How did you arrive at Christianity?

Dirk1540

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Well, to be brief, there are two separate historical questions going on here:

1) Whether the Gospels are a reliable account of the teachings and character of Jesus, and
2) Whether the Resurrection can be defended as an historical event.

I am fairly comfortable with the arguments in favor of a positive response to the first question. I generally agree with what you've written in respect to that, especially the criticism levelled at the Jesus Seminar method. I've run across these arguments before and do not have serious questions concerning the authenticity of the sayings.

I am less comfortable with argumentation for the Empty Tomb, however. I honestly do not trust William Craig Lane, who I have seen use the argument that "most scholars" accept things like the existence of Joseph of Aramathea, and who has been called out for dishonest use of scholarship. (Bart Ehrman accused him of this in their debate.) I would need to actually do some serious research into what the scholarship there actually says to really come down on one side or the other, though I am skeptical about the tomb.

I'll need to give you a more in depth response once I get home, though that it what stood out for me upon a first read of your post. This is one area where you'll really see my postmodernism come into effect, though, since I am not a realist--I am uncertain to what degree our understanding of reality matches the actual thing. So while I do believe that the disciples experienced something transformative, I do not think that it necessarily follows that their interpretation of it was correct. I don't feel limited to naturalistic explanations, but once you open the field up to non-naturalism, you end up with more room for uncertainty, not less. If I were sold on the tomb, this would be a smaller problem, but without that, it's pretty significant.

This is a comfortably Mainline Protestant stance, but it's problematic for my love affair with Orthodoxy. ^_^
Actually I have to be brief this time because I'm at work, just in regards to William Craig, I actually hate quoting percentages of scholarship, I guess I was just kind of saying 'This is why' Craig claims that most scholars...

His reasons that follow is all I really care about, do they make sense to ME. It's funny maybe when it comes to the resurrection Craig's brain is wired the same as mine, I have many resources but I always seem to go directly to his arguments with the resurrection. I believe Gary Habermas claims 75% of scholars agree with the empty tomb, but I also don't care if he says 99% or 30%, I just wanna know if their arguments that follow make sense to me. I do think William Craig might have some bad habits due to the fact that he has spent so many years trying to WIN debates in 5, 10, 15, or 20 minute chunks.
 
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StTruth

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I have no problem with the concept of probability. I do have a problem with writing off divine intervention as impossible because of an arbitrary decision that the world simply doesn't work like that. If probability was built into the universe specifically to allow for subtle intervention, then it very much would be a vehicle of divine intervention. While I'm skeptical of people insisting upon finding meaning everywhere, I see plenty of intellectual pride and not much genuine rationality in those who refuse to even admit this as a possibility. The reasonable position is always going to be the agnostic one.

I have a problem with your stand. First we both accept probability. Even if something is highly improbable, it can happen. It won't happen frequently but it can happen. To the human mind, it may seem shocking if it happened to us. Even our prehistoric caveman ancestors would have said, "Why me? Maybe the Bear-God is trying to tell me something". It is natural when something improbable happens to us (as opposed to others) that we want to explore if some god is trying to tell us something. But a person who REALLY understands probability won't be so filled with wonder.

Which is why it was initially surprising for me why you felt there should be some hidden meaning when you were put in a house of religious people. This is not something in the realm of extreme improbability. Most people won't even think twice about it. And what puzzled me is you are obviously more rational and intellectual than most believers. And then I had an epiphany. You are committed to theism, as you said so yourself. There is zilch evidence for theism and it's usually dismissed as a dumb, meaningless, thoughtless, irrational (even insane) belief. Hence, theists are DESPERATE to look for ANYTHING to show god is real. A sinking man will grab anything.

So you posit that an evidence-less God uses improbability to speak TRY to communicate. The communication is highly ambiguous and depends on the temperament of the person. Someone may think God wants him to blow himself up and others too and so he becomes a Muslim terrorist. It's the ambiguity of such a communication that alarms me. But the ambiguity is also synonymous with something more probable - that God doesn't exist. This a committed theist won't consider.


Committing to theism is like committing to go to college. If you're going to spend your whole life weighing the pros and cons and putting off actually doing anything, you won't get anywhere. I'm satisfied with several Thomist arguments for the existence of God and very dissatisfied with the holes in the popular atheistic alternatives, so I don't see the point in sitting on the fence refusing to move onto the next questions that theism raises.

No, that's a bad analogy. When you commit to college, you commit to something real. Every sane human being agrees that a college exists. There is no dispute there. But theism is highly disputed. A better analogy is to commit oneself to the reality of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer. I can imagine a similarity here. If you commit yourself to Santa Claus being real, you won't listen to your parents when they tell you it's fake. That your dad has been dressing up as Santa Claus all this while. Even when your dad shows you his costume and his big flowing white beard from the closet, you will think that yes, my dad faked Santa Claus but that does not negate the existence of the real Santa Claus who is now flying on his reindeer delivering presents to children. That is a better and more accurate analogy for your commitment to theism.

Right. I think you should take a look at that article I posted earlier about skeptical theism, since dictating what a good God can and cannot do is very problematic.

It's very self-serving to postulate a god and to say that you should not dictate how he should work. If the postulation is of a non-existent being, NATURALLY, you'd expect this non-existent being to be able to only 'perform' nudges and not real miracles. And what are these nudges? When something with a low probability happens, hey, that's God speaking!!! Can you not see how ridiculous that is?

Why do you want to go through all that circus act just to believe in something so airy-fairy?

I hope you will listen to the one who is....

St Truth
 
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StTruth

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Actually I have to be brief this time because I'm at work, just in regards to William Craig, I actually hate quoting percentages of scholarship, I guess I was just kind of saying 'This is why' Craig claims that most scholars...

His reasons that follow is all I really care about, do they make sense to ME. It's funny maybe when it comes to the resurrection Craig's brain is wired the same as mine, I have many resources but I always seem to go directly to his arguments with the resurrection. I believe Gary Habermas claims 75% of scholars agree with the empty tomb, but I also don't care if he says 99% or 30%, I just wanna know if their arguments that follow make sense to me. I do think William Craig might have some bad habits due to the fact that he has spent so many years trying to WIN debates in 5, 10, 15, or 20 minute chunks.

You say you don't care for statistics and yet you quoted the preposterous statistics that 75% of scholars agree with the empty tomb. I dispute that. You have not given the source and even if you do, the scholars you are talking about are probably Bible scholars who are believers.

You state that what is important is Craig's arguments are what's important. And yet, you do not state his arguments. I have mentioned else where that I can refute EVERY argument that Craig comes up with. I find him dishonest and slimy. In our past encounters, you have time and again avoided giving me even a single argument in favour of God despite my asking you repeatedly. Since you now say that it's Craig's arguments that are important, can you please state them? Don't give me a reading list in order to evade answering the question. Just state Craig's arguments.

But I know you won't do it because you don't want me to refute them. Honest readers who read this - please draw your honest conclusion from all this.

Cheers,

St Truth
 
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StTruth

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Well, to be brief, there are two separate historical questions going on here:

1) Whether the Gospels are a reliable account of the teachings and character of Jesus, and
2) Whether the Resurrection can be defended as an historical event.

I am fairly comfortable with the arguments in favor of a positive response to the first question. I generally agree with what you've written in respect to that, especially the criticism levelled at the Jesus Seminar method. I've run across these arguments before and do not have serious questions concerning the authenticity of the sayings.

I am less comfortable with argumentation for the Empty Tomb, however. I honestly do not trust William Craig Lane, who I have seen use the argument that "most scholars" accept things like the existence of Joseph of Aramathea, and who has been called out for dishonest use of scholarship. (Bart Ehrman accused him of this in their debate.) I would need to actually do some serious research into what the scholarship there actually says to really come down on one side or the other, though I am skeptical about the tomb.

I can show you quite convincingly why the answers to both questions should be a huge NEGATIVE.

It's pleasing to see that you relied on REAL history when you dismissed Craig who is the most dishonest person I've ever come across. When I was struggling with my faith, I desperately looked for some argument to clutch. I chanced upon Craig and I must say I have seen EVERY debate of his on youtube and I have read the transcripts too. He repulsed me for his obvious dishonesty and his underhanded debating methods. The empty tomb is an invention of the Gospels. St Paul has never once mentioned it. As Ehrman points out, Roman law required the executed criminal to be thrown in a ditch along with the bodies of all other executed criminals. There could be on tomb for Jesus. The story that he was given a tomb was concocted by the Evangelists in the Gospels in order to lend credence to the story of his resurrection.

As for the reliability of the Gospels, I'm not sure how committed you are to this. If evidence can be shown quite conclusively that the Evangelists made up stories about Jesus in order to make him fulfil an Old Testament prophecy that has already been fulfilled a hundred years before Jesus' time, would that discredit the Gospels as unreliable? I ask this because if that won't discredit the Gospels in your mind, then I wouldn't embark on an exercise that won't yield any fruit. I will show that the stories are definitely made up because in one instance, an Evangelist misunderstood the OT prophecy and he cooked up a story about Jesus that suited his misunderstanding. The other Evangelists understood the prophecy properly and they told a story of Jesus that differed from that told by the first Evangelist. Would this be enough to satisfy you that if they are capable of cooking up stories of Jesus in order to fit him into an Old Testament prophecy, their credibility is impeached?

I ask this because a committed Christian won't budge even in the face of evidence of the evangelists wilfully making up stories that didn't happen.

Cheers,

St Truth
 
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Ed1wolf

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ed: Also, as I demonstrated earlier there are purposes that exist in the universe

pos: And yet it remains simply a statement, what purpose ?

Ears are for hearing, eyes for seeing, legs for walking and etc.

ed: and we know that only personal beings can create purposes.

pos: What is a personable being?

A personal being is a being with a mind, will, conscience, and emotions.

pos: What are purposes ?
The reason for the thing and its characteristics existence.

ed: Therefore the cause of the universe is personal just like the Christian God.

pos; Again presumption, there is absolutely no proof, evidence , or even logic that points to a personal first cause.
What presumption? All I did was look at part of the effect being personal and containing purposes and then using empirical observations of other personal products and things with purposes I inferred a personal source for such things.

ed: In addition, the universe is a diversity within a unity,

pos: Again you seem to be repeating gibberish, what on earth does that mean even ?
See my posts to St. Truth where I explain it.

ed: which is also a fundamental characteristic of the Christian Triune God, thereby making that His probably His fingerprint.

pos: And yet again you simply assert without evidence
See my post to St Truth about diversity within a unity.

ed: See above for the biggest piece of evidence, ie the Universe. But there is much more besides.

pos: Thank goodness for that, what you have presented so far is simply gibberish

It is not gibberish to those that look closely at the universe and the things within it.

ed: Christianity provides the most rational basis for why the universe is the way it is.

pos: Again, how and why? the universe is a violent chaotic place, even the earth is a violent chaotic place?

No, the universe is actually very ordered, it operates according to natural laws and elegant mathematics. Such things can only come from an intelligent lawgiver and an intelligent mind that knows mathematics.

ed: Atheism cannot explain why the universe is a diversity within a

pos: Atheism does not and was never meant to explain anything, why do Christians keep making basic errors like this?

