Are There Credible Witnesses to the Resurrection, Part II

mark kennedy · Mar 4, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Ok, we were discussing Luke. Any questions? Yes, here in the front in the cave man outfit. Yes, you. Your question?

'Ugh!', says the caveman. Puzzled and suddenly feeling a little awkward, doubtingmerle says, 'yes well...'

Where does Paul ever claim that Jesus rose in the same body he lived in? We have been over this for months, and nobody ever showed a verse that said that.

The New Testament is clear that Christ arose in the same body that died and was buried:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō) the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

Specifically, he was buried and rose again.

And that he was buried, and that he 'rose again' (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō) the third day according to the scriptures (1 Cor. 15:4)

Not given a new celestial body in heavens but the body that was buried, 'rose again'.

Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. (Rom. 4:25)

Rose again (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō), is frequently used in the NT in the sense of "raising”…of Christ's "raising" the dead, Mat 11:5; Mar 5:41; Luke 7:14; John 12:1, 9, 17;…of the resurrection of believers, Mat 27:52; John 5:21; 1Cr 15:15, 16, 29, 32, 35, 42-44, 52; 2Cr 1:9; 4:14; of unbelievers, Mat 12:42 Mat 12:41, (Vines New Testament Dictionary)

The New Testament church spanned the 1st century world from Jerusalem to Greece and Rome who's witness was founded on the testimony of the Apostles regarding the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. The witness of resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers at the return of Christ is the foundation of the gospel. Always has been.

Christ 'rose again', ἐγείρω, is used in multiple forms indicating the same body that died, rose again:

Rose again (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō) to arouse from the sleep of death, to recall the dead to life:

with νεκρούς added, John 5:21; Acts 26:8; 2 Corinthians 1:9.
ἔγειρε [Rec. ἐγεῖραι) arise, Mark 5:41;
passive ἐγείρου, Luke 8:54;
ἐγέρθητι, arise from death, Luke 7:14;
ἐγείρονται οἱ νεκροί, Matthew 11:5; Luke 7:22; Luke 20:37; 1 Corinthians 15:15, 16, 29, 32 (Isaiah 26:19);
ἐγείρειν ἐκ νεκρῶν, from the company of the dead; John 12:1, 9; Acts 3:15; Acts 4:10; Acts 13:30; Romans 4:24; Romans 8:11; Romans 10:9; Galatians 1:1; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; Hebrews 11:19; 1 Peter 1:21; passive, Romans 6:4, 9; Romans 7:4; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 20; John 2:22; John 21:14; Mark 6:16; Luke 9:7;
ἀπό τῶν νεκρῶν, Matthew 14:2; Matthew 27:64; Matthew 28:7 (νεκρόν ἐκ θανάτου καί ἐξ ᾅδου, Sir. 48:5; for הֵקִיץ, 2 Kings 4:31);
ἐγείρειν simply: Acts 5:30; Acts 10:40; Acts 13:37; 1 Corinthians 6:14; 2 Corinthians 4:14;
passive, Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:23; Luke 24:6; Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15:4, etc. (Thayer's Greek Lexicon)

The entire New Testament is saying that, you read it six times and missed that core doctrine?

Uh, no, there is no rule of law that says everything written 30 years ago is true unless proven otherwise. The legal principle here is that, although normally a document needs testimony about its origin before being accepted as evidence, originals of ancient documents can be accepted into evidence without a witness to the writing, provided there was a proper chain of custody. Hence, a company ledger from 50 years ago that has been kept in the archives as the ledger can be admitted to court, even though no living witness can testify of the time it was written. But accepting something into evidence is not the same as saying that it must be assumed to be true. See Critique of John Warwick Montgomery's Arguments .

There is a chain of custody, the living witness and legacy of the Apostles, the church. We are not talking about a single ledger, we are talking about a large selection of the best preserved historical documents from history.

In your case, you don't have the original of either Mark or Papias, so the rule does not apply. The rule applies to originals. And if you try to submit the copies, you have no record of who was copying either book or how accurate they were in copying. So no, you have not proven that these books are what you claim, and even if you should prove that, you have not proven that Papias is talking about the particular book we call Mark, or that Mark gives clear evidence of a resurrection.

