gospels of matthew, luke, mark and gospel of thomas christian special pleading

Sat Jun 29, 2019

i saw a christian apologist, that is a christian debator in the spirit of lee strobel's the case for christ

claim that matthew was written by the disciple of jesus and luke was written by luke, disciple of paul and mark was disciple of peter.

he actually quotes bart ehrman's objections and then "refutes" them.

no where in matthew luke mark john does it claim that the author was an actual disciple of jesus, these are later attributions.

he claims saint augustine "refuted" these views but i find it pure nonsense.

these gospels were written in the third person, never uses "we" and written in Greek, not Aramaic.

by point of contrast the gospel of thomas explicitly claims to be written by Thomas, and gospel of peter by peter, which of course christians reject as they were not canonized in the new testament.

here's where special pleading comes in from wiki

Special pleading is an informal fallacy wherein one cites something as an exception to a general or universal principle (without justifying the special exception).[1][2][3][4][5] This is the application of a double standard.[6][7]

In the classic distinction among material fallacies, cognitive fallacies, and formal fallacies, special pleading most likely falls within the category of a cognitive fallacy, as it would seem to relate to "lip service", rationalization and diversion (abandonment of discussion). Special pleading also often resembles the "appeal to" logical fallacies.

it's well known that luke and matthew copy mark word for word, in many passages it is an exact copy word for word


in modern day this is called plagarism. matthew and luke plagarized mark.

if either were written by a disciple of jesus or similar, why did they plagarize mark?

the simplest explanation was that matthew and luke were not written by any disciple of jesus.

christians come up with all kinds of highly suspect claims that copying doesn't prove anything.

but then when they explain why the gospel of thomas or gospel of peter was not included, they claim, esp for thomas, that it was copied from the new testament gospels.

again special pleading, matthew and luke copied verbatim large passages from mark, doesn't invalidate matthew and luke having been written by jesus disciples, whereas the thomas gospel, which does claim to be written by thomas, and has passages that are clearly not direct copies of the gospels, is claimed to be worthless copies of the 4 gospels.

i think christian fundamentalism is dishonest and is not about the truth. they assume the bible most be the inerrant word of god and engage in all kinds of fallacious reasoning to prove this.

since matthew and luke copied mark, then we only have 1 account mark, which matthew and luke are expansions. so this has made some atheists claim jesus never existed since jesus existence is based on 1 gospel, mark.

unfortunately for these atheists the historic method, just 1 source is enough to establish jesus existence so. atheists who claim the new testament is not evidence jesus existed is also engaged in special pleading, since comparable documentary evidence exist for figures in antiquity whose existence is not disputed like alexander the great and socrates.