Well how about Naturalism cannot explain most of the universe and what it contains.

pos: But evolution can explain diversity, in fact evolution depends on diversity to exist as a theory, diversity is evolutions cornerstone.
Actually if living things had not also been created to reflect the nature of God, ie a diversity within a unity, Darwin would have never come up with his theory. All living things are made up of cells, which is the unity, but there are different kinds of cells, which is the diversity. All mammals share certain characteristics, which is the unity, yet there are many different kinds of mammals, which is the diversity.


ed: or even why the universe even exists.

pos: Again presumption, why does there have to be a why ?
Because most humans have a natural curiosity to learn the why about things, without it, we would never would have had science. Maybe you should acquire it? ;-)
 
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StTruth

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I am replying to this because you mentioned my name and Truth is not something that can be bandied about by those who don't understand truth.

Ears are for hearing, eyes for seeing, legs for walking and etc.

Wrong. These are not purposes. These are functions. Ears have the function of hearing, etc. Here is a typical example of the misuse of language by religious people. Loosely, yes, we do say the purpose of the ear is for hearing but that's just language. But religious people (because there is no evidence for faith) are very quick to seize anything that comes in handy. The word 'purpose' suits them fine because it's loaded with the presupposition that the ear must have been designed by an intelligence because who else would imbue purpose into it. But that's wrong. The ear has the function of hearing. Let's not play with language. You only do that when you are trapped. Don't admit to being trapped at this early stage.


See my posts to St. Truth where I explain it.


See my post to St Truth about diversity within a unity.

The reason I didn't respond to your posts is I was fairly certain your mind is vastly different from mine when you can talk about 'unity in diversity' as evidence that a Trinitarian God created the universe. I don't want to describe your kind of mind but it's not the sort I would like to engage in a discussion with. Let me just say that we are poles apart. You are no different from the early church fathers who say that the reason why we have only four gospels is that there are four corners of the earth and there are four winds blowing on earth. That kind of reasoning is so flawed, I usually won't argue with the person who says that.

But I will just say this since you mentioned me as if I accepted what you said in your earlier post which I absolutely do not and I don't even consider it however vaguely a 'reason'. For me, a reason must have something reasonable in it however slight. Yours has none.

I will just say one thing. The unity in diversity is actually proof that the Holy Unicorn is the creator of the world. You see, the Holy Unicorn has ONE horn and FOUR legs. Can you not see it? That's unity in diversity. That's precisely what the Holy Unicorn did when it created the universe - it gave an imprint of its own innate quality in its creation. God is only ONE in THREE. That's not enough for real diversity. The Holy Unicorn's ONE in FOUR is a better representation of what the universe is.

It is not gibberish to those that look closely at the universe and the things within it.

I really hope from what I have said above that you can now see why possibletarian is right to say what you wrote is gibberish. It really is. But somehow, I think you won't see it, so made up is your mind. Which is why I didn't want to respond to you. I have no doubt you are a good guy and I'm sure you live the life of love and kindness (and I really mean it when I say this) but our brains produce different 'wavelengths' and there is no way we can discuss such matters. You may not know this but not many Christians will accept your 'unity in diversity' argument. ;)

I apologise if I have been in any way rude but at least, I hope you will forgive me because whatever I say I say it as truthfully as I can for I am none other than...

St Truth
 
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ToddNotTodd

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No, the universe is actually very ordered, it operates according to natural laws and elegant mathematics. Such things can only come from an intelligent lawgiver and an intelligent mind that knows mathematics.

You're equivocating again...

Because most humans have a natural curiosity to learn the why about things, without it, we would never would have had science. Maybe you should acquire it? ;-)

My natural curiosity comes with a desire to believe things for reasons that don't include logical fallacies. Maybe you should acquire that...
 
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Silmarien

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StTruth said:
Which is why it was initially surprising for me why you felt there should be some hidden meaning when you were put in a house of religious people. This is not something in the realm of extreme improbability. Most people won't even think twice about it. And what puzzled me is you are obviously more rational and intellectual than most believers. And then I had an epiphany. You are committed to theism, as you said so yourself. There is zilch evidence for theism and it's usually dismissed as a dumb, meaningless, thoughtless, irrational (even insane) belief. Hence, theists are DESPERATE to look for ANYTHING to show god is real. A sinking man will grab anything.

This should really not be a difficult concept. IF there is a God, THEN it would follow that hijacking probabilities may be one of the ways he intervenes in the natural world. Means of intervention generally speaking should be built into the laws of the universe; we should not expect common place interference to seem supernatural, unless we believe that God is completely incompetent at universe creation.

This is not evidence for God. The existence of probability is not a proof. I am not grasping for anything--this is simply the sort of possibility that arises if one already presupposes a theistic modal of reality. It's not an argument at all. And I never said that there should be hidden meaning; only that there could be. That is a very large difference.

I'm not sure why you think that I'm desperate to prove anything. I am a former non-theist, so I am familiar with the worldview and I know where I think I goes wrong. I know where I think the conservative worldview goes wrong as well, and the fact that it's as difficult to convince an atheist as it is to convince a conservative to my way of thinking is not really grounds for declaring the alternative viewpoint unassailable. If an atheist wants to dismiss theism as irrational and backwards, they've done little but show their ignorance of the subject at hand. And their own irrationality in not recognizing the limits of their own understanding. I'm not interested in discussions with fundamentalists of any variety.

No, that's a bad analogy. When you commit to college, you commit to something real. Every sane human being agrees that a college exists. There is no dispute there. But theism is highly disputed. A better analogy is to commit oneself to the reality of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer. I can imagine a similarity here. If you commit yourself to Santa Claus being real, you won't listen to your parents when they tell you it's fake.

Theism is experiential; Santa Claus is not. Even an atheist who believes that those experiences are purely psychological in nature ought to accept that for the fact that it is. If you're interested in spiritual and moral development, you cannot spend your life obsessing over proofs of God's existence.

As for the reliability of the Gospels, I'm not sure how committed you are to this. If evidence can be shown quite conclusively that the Evangelists made up stories about Jesus in order to make him fulfil an Old Testament prophecy that has already been fulfilled a hundred years before Jesus' time, would that discredit the Gospels as unreliable?

I'm specifically referring to his teachings and character, not the miracles. I do not accept arguments revolving around the prophecies, though I think it anachronistic to accuse the evangelists of making stories up. The difference between fact and fiction was much more blurry 2000 years ago.

You should probably take a look at how the Eastern Orthodox Church discusses things like prophecy, though. It's a much more pre modern take than we are now accustomed to.
 
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StTruth

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This is not evidence for God. The existence of probability is not a proof. I am not grasping for anything--this is simply the sort of possibility that arises if one already presupposes a theistic modal of reality. It's not an argument at all.

Wow!!! This is the most honest remarks I have ever seen from a Christian. Oops, I checked and you aren't really a Christian. At least not yet but you seem likely to embrace Eastern Orthodoxy and so I can still say you're the most honest Christian I've ever come across. Next to me, that is, since I'm St Truth.

Theism is experiential; Santa Claus is not. Even an atheist who believes that those experiences are purely psychological in nature ought to accept that for the fact that it is.

Santa Claus is not experiential only because I was not taught to pray to him or to talk to him or to attribute every good thing to him and to say that every bad thing has a purpose and God is TRYING (again, he's always trying but he's unable to communicate effectively) to teach me something. I was only taught to look forward to his coming at Christmas and he is not to be prayed to. I didn't know you would distinguish God with Santa Claus by picking on the experiential part. If I knew you'd do that, I'd talk about Guan Yin. This is a goddess the majority of people in the country I'm now in worship. They experience her all the time. They treat her more like we treat Jesus or some quarters treat the BVM. The have an experiential relationship with her. I know Christians hate it when I say this because they insist that only in Christianity is there a relationship between a deity and man and this is not found in other religions. But they are wrong. I have seen and spoken to people who believe in Guan Yin. She's treated in exactly the same way as we treat Jesus. Then I thought at first that maybe they copied the Christian formula until I discovered that their religion is much older than ours by at least one or two thousand years. That is the problem with us CHristians (myself included). We think we are the only ones who are right and all these miserable denizens of the third world can't have anything older than ours. I also discovered that their language is much older than English by 4000 years and they have the world's oldest continuing civilisation and they were dressed in silk and sipping oolong tea when we were unwashed naked apes living on treetops. LOL. I know we Christians don't like to hear this because it's ultimately a racist thing and we can't imagine others having an older civilisation, an older language and an older religion. But it's true. We're a Johnny-come-lately in everything including religion.

If you're interested in spiritual and moral development, you cannot spend your life obsessing over proofs of God's existence.

I believe in moral development but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with God or religion. I'm convinced that it's our humanism that tampered the excesses of our religion so that the harshness of 'God' is reduced by our innate sense of right and wrong. I have a million examples but they will only work on fundamentalists who believe that everything the BIble says about God is true. Those who wriggle their way out of the Bible and who say the Bible is wrong whenever God is shown to be evil are of course untouched because they can fashion God in any way their own humanistic goodness demands. Hence their idea of God is an idea they fashion themselves and I submit it's their humanistic goodness that makes their God turn out to be such a better god than the god of the Bible.

So, I don't need God for moral development. Nobody ever does. Rather, they make up a God that conforms to their humanism and when they do that, their God is as good as themselves. Only fundamentalists are stuck with a nasty God because they can't change the character of God as set out in the Bible.

While I believe in moral development, I have no idea what 'spiritual development' means. I suspect it has no meaning.

I am interested (you say 'obsessed') with proof for God because I can't reconcile God with reality. I can't get over the conundrum that given the world that we have and the sufferings that we see, the Christian God can't exist because he must marry both his supposed Omnipotence with his supposed Love. I have considered this for very long and I am fairly convinced there is no way out. Either God is weak and loving or he is omnipotent and evil. I've worked it all out and he can't be anything else.

Of course I have a lot of problems with God. Hence my desire to see some 'reason' or evidence that can at least recommend his existence.

I'm specifically referring to his teachings and character, not the miracles. I do not accept arguments revolving around the prophecies, though I think it anachronistic to accuse the evangelists of making stories up. The difference between fact and fiction was much more blurry 2000 years ago.

But which Gospel do you rely on to establish Jesus' character and teachings? And what about Paul's writings? Do you accept them too? They are vastly at variance with Jesus' teachings.

And as for Jesus' character, which Gospel do you accept? Do you accept St Matthew who wrote about how racist Jesus was when he was told that a Gentile woman wanted to see him. He called her a dog and refused to help her. Or do you accept the fact that Jesus was angry with the leper who called out to him? Another Gospel changed that from angry to something else - I forget what. I can look it up - it's in Ehrman's book. Do you accept the sometimes harsh portrayal of Jesus or the sometimes watered down version by other Evangelists? [edited: another Gospel changed it from 'angry' to 'compassionate']

It's not easy to just 'accept the Gospels' as if they were a cohesive harmonised collection of books. They are not.

