For your thesis to work these legends would have had to be developed within 20-30 years of the original events, as Mark was written by AD 50-60. Is that enough time?
Who knows? Are you saying it would be more âmiraculousâ for outlandish rumours to spread and be accepted as fact among a group of religious fanatics over that period of time, than for a guy to be dead and come back to life? If so, please spell out how you figured this out.
Thatâs not much of an answer.
Let me try explain more clearly the question we are trying to resolve:
Consider two possible scenarios:
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A group of three people witness a series of events, and later independently write individual accounts of these events.
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In a subculture of a society a number of stories develop about a guy who lived a few decades earlier. It is not possible to verify whether these stories are true, but many people believe them to be. A group of three people who have lived within this culture and have heard these stories independently decide to write them down in order to have a permanent record of them.
Please explain why âundesigned coincidencesâ could only happen in #1 and not #2, because I canât see it.
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It was concise and accurate. 
The details irrelevant to the main points of the stories get dropped in retellings. The fact, for instance, that green grass is mentioned, since it is not important to the thrust of the story (it was not included in the synoptics), would likely not have been kept through multiple retellings. That is good evidence that the person giving the account is not distantly removed from the event, as opposed to someone who, decades later, just decides to write it down after having heard stories as they were passed on through several different people. The veracity of the accounts is further supported by the multiplicity of these kinds of clues.
@Michael_Callen, @jongarvey, @dga471, @structureoftruth, @swamidass: care to add anything?
I more than alluded to the essence of the problem we are encountering here in the OP:
A certified denialist would not find it compelling, though, âŠ
Hidden In Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts adds another layer of confirmation of validity to the historical accuracy of the Gospels. Not in itself compelling to the antitheist, of course, because it does refer to some things that are a priori excluded as even being possible by the aforementionedâs worldview, even if they are historically accurate and trueâŠ
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If the version of the story they had all heard had green grass included, there is no reason they would not have included it when they wrote it down. Right?
Not necessarily, in fact likely not. What has green grass to do with the thrust of the story? Is it a memorable part of the account? (Answer: not so much.) And youâre not accounting for the plentitude of similar examples, picking on just one.
Slight differences in the observed details between the stories in the gospels (or any other testimony) make them more likely to be true accounts of first hand witnesses than if they all matched exactly.
If these accounts about the same event had been circulating for decades, I would expect them to have melded into one.
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It seems to me your âsolutionâ poses more problems than it solves. We have a âmega-proto-gospelâ that, youâre saying, contained all the miraculous elements, as well as all the historical and geographical detail, contained in the 4 gospels that were derived from it.
Whether that was a written document (âSuper Qâ?) or an elaborate tradition recited, I suppose, in churches, it had to be composed by person or persons unknown in the immediate aftermath of the death of Jesus, and before the letters of Paul in the late 40s-50s, in which the supernatural element is fully developed.
This non-fraudulent but actually fictional work had to arise in the presence of witnesses to the events both sympathetic and hostile, and yet be unrefuted by the latter, and swallowed hook, line and sinker by the former, even by those who had seen the real events.
Legends usually take several generations to develop (which is one reason for the former late dating of the 4 gospels into the 2nd century), but this one appears wholecloth within Jesusâs own generation, and becomes known right across the developing churchâŠ
Eventually, 4 anonymous guys had separate goes at abbreviating this account, and picked different bits, thus allowing for variations, for âundesigned coincidences,â for accurate cultural setting and so on.
But although all these later writers had access to this super-gospel in places as far afield as Rome, Ephesus and Judaea (according to scholarly speculations of their provenance) their inferior versions completely replaced the âcommon ancestor,â of which no trace has ever been found either in manuscripts or by repute.
OK. Letâs suppose I buy that story. Behind the 4 gospels stands a lost super-gospel which replaced memories of the actual events within a couple of decades. Would you care to suggest how, who, when and where this astonishingly complete, authoritative and persuasive work was composed - and what happened to replace it with four derivative prĂ©cis by anonymous nobodies?
Hint: nobody in the two century history of textual criticism has, as far as Iâm aware, ever suggested such a bold theory.
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No, I am not. I am saying there was an oral and written tradition that existed in in many forms, and that this is what the authors of the Gospels drew on. The âundesigned coincidencesâ are merely the result of elements that tended to be in common bewteen many of these oral/written accounts.
This model has the advantage of also explaining the many major discrepancies between the synoptic gospels, such as Matthewâs zombie march, whose absence from the other Gospels is pretty much impossible to explain if they were writing of historical events they had all witnessed or for which they had access to primary sources.
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Scientology was established and spread to millions of followers all within the lifetime of L. Ron Hubbard.
I do not believe Scientology to be true, however. Do you?
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Shall we start listing the disanalogies in that? Or, âSpeaking of straw men, âŠâ
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Scientology was entirely the work of L Ron Hubbard (with a bit of advice from the likes of Aleister Crowley), who already had a reputation as a science-fiction writer. His religion consisted of a combination of a pseudo-analytic technique (dianetics), combined with an unverifiable cosmic mythology of operating thetans and all kind of stuff, and spread through the time-honoured way of fleecing rich celebrities of their wealth to reach the next level.
I donât think you can compare that with a faith based on historical claims about events that mainly took place in public, in direct line to the longstanding hopes of the Jews, whose founder never wrote anything except letters in the dust, and who kick-started his cult by being publicly executed and followed mainly by the poor.
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And THATâs how a new modern myth was just born.
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Homer got the geography right for sure.
Thatâs how
was able to find the city of Troy.
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And yet, millions of people believe it is true.
What does that tell you? That people will believe false stuff for no good reason. So why could people not believe a false story about Jesus was true, and tell and re-tell it until it becomes codified as a story that is believed to be historic?
Answer: There is no reason that could not have happened. And it is by far the most likely version of what DID happen, since it does not involve any seeming impossibiliities like dead people coming back to life.
And, to pre-empt the accusation that keeps being made of me: No, I am NOT âpresuming naturalism.â
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Sorry, that didnât work.
And you are completely denying the validating nature of undesigned coincidences⊠but how can you not.
No answer to that - youâve thoroughly convinced yourself.
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Since this has not been demonstrated, and you are not even trying to do so, what else can I do? Affirm something for which I have been give no reason to affirm? Why would I do that?
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It has been, and more thoroughly in the book. You just cannot accept it.
I think @Faizal_Ali has a point.
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I think weâve reached the point of discussion where both sides have presented their case and objections, and are totally unconvinced that the other has any good points. Is there a reason to continue this discussion?
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Not a lot.
@jongarvey got to the core issue with respect to most antitheists: