Atheist Memes

"They are not consistent..."

No history is consistent. It is the nature of history being derived from human perspective. As the line goes in Memento "Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the colour of a car." This is true. Good historians analyze a wide variety of sources and then corroborate them to discover the truth. Sure there are inconsistencies in the Gospels, but if you measure their accounts to the same standard that other histories are measured, the Gospels are remarkably consistent compared to other historical texts that we trust anyway.

"...and not firsthand."

Have you any grounds for such assertion? An honest approach to history tells us that three out of the four Gospel writers would have known this Jesus of Nazareth in person, and the fourth interviewed hundreds of people who did experience Jesus of Nazareth and the surrounding events firsthand. Unless you have reason to doubt the dozens of historical accounts that corroborate the existence of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John we have all reason to believe that the Gospel accounts are first or second hand.

. "Not based on firsthand accounts because the events happened in Aramaic and then written in Greek."

If this is how a "firsthand account" is measured, then we have no reason to trust a practically all of Roman history. Romans wrote in latin, even if they were writing about events that transpired in other languages all across the Roman empire. Josephus then, should be tossed out, and Tacitus, and Plutarch, and others who all wrote latin histories of non-latin people founded on firsthand accounts--not to mention much English contemporary chronicle. The traditional style of history of that day--founded by the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides--was based on interviewing hundreds, even thousands, of firsthand witnesses. I do not even comprehend how a chronicle being written in a different language than in which the events occurred would in any way disqualify it from being validly sourced. One must always consider the audience of a text, and the Gospel writers weren't writing books for a relatively small portion of Aramaic-speaking people, but for the entirety of Asia Minor--which spoke Greek.

It's also important to note that all historical dialogue not recorded on an audio recording device or a direct transcript is more likely than not a paraphrase. Paraphrase is the important note here, it is highly likely that dialogue has been changed in some respect (like the language), but that the content of the dialogue would be largely the same.

"An event that has not happened yet."

What event "has not happened yet." There are no grounds for this assertion unless other historians date the life of Jesus of Nazareth to a different period. Even if there were such accounts that exist firsthand, they would be of a minority historical opinion.

"On 'sophisticated' writing.

The Gospels are somewhat unsophisticated as they are written in Greek and not Latin during the Roman Empire, but I agree that they are remarkably sophisticated in technique. Now again, we have no grounds to assert that the Gospels are not firsthand accounts because the people that wrote them were "unsophisticated." We know who the Gospel writers were, and even if they were illiterate, it is highly likely that they dictated the work to a scribe--who would have been well trained in sophisticate writing. Why not "try" Luke? It sounds like you are simply trying to invalidate him as an option as he is the most likely of the four to be educated. There's also Matthew who was a tax collector who would have likely been literate. John himself claimed to write several books after as well (1,2,3 John and Revelation)

"There are myths in the Gospels the Apostles would not have heard.

I don't know what "myths" you believe you are referring to nor how this would prove anything. It is simply impossible to prove that an individual did not hear a myth. It is possible to prove if someone heard a myth, and it is proven by if they recount that myth. It then follows that if the Gospel writers are who they say they are, they would have heard said myth even if it was unlikely. Since myths are usually oral tradition, it is strictly impossible to date their origin accurately.

"Stuff is missing that should be there."

What is this "stuff"? How do you know it exists? How do you know that it should be in the Gospel accounts. There are all sorts of "stuff" historians leave out for various reasons mostly indiscernible to the modern reader. Why would something not being there also change the nature of whether or not an account is valid historically. History is built on the selection of important events and the leaving out of unimportant ones. Different historians believe different events are more or less important, which is how we get vastly different accounts of the same histories.

"Exact copies of text are found word for word between them"

I do not know what sections you are referring to because the English translation does not have large passages that are word for word between them--which is strange because I would expect any translator with his head screwed on properly to translate passages that are the same as the same. Neither does this really mean anything as to the accuracy of the Gospels as they witnessed the same events.

"You can see traces of arguments that were going on decades later."

What arguments are you referring to? If there were arguments going on decades later, than I expect they were caused by the Gospels. Arguments don't just exist out of nothing, they come about because of differences in interpretation of texts and events.

"The Gospels don't claim to be firsthand"

The Gospels do claim to be firsthand if I am remembering properly, but whether or not they claim to be firsthand would not change whether or not the Gospels are actually firsthand.

"The geography of Mark is totally off."

If we measure Mark's account against other histories of that time, we discover that before the advent of geographically triangulated maps in the Early Modern Era all historians are pretty terrible geographers. Geography, also, in no way damages the veracity of accounts.

"The questions that I refuse to answer."

You are simply asking the wrong questions. These are detail oriented questions, which different historians with different processes of selection, will always get differently. Some are better, like "where was Jesus born" but have a fairly reasonable answer (Bethlehem) that other accounts do not contradict. These questions are unfair to ask of any historian, so why apply such a standard only to the Gospels.

These questions are all questions that automatically assume that the Gospels are incorrect, instead of being reasonably minded questions of whether or not the claims of the text are true. The question "why did the family go to Bethlehem" only makes sense if you first assume that there was no Roman census. All of these questions are loaded, it assumes that the Gospel answer is wrong, so when someone gives the fairly reasonable answer provided by historical texts that corroborate on the issue (like the Gospels) they can say 'ha gotcha! You're wrong!" There is no answer other than that, but you can always ask, how do you know this?