Multiple Attestation Tumbling Down

In this last in the series on why you should care if the Gospel authors put words into Jesus' mouth I warn again about thinking that "multiple attestation" to some type of teaching or some type of event will make up the epistemic deficiencies of the case, if you've already granted that the Gospel authors did this. As discussed in an earlier video on multiple attestation (see link), what we're looking for is independent attestation to the facts, not just to a "Christian tradition" (which might be erroneous). https://youtu.be/EGVlEhtv0Zo Further, many *specific* doctrines and events are not *overwhelmingly* multiply attested, in such a fashion that we can just toss out as inauthentic one or more of them without having a significantly weakened case. Also, the methodology that calls into question the historical accuracy of a given attestation may, consistently applied, undermine many of the attestations all at once. For instance, if we're putting a big question mark over the recognizable historicity of John's reports of Jesus' teachings, this may affect the vast majority (or even all) of the places where Jesus teaches some particular doctrine explicitly, if these are in John. The need for caution about being cavalier about Gospel accuracy and then trying to fall back on multiple attestation is thus intertwined with the emphases of the previous videos in this series--Jesus' personal teaching is data in a special way, and explicitness is evidentially important. I give several examples of these points, including Jesus' explicit teachings of his pre-existence and Jesus' explicit teachings that the believer need not fear the unintentional loss of his salvation. Thumbnail image by Guma89 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17999924