Which part of Italy are you going to? I love Northern Italy. I love the whole of Italy. I travel quite a bit with my dad who is in government - foreign service. He's been to North Korea on a mission that was not reported but he couldn't take me along because they didn't allow it. I would have loved to visit that country only because it's so closed to outsiders. The best part of Italy was this town (I forget the name) that is up on a tall hill and you can only reach it by a very long hanging bridge. I took about a hundred photos of the town.

Cheers,

St Truth
 
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Dirk1540

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Well, to be brief...I'll need to give you a more in depth response once I get home
Absolutely! At your own leisure always, a vacation in the French Alps is way more important than immediate replies to Dirk1540 lol. I'll just reply for the purpose of at least having my posts close together.

I am less comfortable with argumentation for the Empty Tomb, however. I honestly do not trust William Craig Lane, who I have seen use the argument that "most scholars" accept things like the existence of Joseph of Aramathea, and who has been called out for dishonest use of scholarship. (Bart Ehrman accused him of this in their debate.)
Well if William Craig makes 4 arguments in a row like a shady snake oil salesmen, but also makes a convincing 5th argument, I'm happy to disregard the first 4 and give credit to the 5th (avoiding the good old ad hominem argument trap). I quite simply will weigh the points for how well or poorly I like them...I'll even give a thumbs up to a Bart Ehrman point if it makes sense to me. But what bothers me about Bart Ehrman (especially considering his past with Bruce Metzger) is that I really think he should know better with a lot of things that he says.

I have seen him debate and one thing that he loves to say is something that I really feel is a 'Popular level layperson's' argument. He will shout and stretch out the word "SAYS." For instance (I forget if it was against Craig) he will say "Sure, it SAAAAYS that this happened in the NT...or it SAAAAYS that that happened in the NT..." His point being that anyone can say anything, so what! But this is to treat the Gospels as if they were novels that got wrapped up, tucked away for 300 years, then opened up and read.

No this was a major historical movement, if this information was not presented as it occurred then the presence of hostile witnesses would turn out to be the equivalency of legal cross examination. Again like I have said before, THAT THEY SAID such & such, is totally meaningless! THAT PEOPLE BELIEVED such & such is the historic data to include in your inferences. I seriously think Bart knows better than this! He constantly tries to pass off the undeniable history of the sudden belief that sprung up in the middle of the 1st century that God raised Jesus from the dead as 'A Book.' He does it all the time. And he knows better that 'The New Testament' is a collection of separate documents later collected under one cover and labeled as 'The New Testament.' It would be like compiling all of the documents about Alexander The Great, putting them under one cover...then claiming that it's just a book, who cares what 'It Says.'

I believe that many of Bart's arguments are speculations that there were these alternative views of what Christianity really was, but that conveniently all traces of these 'Original Christianity' stories have completely dropped out of historical sight (We're not really doing historical research then are we?). Bart is absolutely an advocate that Joseph of Aramathea was an invention. Hmm, is this a historical stance?? The historical credibility of the burial narrative is most certainly crucial to support the empty tomb because it's important that the burial site of Jesus' grave was known to both Jew & Christian alike. The burial account of Joseph of Aramathea is attested in all 4 Gospels, and there is NO historical trace of a competing burial story. Bart is taking his 21st century theory and injecting it into the 1st century with NOTHING to back it up.

Ok it was attested in a 4 Gospels, so what right? Silmarien, I believe we have previously seen eye to eye on some interesting points about oral tradition (you even pointed me to James Dunn's book). An awful lot of the variation among the Gospel parallels (when you start comparing them) can be accounted for by similar patterns of oral story telling as far as the different 'Tradition' styles go. As for genre, our best example is Luke's prologue (chapters 1-4). He got his information from some who were eye witnesses, and from others who were servants or 'Ministers of the word', those who transmitted the oral tradition. Turn to Josephus Histories and you get a prologue that's about 8 times as long but has most of the identical components. Same is true of Herodotus, Thucydides, etc.

Well the problem with chalking up Joseph of Aramathea as invention inside of the Gospels is that it has an awful lot of competing evidence going against it that the exact opposite is true, that far from the Gospels being chock full of inventions they actually have a reputation of being brutally raw and unrefined. There's of course the 'Hard Sayings' of Jesus. What about Luke 14:26? "If Anyone does not hate his father & mother, his wife & children, his brother & sisters, yes even his own life he can not be my disciple." Fortunately there's a text in Matthew from a different context, but apparently a similar teaching of Jesus, in Matthew 10:37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Ok that's challenging enough! But at least it gives an interpretative grid to understand Luke.

But the question is why did Luke leave it in the form he did, so susceptible to misunderstanding? Maybe there were constraints on his tradition as to making alterations? What about Mark 13:32 "No one knows the day or hour of Christ's return not even the Son."

...well here is one systematic theological interpretation, in the incarnation he voluntarily laid aside the independent exercise of his divine attributes. Ok, but the better question would be this, why not just leave the verse out and spare the church the interpretative problem??

There's the flip side of the hard sayings, the missing sayings/topics that Jesus never addresses in the Gospels. Major dilemmas like adult Greek males interested in Christianity but being told by one segment of Jewish Christians that they must keep the Law of Moses with initiatory rite of circumcision to be saved, in a world without anesthesia! An entire council was convened in Jerusalem according to Acts 15 to debate this...the solution was that you don't have to go through the ordeal.

Why didn't they just add a Jesus quote and just avoid this huge headache and the need of a council?? Apparently nobody knew anything that Jesus said about it. And apparently nobody felt free to invent anything. Speaking in tongues threatened to split the church of Corinth wide open! What did Jesus have to say? Apparently nothing and nobody invented anything.

But along comes Bart Ehrman, and he's trying to sell me on his 21 century argument that Joseph of Aramathea was invented in all 4 Gospels...AND that the original burial story is conveniently lost to history. But worse yet is that I've heard Bart type arguments about WHY they invented Joseph of Aramathea. I've read about reasons such as because that they knew that future generations would know that they need to have this anchor of a 'Burial location' in order to falsely take that argument to the next level into claims of the empty tomb!! SO...they're not even slick enough to invent or to discard a Jesus saying here or there in order to eliminate major IMMEDIATE headaches, or to save themselves from thousands of years worth of 'Contradiction Accusations'...however, when it comes to Joseph of Arimathea they had crafty 2nd and 3rd level thinking going on in order to trick future generations who will research the empty tomb LOL?? Oh AND they were crafty enough to do that, BUT they forgot to have Paul mention him lol??

So yeah it's not that I like William Craig and I don't like Bart, it's that I find Craig's arguments plausible, and I actually see Bart as the deceptive one...even if Craig does have a checkered history of being disingenuous in his debates. Nor do I care at all what percentage of scholars Bart claims, or what percentage of scholars Craig claims...just give me as much data as possible to chew on for myself please, and let me make my own inferences!

How do we know that the burial account is independently attested to when we know that Matthew & Luke were aware of Mark's Gospel (and referred to it)? (John is clearly independent of the Synoptic Gospels). The differences between Mark & Matthew & Luke point to independent sources (besides Mark's source) that are also available to Luke & Mathew. The differences in the burial account between Matthew & Luke & Mark are not plausibly explained as due to editorial changes that Matthew & Luke make to Mark because of several reasons. First of all because of their sporadic and uneven nature.

In Mark the tomb had been described as "A tomb which had been hewn out of rock." Whereas in Matthew the tomb is described as "The tomb which he (Joseph) hewed in the rock." That sort of change is pointless if it's just an editorial change. Also you have the inexplicit omission of events such as Pilate's interrogation of the centurion, which is found in Mark but omitted in Matthew & Luke. If Matthew & Luke were simply using Mark it would be odd that they would both omit the story of Pilate's interrogation. Also Matthew & Luke sometimes agree in their wording in contrast to Mark. Compare Matthew 27:58 with Luke 23:52, it's identical in the Greek. It's enormously improbable that Matthew & Luke would have independently come up with the exact same wording of that sentence which they didn't get from Mark. That suggests that Matthew & Luke are also drawing on some other independent source for the burial account (in addition to Mark). Also the Greek phrase for "He wrapped it in linen" is identical in Matthew & Luke and they don't get it from Mark. Yes I'm sure that you've heard of 'Q' document theory. Well I'm just throwing out some reasons for it at you, just in case you might have simply heard that 'Scholars claim there is a Q source' but you haven't known why.

In addition to this John is independent of all 3 Gospels and yet in John you have the same burial by Joseph of Aramathea in the tomb. In addition you have the ancient Christian formula mediated by Paul to the Corinthians (although you can't explicitly confirm Joseph of Aramathea through Paul, only implicitly). Also Paul was a Pharisee, and he constantly uses Pharisaic language to describe the resurrection of Jesus. The Pharisees believed in bodily resurrection, the Sadducees did not.

You have the description of the tomb as being described as the wealthy bench type tomb (acrosolia) as opposed to the cheap kind, the very tombs that matches the type in the narratives.

You have certain words and phrases used by Matthew that are not characteristic of him and are unique in the entire New Testament...the phrases "On the next day", "The preparation day", "Deceiver", "Guard (of soldiers)", "To make secure", "To seal." Also the the expressions chief priests and pharisees never appear in Mark or Luke and it's also unusual for Matthew.

What we do not have are early traces of an argument debating the existence of Joseph of Aramathea. You can argue that we don't have much early traces of what the earliest disputes were between the Jews and Christians, but earliest Christian polemic traces that we do have that survive are the debates over why the body was missing, how the emptyness of the tomb is explained. The importance of Matthew's guard story is not to claim that the powerful guard would have prevented the disciples from stealing the body. But rather it's importance is that it shows that the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity themselves recognized that the body was missing and so they used a story to explain away the empty tomb.

Matthew's guard is not posted on Friday, the guard is posted as an after thought on Saturday. The body could have been already stolen by then, and the stone replaced. So if this is supposed to be Matthew's brilliant attempt to 'Add a guard story' to make the story more impressive, to refute that the disciples stole the body, he does a terrible job at it. He leaves a huge window of opportunity for anyone to steal the body between Friday night and Saturday when the guard was posted.

What the Jewish authorities were not saying is 'Here is his corpse in the tomb!' If that had been what they were saying then what we would expect to find would be Christian polemics aimed at showing that the body in the tomb was not in fact Jesus. That this was somebody else, or that it was not identified as Jesus, etc. But we don't have any traces of that sort of polemic. Instead the polemic that we have that survives is the debates over why the body was missing. In Matthew 28 we have "This story is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." Once again another public appeal to the people's knowledge.

The earliest Jewish polemic did not deny the emptiness of the tomb, rather it entangled itself into a series of absurdities trying to explain away why the body was missing. The pattern of dialog presupposes a tradition history. The disciples begin by proclaiming "He is risen." The Jewish authorities respond to that that the disciples stole his body. The response of the disciples is to claim that the guard at the tomb would have prevented the theft (even though it's a weak come back due to the delay of the posted guard). It is the Jewish response that then says "No, the guard fell asleep." The falling asleep of the guard couldn't have been a Christian invention because that would not serve their polemic, it would make a theft seem MORE probable, the falling asleep of the guard had to be the Jewish response to the claim that the guard would have prevented it. And how do the Christians respond? They say that the authorities bribed the guard to say this. It is noteworthy to point out that the guard story as Matthew tells it is filled with many of these non-Matthean traits that shows that Matthew is not just making this up, he is drawing on a prior tradition, a tradition of a dispute that has been going on between Jews and Christians 'Up until his day.'