We do have an extraordinarily well preserved representation of the autograph, with 99.5% accuracy:

Norman Geisler stated that "Textual scholars Westcott and Hort estimated that only one in sixty of these variants has significance. This would leave a text 98.3% percent pure." This means that out of the total number of variants within the New Testament, the text is 99% accurate and clean from any major doctrinal errors. In comparison to other ancient books, the New Testament is by far the most accurate. For instance, Bruce Metzger estimated, "that the Mahabharata of Hinduism is copied with only about 90% accuracy and Homer's Iliad with about 95%" (Geisler, 1991, p533). By comparison he estimated the New Testament is about 99.5% accurate. (The Historical Reliability of the New Testament)

I am sorry, you misunderstood what I was saying. When Papias claims that Mark wrote a book, we have no way of knowing for sure what book Mark is talking about. You changed that to the claim that we don't know which Mark he is talking about. That is a different claim.

I understood completely, I just think it's a load of flapdoodle. We know exactly who he is talking about, don't be ridiculous.

Right, and as I explained in my talk on Mark, that is because Mark told them the Son of Man would come in their lifetime. Mark was wrong.

What Mark says is that the generation that sees this:

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven. Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. (Mark 13:24-30)

You have the cart before the horse here, and as usual, you are completely oblivious to the context. The generation that sees this at the end of the tribulation, the heavens shaken, the Son of Man coming in power and glory and the translation of believers. That is the generation that will see the prophecy fulfilled completely.

A rather odd place for Mark to stop from our perspective, without going into the resurrection stories.

Well Sinaiticus and Vaticanus don’t have it but Vaticanus has a place for it. Two versions of the ending circulated for hundreds of years:

In the fourth century, for example, two of the fathers, Eusebius and Jerome, wrote that almost all Greek manuscripts of the New Testament end at verse 8. Did they know those other endings existed? Yes they did. They knew they existed. In the second century, Justin Martyr and Tatian knew about other endings. Irenaeus, also, Irenaeus is in 150 to 200, he knows about this long ending because he quotes verse 19 from it. They knew these endings existed. They existed early. But even by the fourth century, Eusebius says, “The Greek manuscripts do not include these endings...the originals.”

I think the original was damaged and subsequent copies didn't have it for that reason. I've been on the bubble for some time and I've always thought what happened to the ending we will never know for sure. However, this commentary made me think and oh btw, it does end with the resurrection it just doesn't fill in any details about the appearances of Jesus:

Chapter 12, verse 17, when Jesus had escaped the confrontation with the Jewish leaders, chapter 12 and verse 17, “He wisely answers, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, to God the things that are God’s,’ and they were amazed at Him.” Chapter 15 verse 5, Jesus stands before Pilate and doesn’t say anything. “So Pilate was amazed.” Chapter 16, verse 5, “Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe...you read it...and they were amazed.” Could I retitle this book, The Amazing Jesus? What else do you expect Mark to say to finish then that the women fled trembling, and astonishment gripped them and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid?” This is absolutely consistent with how Mark ends everything. This is his pattern and this is the most amazing thing of all. He’s used this all the way along to punctuate absolutely everything. And he moves from one point of amazement to the next. So it ends where it ought to end. It’s not incomplete. It ends where he loves to end. It ends with amazement and wonder at the resurrection. (The Fitting End to Mark’s Gospel, Mark 16:9-20, John MacArthur)

But from Mark's perspective it may have been quite reasonable. I contend that the disciples and Paul were not teaching a bodily resurrection, so Mark needs to tread carefully. If he says the evidence was clear, everybody will ask him why nobody ever heard about it. So Mark leaves the testimony to an unidentified man who tells women who did not tell anybody else. Second, he portrays the disciples as clueless on what was going on, so no wander they were not talking about it. Mark hints by claiming an unidentified man said he rose, but as nobody knew the man's name, nobody could really follow up on this.

