.

Although it is clear certain groups of people were still writing in Hebrew (eg the scribes who wrote Dead Sea Scrolls and stored them in the Qumran caves, from 3rd century BCE to 2nd century CE), Hebrew was no longer a default spoken and written language used by the majority of Jews living in the 1st century CE. The general populace of Jews use, spoke and wrote in either Aramaic or Greek, or bilingually both.

 

[gnostic]

We know the dates of Paul's missions quite well.

Most of his epistles were written during the 50s.

But of all the epistles that were associated with Paul, only some of them were authentically Paul’s.

The ones that we know that are written by Paul, are Romans, both Corinthians, Galatians and only the 1st Thessalonians. The rest, may or may not have his name, but he wasn’t the author of these disputed letters.

And the letters by Peter and John are also attributions, not actual authorship by these letters.

For instance, 1 Peter sounds like one who received formal education in rhetoric, which is highly doubtful, especially if Peter was really a fisherman from Galilee. And 2 Peter seemed to be written by a different person to that of 1 Peter, as well as appearing to have some familiarity to Gnostic concept.

If this is true, then 2 Peter appeared to be written between 120 and 160 CE, while 1 Peter seemed to be written between 80 and 100 CE. The 1st letter indicated that persecution was widespread, but that would only true if 1 Peter was written some times during the Domitian’s reign from 81 to 96 CE.

 

[joelr]

Whenever you want to know something as contentious and important
as details about the bible then it's good to look at material from both
pro and anti-Christian scholarship. Or, "minimalists" and "maximalists."

No you don't want any of that. You want PhD scholarship from people specializing on biblical historicity.
The jump just from Masters to PhD is 4 years of meticulously learning how to vette sources as reliable or not.

So you would read this
anti - the earliest surviving NT manuscript comes from the 2nd Century AD.
pro - scripture writers did not record Nero's persecution and the destruction
of the temple. Acts cuts off about 64 AD.

What scholarship is almost entirely in agreement on is the gospels came after the Jewish war. Based on average lifetimes there were no eyewitnesses still alive. Even many fundamentalists agree with this.
All peer reviewed references say this - The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, any standard reference.

I just read both now in looking up Matthew's Gospel. Matthew would have
used a form of writing called tachygraphy. One account I read suggests
his Gospel shows signs of this legal shorthand - it being written originally
in Hebrew, not Greek.
Its clear that Mark quoted Luke in the Sermon on the Mount. And Luke
ceased writing suddenly in 64AD.

.

I know that theory.
Doesn't make sense because there are pages and pages of verbatim Greek words between Mark and Matthew.
They didn't just accidentally write the same words.
These were translations, in history if 2 translations have the same words they were copied. There is no other way for that to happen. This would not happen if one was translated from Hebrew.

The parts that are identical across Mark Matthew and Luke are far to exact to not have been copied from each other.

Eventually Matthew veers off into new fiction which creates the contradictions.


at 32:19 Dr Rhodes brings up that Hebrew theory

Sermon in the mount is a literary piece created from the Greek OT, The Septuagint.
Luke, as I pointed numerous examples was copying much material from the Kings narrative.

 

[PruePhillip]

No you don't want any of that. You want PhD scholarship from people specializing on biblical historicity.
The jump just from Masters to PhD is 4 years of meticulously learning how to vette sources as reliable or not.

And what happens when one PhD says camels were not domesticated
in the days when Abraham's family was said to employ them. And another
PhD says camels were domesticated a thousand years before Abraham?
Maximalists and Minimalists are all PhD's I would presume.

 

[PruePhillip]

What scholarship is almost entirely in agreement on is the gospels came after the Jewish war. Based on average lifetimes there were no eyewitnesses still alive. Even many fundamentalists agree with this.

I can tell you one author could have been pre-war and post-war - John the Apostle.
I suspect his Gospel was written at the time it happened. It's just about half a dozen
small stories but with high levels of detail. But his Revelations was likely written at
the end of the First Century.
Paul, Peter and Luke, the author of Acts, were all gone by AD 64. The war broke out
two years after this.
Remember too, there were three wars - the AD70 one was the first.

 

[PruePhillip]

Sermon in the mount is a literary piece created from the Greek OT, The Septuagint.
Luke, as I pointed numerous examples was copying much material from the Kings narrative.

No, Luke didn't need to copy anything (though he did, he never met
Jesus and his Gospel is a research effort)
Jesus "copied" (actually quoted) when he came to fulfill all the law of
the Old Testament.
Jesus would say "You have heard... but I say unto you..." and then
he would repeat what was in the Old Testament.