...OR we can just go ahead and throw out the earliest sources and instead go with Ehrman's 'Historical' explanation.
 
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StTruth

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Sorry for butting in but St Truth has to come in to set the record straight. You have made a lot of errors, I'm afraid, and I beg leave to point them out as respectfully as I can.

Well if William Craig makes 4 arguments in a row like a shady snake oil salesmen, but also makes a convincing 5th argument, I'm happy to disregard the first 4 and give credit to the 5th (avoiding the good old ad hominem argument trap).

That is true. I too would give him credit if he made a convincing 5th argument that isn't false and dishonest and isn't a sleight of hand or that isn't easily refutable. The trouble is he makes no convincing 5th argument. If he does, please post it on this thread.

I quite simply will weigh the points for how well or poorly I like them...I'll even give a thumbs up to a Bart Ehrman point if it makes sense to me. But what bothers me about Bart Ehrman (especially considering his past with Bruce Metzger) is that I really think he should know better with a lot of things that he says.

Bart Ehrman is indeed HIGHLY qualified - trained under Bruce Metzger and Metzger also got him to co-author some of the later editions of his definitive works which are used in all modern day translations of the Bible. It's because he is highly knowledgeable that his books are so irrefutable in their arguments. The only reason why Christians don't like Ehrman is he exposes the errors and unreliability of the Bible. And he does it so well because he does know better.

I have seen him debate and one thing that he loves to say is something that I really feel is a 'Popular level layperson's' argument. He will shout and stretch out the word "SAYS." For instance (I forget if it was against Craig) he will say "Sure, it SAAAAYS that this happened in the NT...or it SAAAAYS that that happened in the NT..." His point being that anyone can say anything, so what! But this is to treat the Gospels as if they were novels that got wrapped up, tucked away for 300 years, then opened up and read.

Never mind if Ehrman has a Southern drawl when he says 'SAAAYS'. That's irrelevant. The point is whether there is anything he says that can be refuted? So far, I don't see any.

No this was a major historical movement, if this information was not presented as it occurred the presence of hostile witnesses turns out to be the legal equivalent of cross examination. Again like I have said before, THAT THEY SAID such & such, is totally meaningless! THAT PEOPLE BELIEVED such & such is the historic data to include in your inferences. I seriously think Bart knows better than this! He constantly tries to pass off the undeniable history of the sudden belief that sprung up in the middle of the 1st century that God raised Jesus from the dead as 'A Book.' He does it all the time. And he knows better that 'The New Testament' is a collection of separate documents later collected under one cover and labeled as 'The New Testament.' It would be like compiling all of the documents about Alexander The Great, putting them under one cover...then claiming that it's just a book, who cares what 'It Says.'

This is a totally wrong argument although it's commonly trumpeted in forums. The fact is there is no hostile witnesses. Certainly none in the 1st century. The early church fathers say (and this was confirmed by Josephus) that the early Christians were mainly poor and illiterate. The followers of the real Apostles (Peter) and also James were Jewish Christians who could not read the New Testament works that were ALL written by Hellenistic Christians in Greek. This is attested to by many scholars and there is overwhelming evidence for it. The Hellenistic Christians were later converts. They didn't know Jesus and they were not there at the crucifixion. They knew nothing about whether there was a tomb in the first place or whether it was empty or whether the real Apostles saw the resurrected Jesus. They wouldn't have protested or become hostile witnesses because they were on the side of Paul and the Hellenistic writers of the NT (the Gospels included). The real people who could counter the allegations in the Gospels were the real Apostles who probably never came across a copy of any of the works of these Hellenistic Christians. Hence the argument that there would have been hostile witnesses if the Gospel writers got their facts wrong does not stand at all.

Documents about Alexander the Great are always used in comparison with the Gospels but this is wrong. You see, nobody would object if the Gospels are used to show that there was a Pontius Pilate, etc. That's how we use documents about ALexander the Great. But documents about Alexander the Great are discounted whenever they go into the supernatural. Eg Alexander is said to have been born of a virgin. He is said to have been fathered by a Greek god. These are discounted. What Christians don't realise is we tend to insist that our Gospels are accepted lock stock and barrel and we bring in documents about Alexander but we forget that historians discount the supernatural parts of the documents in ALexander's case but we won't allow historians to do that with our holy Gospels. As one who has been an altar boy all my conscious life, I know how important the Holy Gospels are. We stand for the reading and we say a different response for the Gospels. I always have that tingling feeling before the Holy Gospels are read. But we have to be truthful about the reliability of the Gospels. I carry the candle of the Gospels as an altar boy and I show complete homage to the holy writ but I have to be truthful about their unreliability from the historical context.

I believe that many of Bart's arguments are speculations that there were these alternative views of what Christianity really was, but that conveniently all traces of these 'Original Christianity' stories have completely dropped out of historical sight (We're not really doing historical research then are we?). Bart is absolutely an advocate that Joseph of Aramathea was an invention. Hmm, is this a historical stance?? The historical credibility of the burial narrative is most certainly crucial to support the empty tomb because it's important that the burial site of Jesus' grave was known to both Jew & Christian alike. The burial account of Joseph of Aramathea is attested in all 4 Gospels, and there is NO historical trace of a competing burial story. Bart is taking his 21st century theory and injecting it into the 1st century with NOTHING to back it up.

I'm afraid your belief is wrong. It's not true that many of Ehrman's arguments are speculations. He backs them all up convincingly. If you read Ehrman's Lost Christianities, you will see that he has many of these documents translated. He also has a book containing all the manuscripts of the ancient texts. Of course these texts which are not canonical haven't got as good an attestation as the canonical texts but the reason is obvious. It's only the canonical texts that were re-written by scribes throughout the centuries and many of the non-canonical texts were destroyed or not replicated. But even so, he gives many of the ancient texts in his books. I read Ehrman only because I found a reviewer who said that Ehrman was one of the few scholars who have read all existing documents pertaining to Christianity that were written in the first 4 centuries and in the original tongue!!! And that's because Ehrman can read Aramaic, Syriac, Koine Greek, Hebrew etc. He can even read the Peshitta because he can read Syriac. I never knew the significance of these texts until I read his books.

It's a wrong argument to say that there is no competing documents to tell a different story about Jesus' supposed burial. That is because apart from religious texts, nobody was interested in Jesus. The fact is Jesus was not mentioned at all in any of the secular historical texts. So it is hardly surprising that his death and far less his supposed burial would be mentioned.

It's the same with all religious texts. The story that Muhammad flew in a winged horse to heaven is attested to in not just the Quran but the Hadiths. And there is NO historical trace of a competing story. So should we conclude that Muhammad MUST have flown to heaven on a winged horse? Of course not. Similarly neither should we accept the burial story as real.

According to Ehrman, the tomb story is hardly likely in view of the fact that executed prisoners were never allowed a tomb but their bodies were thrown into an unmarked ditch together with the bodies of other executed criminals. In the light of this, not only is the story of a tomb most likely false, it's probably written to facilitate another untrue story - that of the resurrection.

Ehrman notes that Paul did not once mention the empty tomb even when he was trying hard to convince people of Jesus' resurrection. The only time the empty tomb was mentioned was in the Gospels and this would be after the Pauline epistles - some time after 70 AD. It seems more like an afterthought.

Ok it was attested in a 4 Gospels, so what right? Silmarien, I believe we have previously seen eye to eye on some interesting points about oral tradition (you even pointed me to James Dunn's book). An awful lot of the variation among the Gospel parallels (when you start comparing them) can be accounted for by similar patterns of oral story telling as far as the different 'Tradition' styles go. As for genre, our best example is Luke's prologue (chapters 1-4). He got his information from some who were eye witnesses, and from others who were servants or 'Ministers of the word', those who transmitted the oral tradition. Turn to Josephus Histories and you get a prologue that's about 8 times as long but has most of the identical components. Same is true of Herodotus, Thucydides, etc.

Strangely, none of these secular historians once mentioned Jesus.

Well the problem with chalking up Joseph of Aramathea as invention inside of the Gospels is that it has an awful lot of competing evidence going against it that the exact opposite is true, that far from the Gospels being chock full of inventions they actually have a reputation of being brutally raw and unrefined. There's of course the 'Hard Sayings' of Jesus. What about Luke 14:26? "If Anyone does not hate his father & mother, his wife & children, his brother & sisters, yes even his own life he can not be my disciple." Fortunately there's a text in Matthew from a different context, but apparently a similar teaching of Jesus, in Matthew 10:37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Ok that's challenging enough! But at least it gives an interpretative grid to understand Luke.

But the question is why did Luke leave it in the form he did, so susceptible to misunderstanding? Maybe there were constraints on his tradition as to making alterations? What about Mark 13:32 "No one knows the day or hour of Christ's return not even the Son."

...well here is one systematic theological interpretation, in the incarnation he voluntarily laid aside the independent exercise of his divine attributes. Ok, but the better question would be this, why not just leave the verse out and spare the church the interpretative problem??

Ehrman shows from manuscript evidence that the church did try to leave out some of the hard sayings including the one you mentioned in Mark about Jesus' lack of knowledge. But the Synoptics were written without a strong agenda to show Jesus' divinity. Some scholars think that Matthew, for example, was written to convince a more Jewish crowd. The divinity of Jesus was only important after the first century AD or towards the end of it - at the time when John was written which explains why John leaves out all the 'hard sayings' as you put it that question Jesus' divinity and John is the only one that goes to town about Jesus being God Himself. This doesn't speak for the accuracy or reliability of the Holy Gospels.


There's the flip side of the hard sayings, the missing sayings/topics that Jesus never addresses in the Gospels. Major dilemmas like adult Greek males interested in Christianity but being told by one segment of Jewish Christians that they must keep the Law of Moses with initiatory rite of circumcision to be saved, in a world without anesthesia! An entire council was convened in Jerusalem according to Acts 15 to debate this...the solution was that you don't have to go through the ordeal.

Ehrman has shown how this Council mentioned in Acts did not take place. He shows very convincing evidence in Lost Christianities that the rift between Paul on the one hand and Peter and James on the other was never healed. We read of Paul's fury against Peter and James in Galatians (he even used the word accursed on them). We never see again any reconciliation between the two camps in Paul's non-pseudepigraphical epistles. The only time we see a supposed reconciliation is in Acts. And from the hugely conflicting accounts of what Paul did after his conversion as told in Acts and as told in Galatians, we know that Acts can't be trusted on this.

Why didn't they just add a Jesus quote and just avoid this huge headache and the need of a council?? Apparently nobody knew anything that Jesus said about it. And apparently nobody felt free to invent anything. Speaking in tongues threatened to split the church of Corinth wide open! What did Jesus have to say? Apparently nothing and nobody invented anything.

There was no council to begin with. Not the kind reported in Acts. Further, that problem with the Judaizers was only a problem during the time when Paul wrote his epistles. But history tells us that Paul's churches grew in size and wealth and Peter and James' Jerusalem church was poor and dwindled in size. It fizzled out after the 1st AD or so.

You are conflating two periods of time. The time when there was trouble with the Judaisers was only the time when Paul wrote his epistles. That was the time when he had competition from the Jewish church which is why he kept warning people in his epistles against the Judaisers and he even went to the extent of saying that if you are under the law, you have no grace or something like that. By the time the Gospels were written, any voice from the Jewish church had long been quelled. They were probably massacred in the Fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. The Gospels were written after that time and there was no more need to put into Jesus' mouth anything about there not being a need for circumcision, etc. Because the Hellenistic churches of Paul were already established and there was no more competition from the dying Jerusalem church.

But along comes Bart Ehrman, and he's trying to sell me on his 21 century argument that Joseph of Aramathea was invented in all 4 Gospels...AND that the originally burial story is conveniently lost to history. So yeah it's not that I like William Craig and I don't like Bart, it's that I find Craig's arguments plausible...even if he does have a checkered history of being disingenuous in his debates. Nor do I care at all what percentage of scholars Bart claims, or what percentage of scholars Craig claims...just give me as much data as possible to chew on for myself please, and let me make my own inferences!

But there was no burial or tomb. The data confirm that. Executed criminals in Roman times were not placed in tombs. It's hard for us to understand that because we can't imagine a time when a regime can be so vicious as not to release the bodies of executed criminals but when we do that we are the ones who are guilty of selling our 21st century argument.

What argument of Craig's is plausible? I can't believe any of that snake oil pedlar's arguments can be plausible. Please state it.

The importance of Matthew's guard story is not to claim that the powerful guard would have prevented the disciples from stealing the body. But rather it's importance is that it shows that the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity themselves recognized that the body was missing and so they used a story to explain away the empty tomb.

First, there is no tomb because like all executed criminals in Roman times, Jesus body would have been thrown into an unmarked ditch together with all the other bodies of executed convicts. The argument that early Jews recognised the body is an argument made only by Christian apologists. The fact is the Jews didn't even bother one bit about Jesus' body or Jesus' death. Josephus the historian did not once mention Jesus as a person and the only time he did that was to refer to 'the followers of Jesus' when he talked about Christians being from the very poor in society. He spoke of Jesus the same way he would have spoken of Zeus in 'the followers of Zeus' which is why some scholars are led to even deny the existence of Jesus because he was not mentioned at all in non religious texts.

What the Jewish authorities were not saying is 'Here is his corpse in the tomb!' If that had been what they were saying then what we would expect to find would be Christian polemics aimed at showing that the body in the tomb was not in fact Jesus. That this was somebody else, or that it was not identified as Jesus, etc. But we don't have any traces of that sort of polemic. Instead the polemic that we have that survives is the debates over why the body was missing. In Matthew 28 we have "This story is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." Once again another public appeal to the people's knowledge.

The earliest Jewish polemic did not deny the emptiness of the tomb, rather it entangled itself into a series of absurdities trying to explain away why the body was missing. The pattern of dialog presupposes a tradition history. The disciples begin by proclaiming "He is risen." The Jewish authorities respond to that that the disciples stole his body. The response of the disciples is to claim that the guard at the tomb would have prevented the theft (even though it's a weak come back due to the delay of the posted guard). It is the Jewish response that then says "No, the guard fell asleep." The falling asleep of the guard couldn't have been a Christian invention because that would not serve their polemic, it would make a theft seem MORE probable, the falling asleep of the guard had to be the Jewish response to the claim that the guard would have prevented it. And how do the Christians respond? They say that the authorities bribed the guard to say this. It is noteworthy to point out that the guard story as Matthew tells it is filled with many of these non-Matthean traits that shows that Matthew is not just making this up, he is drawing on a prior tradition, a tradition of a dispute that has been going on between Jews and Christians 'Up until his day.'

This is a non-issue. The idea that the Jews were so desirous of quelling stories of Jesus' resurrection is an idea that only came about when the Gospels were written after 70AD and it's an invented story by the Hellenistic Christians who wrote the Gospels. The fact is the Jews did not even bother one bit about Jesus as can be seen by the total absence of any mention of Jesus by Jewish historians. It should always be noted that even when Paul was very anxious to say that Jesus rose, he did not once mention the 'empty tomb'. Because Paul would have known that Jesus would have been thrown into an unmarked ditch.

...OR we can just go ahead and throw out the earliest sources and instead go with Ehrman's 'Historical' explanation.

Your 'earliest sources' are not reliable at all. They were obviously concocted. St Paul's epistles which predate the Gospels, made no mention of the empty tomb even when we would have thought he would have mentioned it as evidence of the resurrection. But there was no tomb as I have said repeatedly above.

Cheers,

St Truth
 
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possibletarian

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Ears are for hearing, eyes for seeing, legs for walking and etc.

Okay, but that's not any evidence of anything divine

A personal being is a being with a mind, will, conscience, and emotions.

A brain then

The reason for the thing and its characteristics existence.

That makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

What presumption? All I did was look at part of the effect being personal and containing purposes

Yes, but you are mistaking survival of the fittest with design. Once we were shaped very differently, out ancestors were little more than a single cell. Hardly a creative god.

and then using empirical observations of other personal products and things with purposes I inferred a personal source for such things.

Yes you did infer, but have you any evidence of a personal source ?

See my posts to St. Truth where I explain it. See my post to St Truth about diversity within a unity.

Yes but its the same as you are saying to me, rambling about diversity in unity simply reinforces biological evolution.

It is not gibberish to those that look closely at the universe and the things within it.

Sorry it looks very much like gibberish to me, you sound very new age to me, but that of course could just be a personal opinion.

No, the universe is actually very ordered,

No its very violent, a look at any basic science program will teach you that.

it operates according to natural laws and elegant mathematics.

Yes humans have figured out a way to explain most things, but the so called laws are just how it is, no god needed. And mathematics are a way humans explain what is going on, not a god and certainly predate Christianity.

Such things can only come from an intelligent lawgiver and an intelligent mind that knows mathematics.

We created descriptions of how we see the universe, a god (any of your choice of many) god didn't invent mathematics.

Well how about Naturalism cannot explain most of the universe and what it contains.

I've heard people say we know only about 4% of how the universe is, how they come to that figure I have absolutely no idea, but lets take it at face value.

Not knowing is simply not knowing, not having knowledge is simply not having knowledge we don't need to create a god or 'goddidit' moment to explain all the gaps.
Science just keeps pecking away at what we don't know till it finds the answer.


Actually if living things had not also been created to reflect the nature of God,

Prove a god first, not presume a god

ie a diversity within a unity, Darwin would have never come up with his theory. All living things are made up of cells, which is the unity, but there are different kinds of cells, which is the diversity. All mammals share certain characteristics, which is the unity, yet there are many different kinds of mammals, which is the diversity.

Yes that's exactly what you would expect of a biological evolution, why add a god in there ?

Because most humans have a natural curiosity to learn the why about things, without it, we would never would have had science. Maybe you should acquire it? ;-)

Oh but I am curious, I just have no need to add a fantasy story about a god in there. ;)

And let me ask you again, you claim to be a scientist, but certainly don't talk with the knowledge of one, again I ask, what kind of scientist are you ;) ?
 
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Silmarien

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I am interested (you say 'obsessed') with proof for God because I can't reconcile God with reality. I can't get over the conundrum that given the world that we have and the sufferings that we see, the Christian God can't exist because he must marry both his supposed Omnipotence with his supposed Love. I have considered this for very long and I am fairly convinced there is no way out. Either God is weak and loving or he is omnipotent and evil. I've worked it all out and he can't be anything else.

Have you considered theories of Atonement that stress Christ setting the world straight and defeating the evil that holds the world in bondage rather than those that stress personal redemption from sin? I believe the Christus Victor theory of Atonement and the picture of a God that suffers alongside the world instead of remaining outside of it is Christianity's answer to the Problem of Evil. And it is a powerful one.

Which part of Italy are you going to? I love Northern Italy. I love the whole of Italy. I travel quite a bit with my dad who is in government - foreign service. He's been to North Korea on a mission that was not reported but he couldn't take me along because they didn't allow it. I would have loved to visit that country only because it's so closed to outsiders. The best part of Italy was this town (I forget the name) that is up on a tall hill and you can only reach it by a very long hanging bridge. I took about a hundred photos of the town.

Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Brindisi! Though Milan and Florence mostly in passing.
 
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Dirk1540

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Sorry for butting in but St Truth has to come in to set the record straight. You have made a lot of errors, I'm afraid, and I beg leave to point them out as respectfully as I can.



That is true. I too would give him credit if he made a convincing 5th argument that isn't false and dishonest and isn't a sleight of hand or that isn't easily refutable. The trouble is he makes no convincing 5th argument. If he does, please post it on this thread.



Bart Ehrman is indeed HIGHLY qualified - trained under Bruce Metzger and Metzger also got him to co-author some of the later editions of his definitive works which are used in all modern day translations of the Bible. It's because he is highly knowledgeable that his books are so irrefutable in their arguments. The only reason why Christians don't like Ehrman is he exposes the errors and unreliability of the Bible. And he does it so well because he does know better.



Never mind if Ehrman has a Southern drawl when he says 'SAAAYS'. That's irrelevant. The point is whether there is anything he says that can be refuted? So far, I don't see any.



This is a totally wrong argument although it's commonly trumpeted in forums. The fact is there is no hostile witnesses. Certainly none in the 1st century. The early church fathers say (and this was confirmed by Josephus) that the early Christians were mainly poor and illiterate. The followers of the real Apostles (Peter) and also James were Jewish Christians who could not read the New Testament works that were ALL written by Hellenistic Christians in Greek. This is attested to by many scholars and there is overwhelming evidence for it. The Hellenistic Christians were later converts. They didn't know Jesus and they were not there at the crucifixion. They knew nothing about whether there was a tomb in the first place or whether it was empty or whether the real Apostles saw the resurrected Jesus. They wouldn't have protested or become hostile witnesses because they were on the side of Paul and the Hellenistic writers of the NT (the Gospels included). The real people who could counter the allegations in the Gospels were the real Apostles who probably never came across a copy of any of the works of these Hellenistic Christians. Hence the argument that there would have been hostile witnesses if the Gospel writers got their facts wrong does not stand at all.

Documents about Alexander the Great are always used in comparison with the Gospels but this is wrong. You see, nobody would object if the Gospels are used to show that there was a Pontius Pilate, etc. That's how we use documents about ALexander the Great. But documents about Alexander the Great are discounted whenever they go into the supernatural. Eg Alexander is said to have been born of a virgin. He is said to have been fathered by a Greek god. These are discounted. What Christians don't realise is we tend to insist that our Gospels are accepted lock stock and barrel and we bring in documents about Alexander but we forget that historians discount the supernatural parts of the documents in ALexander's case but we won't allow historians to do that with our holy Gospels. As one who has been an altar boy all my conscious life, I know how important the Holy Gospels are. We stand for the reading and we say a different response for the Gospels. I always have that tingling feeling before the Holy Gospels are read. But we have to be truthful about the reliability of the Gospels. I carry the candle of the Gospels as an altar boy and I show complete homage to the holy writ but I have to be truthful about their unreliability from the historical context.



I'm afraid your belief is wrong. It's not true that many of Ehrman's arguments are speculations. He backs them all up convincingly. If you read Ehrman's Lost Christianities, you will see that he has many of these documents translated. He also has a book containing all the manuscripts of the ancient texts. Of course these texts which are not canonical haven't got as good an attestation as the canonical texts but the reason is obvious. It's only the canonical texts that were re-written by scribes throughout the centuries and many of the non-canonical texts were destroyed or not replicated. But even so, he gives many of the ancient texts in his books. I read Ehrman only because I found a reviewer who said that Ehrman was one of the few scholars who have read all existing documents pertaining to Christianity that were written in the first 4 centuries and in the original tongue!!! And that's because Ehrman can read Aramaic, Syriac, Koine Greek, Hebrew etc. He can even read the Peshitta because he can read Syriac. I never knew the significance of these texts until I read his books.

It's a wrong argument to say that there is no competing documents to tell a different story about Jesus' supposed burial. That is because apart from religious texts, nobody was interested in Jesus. The fact is Jesus was not mentioned at all in any of the secular historical texts. So it is hardly surprising that his death and far less his supposed burial would be mentioned.

It's the same with all religious texts. The story that Muhammad flew in a winged horse to heaven is attested to in not just the Quran but the Hadiths. And there is NO historical trace of a competing story. So should we conclude that Muhammad MUST have flown to heaven on a winged horse? Of course not. Similarly neither should we accept the burial story as real.

According to Ehrman, the tomb story is hardly likely in view of the fact that executed prisoners were never allowed a tomb but their bodies were thrown into an unmarked ditch together with the bodies of other executed criminals. In the light of this, not only is the story of a tomb most likely false, it's probably written to facilitate another untrue story - that of the resurrection.

Ehrman notes that Paul did not once mention the empty tomb even when he was trying hard to convince people of Jesus' resurrection. The only time the empty tomb was mentioned was in the Gospels and this would be after the Pauline epistles - some time after 70 AD. It seems more like an afterthought.



Strangely, none of these secular historians once mentioned Jesus.



Ehrman shows from manuscript evidence that the church did try to leave out some of the hard sayings including the one you mentioned in Mark about Jesus' lack of knowledge. But the Synoptics were written without a strong agenda to show Jesus' divinity. Some scholars think that Matthew, for example, was written to convince a more Jewish crowd. The divinity of Jesus was only important after the first century AD or towards the end of it - at the time when John was written which explains why John leaves out all the 'hard sayings' as you put it that question Jesus' divinity and John is the only one that goes to town about Jesus being God Himself. This doesn't speak for the accuracy or reliability of the Holy Gospels.




Ehrman has shown how this Council mentioned in Acts did not take place. He shows very convincing evidence in Lost Christianities that the rift between Paul on the one hand and Peter and James on the other was never healed. We read of Paul's fury against Peter and James in Galatians (he even used the word accursed on them). We never see again any reconciliation between the two camps in Paul's non-pseudepigraphical epistles. The only time we see a supposed reconciliation is in Acts. And from the hugely conflicting accounts of what Paul did after his conversion as told in Acts and as told in Galatians, we know that Acts can't be trusted on this.



There was no council to begin with. Not the kind reported in Acts. Further, that problem with the Judaizers was only a problem during the time when Paul wrote his epistles. But history tells us that Paul's churches grew in size and wealth and Peter and James' Jerusalem church was poor and dwindled in size. It fizzled out after the 1st AD or so.

You are conflating two periods of time. The time when there was trouble with the Judaisers was only the time when Paul wrote his epistles. That was the time when he had competition from the Jewish church which is why he kept warning people in his epistles against the Judaisers and he even went to the extent of saying that if you are under the law, you have no grace or something like that. By the time the Gospels were written, any voice from the Jewish church had long been quelled. They were probably massacred in the Fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. The Gospels were written after that time and there was no more need to put into Jesus' mouth anything about there not being a need for circumcision, etc. Because the Hellenistic churches of Paul were already established and there was no more competition from the dying Jerusalem church.



But there was no burial or tomb. The data confirm that. Executed criminals in Roman times were not placed in tombs. It's hard for us to understand that because we can't imagine a time when a regime can be so vicious as not to release the bodies of executed criminals but when we do that we are the ones who are guilty of selling our 21st century argument.

What argument of Craig's is plausible? I can't believe any of that snake oil pedlar's arguments can be plausible. Please state it.



First, there is no tomb because like all executed criminals in Roman times, Jesus body would have been thrown into an unmarked ditch together with all the other bodies of executed convicts. The argument that early Jews recognised the body is an argument made only by Christian apologists. The fact is the Jews didn't even bother one bit about Jesus' body or Jesus' death. Josephus the historian did not once mention Jesus as a person and the only time he did that was to refer to 'the followers of Jesus' when he talked about Christians being from the very poor in society. He spoke of Jesus the same way he would have spoken of Zeus in 'the followers of Zeus' which is why some scholars are led to even deny the existence of Jesus because he was not mentioned at all in non religious texts.



This is a non-issue. The idea that the Jews were so desirous of quelling stories of Jesus' resurrection is an idea that only came about when the Gospels were written after 70AD and it's an invented story by the Hellenistic Christians who wrote the Gospels. The fact is the Jews did not even bother one bit about Jesus as can be seen by the total absence of any mention of Jesus by Jewish historians. It should always be noted that even when Paul was very anxious to say that Jesus rose, he did not once mention the 'empty tomb'. Because Paul would have known that Jesus would have been thrown into an unmarked ditch.



Your 'earliest sources' are not reliable at all. They were obviously concocted. St Paul's epistles which predate the Gospels, made no mention of the empty tomb even when we would have thought he would have mentioned it as evidence of the resurrection. But there was no tomb as I have said repeatedly above.

Cheers,

St Truth
I actually addressed a lot of this in my obnoxiously huge post that was in that thread but that whole thread got deleted. But something tells me if you read it you'd disagree lol. When I say hostile witnesses I'm not necessarily talking about just violent or angry witnesses, but also intellectually hostility. One of these days make a day out of trying to pass a known figure from 30 years ago off as being something different than what they were. Maybe start off in your hometown talking to people about the mayor there 30 years ago, but include far fetched ridiculous fact after ridiculous fact, and see how it plays out. Then maybe take a break and grab yourself some lunch. Then after lunch try to start convincing people of all kinds of made up facts about Ronald Reagan that are far from true. Tell people that he caught the bullet with his bare hands during that assassination attempt on him during his 1st term.

Actually I just thought of a more accurate one, Jesus was a crucified fraud, an utter failure in the eyes of the people. Do you know who Bill Buckner is? He had one of the worst errors in sports history that cost the Red Sox the 1986 World Series. Take a trip to Boston one of these days and try to convince people that Bill Buckner was the most 'Clutch' player in baseball history Haha.

Actually I know that you've talked to @hedrick a lot, and I vaguely remember him talking to you about this when he recommended that book to you 'How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?' I think that might be the best book title that I've ever seen, it really puts it plainly. Strangely I bought the book years ago and it has just sat in my closet lol, Hedrick's praise over it has me planning to read it soon.

I see Jesus as having these extraordinary amounts of converging lines of data to look at, you're able to attack historical Jesus from so many angles. I consider that extremely rare, and I do NOT think it's a coincidence. Here's the thing, I have faith that Moses parted the Red Sea but i do NOT believe I can present a historical argument for it. Jesus seems a little analogous to the Earth's goldilocks location, without it most of our cosmological observable knowledge would be impossible. As far as history from VERY long ago goes I believe that Jesus also sits in a goldilocks location for historical observation.

But I also am starting to believe more & more that you can only go back & forth with some people so many times before it's clear where both people stand, and that neither person will budge an inch. This one member in here, can't recall her name, at first I laughed when I saw her post a few times "Sorry we disagree, goodbye." But then I started thinking hey that's actually pretty wise of her, to know when the wall has been hit.
 
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Targaryen

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Let me respond to the OP's questions one by one here, so:

Why are you a Christian?

It is the best fit for my life. Which is all anyone can ask.

Why aren't you a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a Hindu?

I have studied and still do study, these forms of spirituality. However, Buddhism left me cold, as did Taoism, as does Islam, paganism and so on. There is certain things that ring true, but they are just as easily found in the Bible for me and the Bible's teaching feel more relatable.


Why aren't you an atheist? A humanist? Even a Satanist?

Cause I never felt and still don't feel that even with all we are leaning about the world and universe around us that there isn't something more, something that defies simplistic explanation. We could argue,that the Bible is simplistic but I don't feel it's that way at all. But if i feel that there is more to our shared exploration of life essentially, rejecting it to me makes no sense.


What about Christianity makes you believe it's true?

Cause there is something about it that fits. The concept in most other religions is less that the Divine wants the best out of it's creation and more, if you do this only then you get rewarded. Christianity teaches that, the Devine seeing how badly we struggle with things, took on our nature and then gave that nature up so brutally in a effort to redeem us all.

That's why it feels true to me, cause I know what my own struggles in life have been, how bad I can be. The idea that Jesus did this for me, hits home.
 
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StTruth

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Have you considered theories of Atonement that stress Christ setting the world straight and defeating the evil that holds the world in bondage rather than those that stress personal redemption from sin? I believe the Christus Victor theory of Atonement and the picture of a God that suffers alongside the world instead of remaining outside of it is Christianity's answer to the Problem of Evil. And it is a powerful one.

Thanks for your post. The suggestion of Christ getting crucified and died in order to set the world straight befits best the idea of a god who isn't omnipotent. An omnipotent and loving God wouldn't allow such a mess and then go through suffering to set the world straight and yet it's not efficacious because the world is still in the same mess (if not worse) and sufferings continue.

The picture of a God who suffers alongside the world is a picture of a god who isn't omnipotent. You say it's a powerful picture but there is no power in it at all. It is, at best, a romantic picture of a weak and pitiful God.

Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Brindisi! Though Milan and Florence mostly in passing.

If you are going to Milan in passing, you probably can't enter the cathedral. There is a long queue and the cathedral is tightly controlled for security purposes to prevent Islamic terrorists from blowing it up. There are soldiers everywhere. Rome is nice but be careful of pickpockets. I carry a daypack in front of me all the time, slinging the straps over both arms and so pickpockets can be seen tearing their hair out every time they see me. Ho ho Ho!!! I'm laughing at them.

For I am the laughing...

St Truth
 
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StTruth

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I actually addressed a lot of this in my obnoxiously huge post that was in that thread but that whole thread got deleted. But something tells me if you read it you'd disagree lol. When I say hostile witnesses I'm not necessarily talking about just violent or angry witnesses, but also intellectually hostility. One of these days make a day out of trying to pass a known figure from 30 years ago off as being something different than what they were. Maybe start off in your hometown talking to people about the mayor there 30 years ago, but include far fetched ridiculous fact after ridiculous fact, and see how it plays out. Then maybe take a break and grab yourself some lunch. Then after lunch try to start convincing people of all kinds of made up facts about Ronald Reagan that are far from true. Tell people that he caught the bullet with his bare hands during that assassination attempt on him during his 1st term.

Hi,

It doesn't matter whether they are violent and angry witnesses or mere intellectual hostility. The fact is there was neither even though tall tales and untrue tales were told. You kept saying that Ehrman misunderstood the 1st century and transported his idea of the 21st century to the 1st century but you are the one doing that. In the 1st century, it's an indisputable fact (confirmed by both Christians ie the early church fathers and by the non-Christian Josephus that the early Christians in Palestine were extremely poor and illiterate). These are the only ones who could have contested the claims of the Gospels but they couldn't have done it even if they wanted to because:

1. They didn't have access to the Gospels which were written by Hellenistic Christians in Greek and they were illiterate and in any event, they had no access to the books of the Hellenistic Christians since there was a rift between the Pauline Christians and the Christians who followed the original Apostles.

2. By the time the Gospels were written (after 70 AD), these Jewish Christians were dispersed because of the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70. They were gone and even if there were still some who knew Greek and knew the Gospels were wrong, what could they do? Post their views in a blog? Write to the local newspapers? In the 1st Century AD, there were very few things you could do. You couldn't write a book because that would be too difficult and expensive. Even if one of them did write a book to counter the Gospels, the book would be long gone today. But it's unlikely they would have gone through such lengths. They were a small group even during the time of Paul and a very poor group and at the most, they would probably dismiss the Gospels as yet another lie of the Hellenistic Christians.

But historically, it was highly unlikely they had access to the gospels in order to counter them.

What about the Romans? Your example of Ronald Reagan is wrong. We know that the Romans didn't even notice Jesus. The historian Josephus did not even mention Jesus as a person at all. The only time he mentioned Jesus was when he spoke about how poor the Christians were and he called the Christians 'followers of Jesus'. This is something we Christians find hard to understand. That's because to us, Jesus is such an important figure. We believe the miracles he performed and the claim in the Gospels that everyone had heard of him. So we think that if there is any false reporting of Jesus, the whole world would jump. But it wasn't like that at all. Nobody noticed Jesus. There is even no record of Jesus being crucified although there was another Jesus 100 years before our Lord's time who was crucified. Because of the absence of any reference to Jesus, some scholars think Jesus was just a legend created from the memory of the real Jesus who was crucified for treason 100 years before our Lord's time. But we are not talking about the historicity of Jesus. I'm using this fact that there was zero account of Jesus among historians and record keepers to show you that it's wrong to assume that any false reporting of Jesus would have attracted a backlash.

Actually I just thought of a more accurate one, Jesus was a crucified fraud, an utter failure in the eyes of the people. Do you know who Bill Buckner is? He had one of the worst errors in sports history that cost the Red Sox the 1986 World Series. Take a trip to Boston one of these days and try to convince people that Bill Buckner was the most 'Clutch' player in baseball history Haha.

Bad analogy again. Bill Buckner is probably known to people who know about baseball. I don't know a thing about baseball because civilised people only play cricket. But Jesus was not a known person, as the absence of any historical record of him shows. See my comment above on how unknown and insignificant a person Jesus was.

Ehrman does not say Jesus was a fraud. He says Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot and history tells us that around the time of Jesus, there were many apocalyptic zealots who were crucified by the Romans for treason. An apocalyptic zealot was one who was zealous in getting the Romans out of Israel, the way the Muslim zealots want to throw the US army out of Saudi Arabia even though there is a huge difference in that the US army are welcome by Saudi. An apocalyptic zealot wanted the Romans out. Hence in Jesus' prophecies in the Synoptics (NEVER in John), Jesus speaks of the coming of the Son of Man on a cloud with the angels to rule Israel. Jesus promised that this would take place in the lifetime of the hearers in the 1st century.

Ehrman made no decision as to whether the Son of Man was Jesus or another person. It can be either. Notice that Jesus speaks of the Son of Man in the third person. It's unclear if he was thinking of himself or a different person. But whatever it was, if Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot, that would be in line with historical facts and it would explain why the Synoptics seem to talk of an earthly kingdom. John, which was written much much later by some Hellenistic Christian, spiritualises everything so that the earthly kingdom of the typical apocalyptic zealot is now changed to a spiritual kingdom. All the later books do that too including the non-canonical books.

Actually I know that you've talked to @hedrick a lot, and I vaguely remember him talking to you about this when he recommended that book to you 'How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?' I think that might be the best book title that I've ever seen, it really puts it plainly. Strangely I bought the book years ago and it has just sat in my closet lol, Hedrick's praise over it has me planning to read it soon.

Hedrick is a true scholar and a very nice chap. He's a Sunday School teacher who teaches people my age and so he is more patient and understanding. I intend to read some of his recommendations. I can buy any number of books I like online because my mum gives me her credit card number. I usually will read the review first. I'm very careful not to buy a book that is purely devotional. I hate devotional books. They aren't scholastic and I can't read past the first page. But it's not that I'm opposed to fundamentalist books. I have read quite a few books by people from a super fundamentalist seminary - the Dallas Theological Seminary. Some of their books can be quite scholastic even if I can see the flaws of their argument. I'm fair-minded in my choice of reading.

I see Jesus as having these extraordinary amounts of converging lines of data to look at, you're able to attack historical Jesus from so many angles. I consider that extremely rare, and I do NOT think it's a coincidence. Here's the thing, I have faith that Moses parted the Red Sea but i do NOT believe I can present a historical argument for it. Jesus seems a little analogous to the Earth's goldilocks location, without it most of our cosmological observable knowledge would be impossible. As far as history from VERY long ago goes I believe that Jesus also sits in a goldilocks location for historical observation.

This is all your belief. Pure belief and nothing more. The mother of one of my friends is into New Age stuff. She tells me fairies exist. When she first told me that I laughed out loud thinking she was only joking. She then placed a thick book in front of me. The title was Fairyology or something like that. It was very thick (as thick as a good dictionary) and the title says Book 1. Haha. There were other books! She said there was a Book 2 which was even thicker. She explained that fairies were real. Again, it is all belief. Yours is a belief in Jesus as God and hers is a belief in fairies.

But I also am starting to believe more & more that you can only go back & forth with some people so many times before it's clear where both people stand, and that neither person will budge an inch. This one member in here, can't recall her name, at first I laughed when I saw her post a few times "Sorry we disagree, goodbye." But then I started thinking hey that's actually pretty wise of her, to know when the wall has been hit.

We go back and forth because so far, nobody has produced the evidence or reason for belief that I have been asking for since I started coming to CF. Absolutely nobody. Giving me a reading list is not giving me a reason or the evidence for belief in God. Why an answer is not forthcoming is something I can't understand. It leads me to believe that there is no evidence and no reason. Otherwise, by now, somebody is sure to have given me the reason for belief. So, I have to say that the reason we go back and forth is because nobody has given me a single reason for belief. Not one. Other people can be sidetracked. When you evade giving them a reason for your belief and you talk about other things, they soon forget their quest in the first place. And then you wipe your forehead with relief because you don't have to give that highly elusive reason for your belief. But I'm St Truth and I don't lose sight of my quest. I will tenaciously ask for your reason for belief. Even though I know it's a deep dark secret and no Christian will EVER give a reason for his belief.

My conclusion is every Christian probably has no good reason for belief. My reason is I was raised in a Christian family and brought up as an altar boy from my first consciousness so naturally, I'm a believer. It's not a good reason. It's a very bad reason. It does not show that God is real or my faith is real at all. Other Christians have probably roughly the same answer but they would rather not say it honestly because once they do, the truth is out - there is nothing reasonable at all about our Christian belief. They would rather keep it a secret so that at least there is a veneer of mystery surrounding their faith and why they believe. But I am different and I tell the whole truth for I am none other than...

St Truth
 
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Ed1wolf

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Ed1wolf said:
Yes it does if you look at the original Greek and Hebrew. But I am not saying that the writers understood exactly what they were writing at the time. It was only after we learned from God's other book, Nature, that we found out which definition of the Greek and Hebrew words we should use.

pos: Can you give examples?

Psalm 104:2 and Job 9:8 among others teach that the universe is expanding and the Hebrew word means a continuous expanding, just as science has discovered.

ed: Umm, parts of their histories are their own eyewitness accounts

pos: So are many other supernatural claims of other religions, cults, alien abductions etc.
All of them have serious defects that undermine their claims.

ed: especially Josephus and also their own historical research.

pos: Josephus has no eyewitness account, like you he has what he believe are eyewitness accounts, but like you no evidence
Uhh...yes he does, he was a commander in the Jewish army during the war against the Romans. IOW, he was there. And also most of history is based on second hand accounts, does that mean you don't believe in history?

ed: They are considered generally reliable historical documents and since the Bible was written even closer to the actual events then at the very least it should be considered slightly more reliable than Herodotus and Josephus.

pos: They were just re-hash of earlier accounts.
That is what most of history is.

pos: Joseph Smith claimed many things, I don't believe they are true either, but his accounts also have real place's. Smith himself obtained testimonies from eleven witnesses all of whom we have records of actually existing.
But I don't believe their supernatural claims either, even though there is vastly more evidence of eyewitness accounts from people that we knew existed.

Besides Joseph Smith being a known con-man by authorities at the time, the book of Mormon has been shown to be a rewrite of an 18th century historical novel. Such things did not exist in biblical times.

ed: There are many natural events that have occurred in history that cannot be verified either,

pos: Can you give one example ? where credible historians believe it really happened rather than saying 'it may have happened, but we would have to see complementary evidence' ?
The fact that Josephus was a commander in the Israeli army against the Romans.

ed: but if they come from a source that is recorded close to the events, historians consider it be much more likely to have actually occurred.

pos: Like Joseph Smith and the Mormons you mean? the closeness has nothing to do with the truths of the claims, especially fantastic ones.
Joseph Smith lived in the 19th century and writes about things that he claims took place in the Bronze Age in the Middle East and ancient America. Since he never existed in those two places, his book is refuted. But There is strong evidence that parts of the Bible were actually written in the Bronze Age IN the area that it describes, so it is much more likely to be accurate about that time period.

ed; The reason according to His word, He does not make it beyond doubt, is because He wants us trust Him by faith and not overwhelm our free will.

pos: Utter nonsense, There is a difference between trusting a god, and knowing one exists, as I have already said Adam & Eve knew god existed, yet still used their so called free will, Satan and myriads of angels also knew god existed and it still didn't stop them using their so called free will and follow another.
True, but in order to destroy evil forever (which is His goal for the universe) he needs beings that have a greater faith and trust than any of them had so that they become even stronger spiritually.

ed: Only through faith can we grow spiritually and that is one of the goals of His creating this type of universe.

pos: Faith being simply believing, the same can be said of anything one calls a god, right from some type of theism through to some kind of Gia concept.

Not biblical faith, biblical faith is based on evidence. Why do you think Jesus did all those miracles? Contrary to popular belief, the bible does not endorse blind faith.

pos: Again, how do you know it was created by a god?

See my earlier post of my cosmological argument.

ed: Art experts determine who painted a painting by studying the patterns and characteristics of the work and even what paint was used and how.

pos: Art is not claiming fantastic supernatural qualities.
No, but this how you determine the origin of things, ie you study their characteristics. This is done in art and science everyday.
 