Matthew 5: 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.
But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Proverbs "If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is
thirsty,give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his
head, and the Lord will reward you."

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Pontius Pilate’s ring may have been discovered at ancient biblical fortress

Just another nail that keeps appearing again and again.

It's amazing, to me, how the information in the Gospels and letters are supported by facts that are discovered.

Marvel Comics mentions a real US president and Manhattan.
Therefor Spiderman exists. I bet there's a Peter Parker living in New York.

 

[Kenny]

Marvel Comics mentions a real US president and Manhattan.
Therefor Spiderman exists. I bet there's a Peter Parker living in New York.

LOL...

The National Enquirer TRUELY reported that

2008: John Edwards and Rielle Hunter Scandal.

John Edwards was once a promising vice-presidential candidate and devoted husband and father. Then, the National Enquirer reported that he had a mistress, Rielle Hunter, and a secret love child.

The story turned out to be true, ruining Edwards' career and earning the Enquirer a Pulitzer nomination.


So, obviously, everything the National Enquirer reports is true.

When is reality actually real?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

LOL...

The National Enquirer TRUELY reported that

2008: John Edwards and Rielle Hunter Scandal.

John Edwards was once a promising vice-presidential candidate and devoted husband and father. Then, the National Enquirer reported that he had a mistress, Rielle Hunter, and a secret love child.

The story turned out to be true, ruining Edwards' career and earning the Enquirer a Pulitzer nomination.


So, obviously, everything the National Enquirer reports is true.

When is reality actually real?

Gratz on completely missing the point.


That point being: obviously the bible is going to be mentioning real places and people. Some of them contemporary.

None of this lends any support or credibility whatsoever to the extra-ordinary and supernatural claims of the bible.

If tomorrow you prove conclusively through extra-biblical evidence that Pontius Pilates was everything the bible claims, it would only prove that Pontius Pilates was real. It would not prove that Mozes talked to a burning bush. It wouldn't lend any support at all to the claim that Jesus performed miracles. It wouldn't lend any support at all to anything other then Pontius Pilates being an actual historical figure of that time.

In exactly the same way that Marvel Comics mentioning real places and people, doesn't lend any support at all to the idea that Peter Parker is actually Spiderman. And I'm quite confident that among the millions of citizens of New York, several of them will be named Peter Parker.

 

[Erik Nelson]

Gnostic wrote………In the gospel of Matthew, its tree started with Abraham, but in the Luke gospel, it goes alway back to Adam and to God. Plus, both trees of Joseph, showed that Joseph have different fathers, with 2 different lines Joseph to David, and those lines with Matthew’s line having go back 27 generations, while Luke’s genealogy has 42 generations.

The Anointed……..I realise that being a atheist, you are not conversant with the scriptures that in your ignorance you attack, but the genealogy of Joseph the son of Jacob from the tribe of Judah, as seen in Matthew, is not the genealogy of Jesus, but of Joseph the son of Jacob, who married the already pregnant Mary, thereby becoming the step father of Jesus, having no genetic connection to the child at all.

The genealogy as recorded in Luke, is that of Joseph the son of Heli [Alexander Helios III] from the tribe of Levi. Two different men by the name Joseph, which name was as common in those days as it is today.

Gnostic wrote………Mary’s father was never mentioned. And the first time, Christians given the Mary-Heli connection was the early 4th century Eusebius. Did Eusebius have any literary record that explicitly says Heli was really Mary’s father, not Joseph’s father?

The answer to that is, a “No”. Eusebius used fabricated excuses, not any lost record of Mary’s line to David.

The Anointed……….It was Luke the companion of Paul, who in the 1st century before the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of Herod’s temple by the Romans, wrote that Heli was definitely the father of Joseph ben Heli, the biological father of Jesus.

Alexander Helios or Heli, was a descendant of Nathan the prophet, the son of Bathsheba from the tribe of Levi, who was adopted by King David, and Heli had a son by the name Joseph, and Heli later married Hanna the sister of Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, and aunty of Mary, and Heli is the father to both Joseph and Mary by two different women.

Gnostic wrote………Beside that, Mary in the gospel of Luke, made it very explicit that she was related to Elizabeth (Luke 1:36), the mother of John the Baptist, and that Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron (1:5).