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possibletarian

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Psalm 104:2 and Job 9:8 among others teach that the universe is expanding and the Hebrew word means a continuous expanding, just as science has discovered.

I've never heard such nonsense in my life. The word does not mean expanding at all, never mind continuous expanding. It clearly indicates a tent like thinking, a stretching, not to mention god fastens it to the outer limits of the earth. It bears absolutely no honest resemblance to what we now know.
Institute for biblical and scientific studies

Psalm 104 parallels the order of creation in Genesis one. The first verse and the first part of the second verse describe day one. Verses 2b-4 describes day two, and verses 5-9 describes day three. Psalm 104:2b says, "he stretches out the heavens like a tent." Herder comments, "They represent God as daily spreading it (heaven) out, and fastening it at the extremity of the horizon to the pillars of heaven, the mountains" (Perowne 1976, 235). Verse three says, "and he lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters." The Hebrew word for "upper chambers" is hylu which means "roof-chamber" (BDB 1980, 751). It is used in I Kings 17:19 and 23. In Nehemiah 3:31-32 it is used for a roof-chamber with walls over a gateway. It is also used in Solomon’s temple according to 2 Chron 3:9. In Psalm 104:13 it explains that the upper chambers contains water which God rains down upon the earth. The beams of the upper chambers are probably laid on the waters that are above the firmament to contain the waters for whenever God wants to let it rain; however, it could mean that the support beams of the firmament are founded upon the waters on earth. In Amos 9:6 the firmament is founded upon the earth.


All of them have serious defects that undermine their claims

And they say exactly the same about yours.

Uhh...yes he does, he was a commander in the Jewish army during the war against the Romans. IOW, he was there.

He came around 90 years later so couldn't possibly be an eyewitness.
Many scholars believe his work is likely changed and messed with by Christians.
Josephus and Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Question

And also most of history is based on second hand accounts,

Of course, but most of history does not have fantastic supernatural accounts like all religions and fantasy stories.

does that mean you don't believe in history?

Well when it has people virgin births, walking on water, flying around on clouds, Turning water into wine i treat it with scepticism, just like all other religions with fantastic claims.

That is what most of history is.

Yes but when the fate of mankind hangs in the balance there is a greater need to verify it's truth, and as yet you have failed to do that. Though of course it's not the only religion to do that. Christianity claims are not just of the past they are today and every day, we should be able to verify a living god today with absolutely no question of whether one exists or not. Sadly we seem to rely on 2,000 year old unverifiable accounts.

Besides Joseph Smith being a known con-man by authorities at the time,

That's exactly what they said of jesus and his followers at the time.

the book of Mormon has been shown to be a rewrite of an 18th century historical novel.

Which one ?

The fact that Josephus was a commander in the Israeli army against the Romans.

And ?

Joseph Smith lived in the 19th century and writes about things that he claims took place in the Bronze Age in the Middle East and ancient America. Since he never existed in those two places, his book is refuted. But There is strong evidence that parts of the Bible were actually written in the Bronze Age IN the area that it describes, so it is much more likely to be accurate about that time period.

The Mormons would disagree. Personally i think both are fantasy.

True, but in order to destroy evil forever (which is His goal for the universe) he needs beings that have a greater faith and trust than any of them had so that they become even stronger spiritually.

Why not simply not allow it in the first place, why would they need to become stronger ? After hardly anyone who lived in those days would even consider a world without at least a god.

Not biblical faith, biblical faith is based on evidence.

Really, what evidence? so far I have seen none.

Why do you think Jesus did all those miracles?

How, apart from blind faith do you believe he did them, many religions claim great miracles for their gods.

Contrary to popular belief, the bible does not endorse blind faith.

Great stuff, so there should be heaps of everyday conclusive evidence then. I look forward to you pointing it out.

See my earlier post of my cosmological argument.

Yes you keep saying this, but sadly you have not provided any evidence at all.

No, but this how you determine the origin of things, ie you study their characteristics. This is done in art and science everyday.

It's easier to make a god of your choice in the fashion of what you see around you, like St Truth showed you it's relatively easy in afterthought and observation to create a god who fits what you see around you.

What we need is evidence not word salad.

You claimed to be a scientist, what kind of scientist are you ?
 
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Dirk1540

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Hi,

It doesn't matter whether they are violent and angry witnessing es or mere intellectual hostility. The fact is there was neither even though tall tales and untrue tales were told. You kept saying that Ehrman misunderstood the 1st century and transported his idea of the 21st century to the 1st century but you are the one doing that. In the 1st century, it's an indisputable fact (confirmed by both Christians ie the early church fathers and by the non-Christian Josephus that the early Christians in Palestine were extremely poor and illiterate). These are the only ones who could have contested the claims of the Gospels but they couldn't have done it even if they wanted to because:

1. They didn't have access to the Gospels which were written by Hellenistic Christians in Greek and they were illiterate and in any event, they had no access to the books of the Hellenistic Christians since there was a rift between the Pauline Christians and the Christians who followed the original Apostles.

2. By the time the Gospels were written (after 70 AD), these Jewish Christians were dispersed because of the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70. They were gone and even if there were still some who knew Greek and knew the Gospels were wrong, what could they do? Post their views in a blog? Write to the local newspapers? In the 1st Century AD, there were very few things you could do. You couldn't write a book because that would be too difficult and expensive. Even if one of them did write a book to counter the Gospels, the book would be long gone today. But it's unlikely they would have gone through such lengths. They were a small group even during the time of Paul and a very poor group and at the most, they would probably dismiss the Gospels as yet another lie of the Hellenistic Christians.

But historically, it was highly unlikely they had access to the gospels in order to counter them.

What about the Romans? Your example of Ronald Reagan is wrong. We know that the Romans didn't even notice Jesus. The historian Josephus did not even mention Jesus as a person at all. The only time he mentioned Jesus was when he spoke about how poor the Christians were and he called the Christians 'followers of Jesus'. This is something we Christians find hard to understand. That's because to us, Jesus is such an important figure. We believe the miracles he performed and the claim in the Gospels that everyone had heard of him. So we think that if there is any false reporting of Jesus, the whole world would jump. But it wasn't like that at all. Nobody noticed Jesus. There is even no record of Jesus being crucified although there was another Jesus 100 years before our Lord's time who was crucified. Because of the absence of any reference to Jesus, some scholars think Jesus was just a legend created from the memory of the real Jesus who was crucified for treason 100 years before our Lord's time. But we are not talking about the historicity of Jesus. I'm using this fact that there was zero account of Jesus among historians and record keepers to show you that it's wrong to assume that any false reporting of Jesus would have attracted a backlash.



Bad analogy again. Bill Buckner is probably known to people who know about baseball. I don't know a thing about baseball because civilised people only play cricket. But Jesus was not a known person, as the absence of any historical record of him shows. See my comment above on how unknown and insignificant a person Jesus was.

Ehrman does not say Jesus was a fraud. He says Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot and history tells us that around the time of Jesus, there were many apocalyptic zealots who were crucified by the Romans for treason. An apocalyptic zealot was one who was zealous in getting the Romans out of Israel, the way the Muslim zealots want to throw the US army out of Saudi Arabia even though there is a huge difference in that the US army are welcome by Saudi. An apocalyptic zealot wanted the Romans out. Hence in Jesus' prophecies in the Synoptics (NEVER in John), Jesus speaks of the coming of the Son of Man on a cloud with the angels to rule Israel. Jesus promised that this would take place in the lifetime of the hearers in the 1st century.

Ehrman made no decision as to whether the Son of Man was Jesus or another person. It can be either. Notice that Jesus speaks of the Son of Man in the third person. It's unclear if he was thinking of himself or a different person. But whatever it was, if Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot, that would be in line with historical facts and it would explain why the Synoptics seem to talk of an earthly kingdom. John, which was written much much later by some Hellenistic Christian, spiritualises everything so that the earthly kingdom of the typical apocalyptic zealot is now changed to a spiritual kingdom. All the later books do that too including the non-canonical books.



Hedrick is a true scholar and a very nice chap. He's a Sunday School teacher who teaches people my age and so he is more patient and understanding. I intend to read some of his recommendations. I can buy any number of books I like online because my mum gives me her credit card number. I usually will read the review first. I'm very careful not to buy a book that is purely devotional. I hate devotional books. They aren't scholastic and I can't read past the first page. But it's not that I'm opposed to fundamentalist books. I have read quite a few books by people from a super fundamentalist seminary - the Dallas Theological Seminary. Some of their books can be quite scholastic even if I can see the flaws of their argument. I'm fair-minded in my choice of reading.



This is all your belief. Pure belief and nothing more. The mother of one of my friends is into New Age stuff. She tells me fairies exist. When she first told me that I laughed out loud thinking she was only joking. She then placed a thick book in front of me. The title was Fairyology or something like that. It was very thick (as thick as a good dictionary) and the title says Book 1. Haha. There were other books! She said there was a Book 2 which was even thicker. She explained that fairies were real. Again, it is all belief. Yours is a belief in Jesus as God and hers is a belief in fairies.



We go back and forth because so far, nobody has produced the evidence or reason for belief that I have been asking for since I started coming to CF. Absolutely nobody. Giving me a reading list is not giving me a reason or the evidence for belief in God. Why an answer is not forthcoming is something I can't understand. It leads me to believe that there is no evidence and no reason. Otherwise, by now, somebody is sure to have given me the reason for belief. So, I have to say that the reason we go back and forth is because nobody has given me a single reason for belief. Not one. Other people can be sidetracked. When you evade giving them a reason for your belief and you talk about other things, they soon forget their quest in the first place. And then you wipe your forehead with relief because you don't have to give that highly elusive reason for your belief. But I'm St Truth and I don't lose sight of my quest. I will tenaciously ask for your reason for belief. Even though I know it's a deep dark secret and no Christian will EVER give a reason for his belief.

My conclusion is every Christian probably has no good reason for belief. My reason is I was raised in a Christian family and brought up as an altar boy from my first consciousness so naturally, I'm a believer. It's not a good reason. It's a very bad reason. It does not show that God is real or my faith is real at all. Other Christians have probably roughly the same answer but they would rather not say it honestly because once they do, the truth is out - there is nothing reasonable at all about our Christian belief. They would rather keep it a secret so that at least there is a veneer of mystery surrounding their faith and why they believe. But I am different and I tell the whole truth for I am none other than...

St Truth
You're conflating what history shows us was accepted as being true (even though it was in bold violation of Jewish belief...barring a resurrection), with the ability to get ahold of and change a document. Again, these are events and movements that can not be minimized down into just being called 'A document.' On top of that textual criticism DOES show us that documents have been tampered with.

You're not doing yourself any favors by claiming that it's possible that Jesus never existed, or that the Jesus of the Gospels was actually a Jesus from 100 years prior...then proceeding to go on elaborate historical inferences of your own as if you respect the data. If anything your 2 claims of a possibly non-existing Jesus or a 70 BC Gospel Jesus would be more consistent with a person who has very low regard for historicity in general, or even a person who claims that history is all a lie.
 
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