Which would mean Mary was most likely a descendant of Aaron too, not to David or to Judah. Joseph has been referred to as “son of David”, but Mary was never called “daughter of David”. And the story of travel to Bethlehem, stated that Joseph was of the line of David, not Mary.

The Anointed…….. Hanna, the mother of Mary, was the daughter of Yehoshua/Jesus III, the Levite, who was the high priest in Jerusalem from 36 to 23 BC and is believed to have been murdered at the orders of Herod the Great.

Jehoshua the high priest in Jerusalem and his wife Phanuel of the tribe of Asher, were the parents of Hanna, the sister of Elizabeth, who gave birth to John the Baptist at a very advanced age, and Hanna/Anna, was the aged grandmother of Jesus.

Gnostic wrote………As I said, the whole Mary being daughter of Heli was made up, with Eusebius first coming up with this idea, but he has nothing to verify his claim about Mary’s alleged line, let alone the identity of her parent.

The Anointed……. From “The Ancestors of Jesus in First and Second Century Judea BCE”
By Robert Mock M.D.
December 2007.
Book One
Chapter Two we learn that this young maiden, Miriam, was a child of sorrow. Her father, Heli, a Davidic and Hasmonean prince, called Alexander Helios III, was apparently executed, in the world where many Davidian aspirants, as the “young lions of Judah”, were eliminated by the cruel and tyrannical King Herod the Great., Etc.

A son of the famous Boethus family of seven sons, Mary’s great-great-great grandfather, arrived into Jewish history as one of the giants of the priests of the House of Zadok. The High Priest Hananeel (Ananelus) the Egyptian/Jew was privileged to sacrifice one of the nine red heifers before the temple of Herod was destroyed in 70 AD.

The great grandfather of the biblical Jesus was Yehoshua/Jesus III, who was the high priest in Jerusalem from 36 to 23 BC and is believed to have been murdered at the orders of Herod the Great. The sonless Yehoshua, had three daughters, Joanna, Elizabeth and Anna/Hanna.

Knowing that his Zadokian lineage would become extinct unless his daughters were placed with future husbands according to the Torah, he married them off to chosen husbands.

Joanna, was betrothed to Joachim from the non-royal genetic lineage of David. The second daughter of Yehoshua III, was Elizabeth. This was the Elizabeth, who, at a very advanced age was to become the mother of John the Baptist in 7 BC, a year before the birth of Jesus and some 16 years after the death of her father in 23 BC, and she was betrothed to a Levite priest by the name Zacharias of the priestly course of Abijah.

The young Davidian prince Heli, [Alexander Helios III] was chosen by Yehoshua/Jesus III the high priest in Jerusalem, as the candidate to marry his daughter Hanna/Anna.

Hanna/Anna, the third daughter, was betrothed to Alexander Helios (Heli) a young Macedonian Jew, of the tribe of Judah through Nathan the Levite, who was the stepson of King David.

Gnostic wrote………But the problem isn’t just with Matthew and Luke. There is also the problem with the gospel of Matthew when you compared the lines of 1 & 2 Kings (OT), in which the the gospels are missing 4 generations. I would guess that 3 of omitted names (Ahaziah, Joash & Amaziah) were made in the gospel, because the author want to use the magic number “14 generations”.

The Anointed……… Ahaziah was the only son of Ahab and Jezebel, and was not in the line of descent from King David. Ahaziah died childless. His sister, ‘Athaliah’ had married Joram/Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, and Joram the son-in-law to Ahab, ruled Israel after the death of his brother-in-law for four years until the death of his father Jehoshaphat the King of Judah, in the beginning of his fifth year as King of Israel, he then ruled both Israel and Judah for eight years.

Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, who married Athaliah the daughter of Ahab, is recorded in the genealogy of Matthew.

Athaliah named their firstborn son after her dead brother ‘Ahaziah,’ and after ruling both Israel and Judah for 12 years, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, set his son ‘Ahaziah’ [The Grandson of Ahab and Jezebel] as King of Judah. This ‘Ahaziah’ [The Grandson of Ahab and Jezebel] is not recorded in Matthew.

Joash, the son of Ahaziah was the great grandson of Ahab and Jezebel, his name is also missing in Matthew 1.

Amaziah, the son of Joash, was the great- great grandson of Ahab and Jezebel. Amaziah, the father of Uzziah, is also missing from the genealogy as recorded in Matthew.

Matthew has Jehoshaphat, his son Jehoram……3 descendants of Ahab missing……then Uzziah the fourth generation from Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, as descendants of King David.

Joram and Jehoram- The Aleph-Tav Project

you can save yourself a lot of time and simply scroll down to the summary at the very bottom of the page. But the author argues like you do that Jorum Son of Josephat was the same as Jorum, Son of Ahab

I ask you In addition to please observe that all of the Kings of Israel and Judah. reign at almost exactly the same time with The exact same names all the way down until the reign of Jeroboam, the second. Offer that there was much more of an overlap in kingship, then many are want to. Consider.

 

[joelr]

No, Luke didn't need to copy anything (though he did, he never met
Jesus and his Gospel is a research effort)
Jesus "copied" (actually quoted) when he came to fulfill all the law of
the Old Testament.
Jesus would say "You have heard... but I say unto you..." and then
he would repeat what was in the Old Testament.

Matthew 5: 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil.
But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Proverbs "If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is
thirsty,give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his
head, and the Lord will reward you."

He didn't "need" to but he did. I already posted links to some of the places where Luke copies OT stories and uses them to write the gospel fiction.

22:47
23:07

 

[joelr]

And what happens when one PhD says camels were not domesticated
in the days when Abraham's family was said to employ them. And another
PhD says camels were domesticated a thousand years before Abraham?
Maximalists and Minimalists are all PhD's I would presume.

Then they are not sure when camels were domesticated.
The historicity field has long ago however reached consensus that the supernatural aspects of all religions are mythology. That isn't even a question.
The few PhD who are fundamentalist get their moments too, I've listened to fundamentalist debates. They lose in a serious way.
This is basically what ALWAYS happens:

Fundamentalist - "it says in the gospels that..."

Historian - "The gospels are not reliable as history because....."

Fundamentalist - "the gospels say...."

the end

 

[joelr]

I can tell you one author could have been pre-war and post-war - John the Apostle.
I suspect his Gospel was written at the time it happened. It's just about half a dozen
small stories but with high levels of detail. But his Revelations was likely written at
the end of the First Century.
Paul, Peter and Luke, the author of Acts, were all gone by AD 64. The war broke out
two years after this.
Remember too, there were three wars - the AD70 one was the first.

Oh C'mon, even Wiki knows better than that?

The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70,[10] Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90,[11] and John AD 90–110.[12] Despite the traditional ascriptions all four are anonymous, and none were written by eyewitnesses.[13] Like the rest of the New Testament, they were written in Greek.[14]
But we know there are pages and pages of verbatim Greek, including grammatical errors copied exactly among all gospels starting with Mark.
So there was either a Q gospel (source) or Mark was used as a template.
John is not the original, it's been edited and sections have been moved around. There are sequence problems that the editor didn't fix.
Again Carrier mentions this at 44:00

recently listened to this guy, pretty interesting PhD:

Wiki-
"They are also composed in Koine Greek and the majority of Mark and roughly half of Matthew and Luke coincide in content, in much the same sequence, often nearly verbatim."

 

[joelr]

Gratz on completely missing the point.


That point being: obviously the bible is going to be mentioning real places and people. Some of them contemporary.

None of this lends any support or credibility whatsoever to the extra-ordinary and supernatural claims of the bible.

If tomorrow you prove conclusively through extra-biblical evidence that Pontius Pilates was everything the bible claims, it would only prove that Pontius Pilates was real. It would not prove that Mozes talked to a burning bush. It wouldn't lend any support at all to the claim that Jesus performed miracles. It wouldn't lend any support at all to anything other then Pontius Pilates being an actual historical figure of that time.

In exactly the same way that Marvel Comics mentioning real places and people, doesn't lend any support at all to the idea that Peter Parker is actually Spiderman. And I'm quite confident that among the millions of citizens of New York, several of them will be named Peter Parker.

Not only modern fiction but most mythologies contained reference to real life people and events.

The Trojan War, fought between Greeks and the defenders of the city of Troy in Anatolia sometime in the late Bronze Age, has grabbed the imagination for millennia. A conflict between Mycenaeans and Hittites may well have occurred, but its representation in epic literature such as Homer’s Iliad is almost certainly more myth than reality. Nevertheless, it has defined and shaped the way ancient Greek culture has been viewed right up to the 21st century CE.

 

[gnostic]

John is not the original, it's been edited and sections have been moved around. There are sequence problems that the editor didn't fix.

Not only that.

It would seem that some sections were written at different times, so most likely by different authors, but in either case the author isn't the apostle John, as most church traditions claimed.