I don't know what this commentary is based on but it seem pretty aimless. Why details are so sparse has more to do with the brevity of Mark, only 16 chapters, compared to Luke and Matthew that both weigh in at 28 chapters. The emphasis in Mark is on the ministry of Jesus culminating in his atoning sacrifice on the cross:

Whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:44,45)

Any Christian hearing the scroll read knows about the resurrection, it was the Apostolic creed. What they wouldn't have known as much about is the three year ministry leading up to the resurrection. The various problems are not a major problem for me and given a fair comparison to any historical narrative from antiquity:

Homer’s Iliad is the second best preserved document from antiquity, there are 643. The New Testament is represented by 25,000 copies. The history of the Golic Wars in the first century B.C. There are ten existing manuscripts of that, the oldest one is a thousand years after Caesar wrote…Herodotus could be the father of historians, he was the son of the first historian. He wrote in the fifth century before Christ. We have eight manuscripts of Herodotus’ history and the earliest is 1300 years after he wrote…the history of the Peloponnesian war written by Thucydides, we have eight manuscripts of that, the earliest is 1300 years later. (The Fitting End to Mark’s Gospel, Mark 16:9-20, John MacArthur)

Well no, I explained in my talk on Matthew why he could hardly be an eyewitness. And as for John, he is the topic of my next lecture, so we will see about that next.

Matthew was an Apostle, we know a good deal about him:

Matthew, called Levi, was a Jew of Galilee, but of what city is uncertain. He held the place of publican, or tax-gatherer, under the Roman government, and his office seems to have consisted in collecting the taxes within his district, as well as the duties and customs levied on goods and persons, passing in and out of his district and province, across the lake of Genesareth…He is generally allowed to have written first, of all the evangelists; but whether in the Hebrew or the Greek language, or in both, the learned are not agreed, nor is it material to our purpose to inquire; the genuineness of our present Greek gospel being sustained by satisfactory evidence. The precise time when he wrote is also uncertain, the several dates given to it among learned men, varying from A.D. 37 to A.D. 64. The earlier date, however, is argued with greater force, from the improbability that the Christians would be left for several years without a general and authentic history of our Savior's ministry; from the evident allusions which it contains to a state of persecution in the church at the time it was written; from the titles of sanctity ascribed to Jerusalem, and a higher veneration testified for the temple than the comparative gentleness with which Herod's character and conduct are dealt with, that bad prince probably being still in power; and from the frequent mention of Pilate, as still governor of Judea. (Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf 1846)

OK. Then you might want to go back and read the transcripts of my lectures on Matthew and Mark. There is a reason why I question their testimony.

If you had some kind of primary sources I might, as it stands, I don't see the point.

The internal clues of the book of Galatians indicate it was written by Paul, and the internal clues of all of Paul's books together indicate they were written in 40 AD - 65 AD. So there is a reason why we accept these dates.

And there is a reason critical scholars date the gospels later.

I've never seen anything conclusive from any, of the many discussions I've seen on the subject. The nearest I can figure is that there is no denying the living witness of the churches he founded.

Uh, actually, this is not what happened. Ramsay's quest was in regard to whether Paul went to North Galatia or South Galatia, and was not an attempt to put the author of Acts on trial. See Thoughts from a Sandwich: Sir William Mitchell Ramsay

Actually the primary question was the date of Acts:

It was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with the fixed idea that the work was a second-century composition and never relying upon its evidence as trustworthy for first-century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations. But there remained still one serious objection to accepting it as a first-century work. (St. Paul, The Traveler and the Roman Citizen, William Ramsey)

That question was the Northern vs. Southern Galatia issue. That was the final obstacle in rejecting the Tübingen theory and accepting Acts as a first century work. Sir William Ramsey rejects the Tübingen theory that places the date of the original writing sometime in the second century. Instead Ramsey found the book of Acts as an "authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor". He tells us:

“That Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historical sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely as much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians” (St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, William Ramsey).

Ah, Luke had sources? Any good ancient historian would name his sources. He would tell us why he considers them reliable and what they said. When encountering differing views, a good historian shows that other views exist and why he considers one view most credible. We have none of this in Luke.

Any freshman English Composition student would cite their sources, ancient writers not so much.

How does Luke know all he says it true? He does not tell us.

Of course he does:

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)

He tells us these things were delivered 'unto us', from those who were, 'from the beginning were eyewitnesses'. He had ample opportunity to speak with Paul, the twelve Apostles, any number of the original 70 who were with Jesus, 'from the beginning'. Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene both are said to have relocated to Ephesus at some point, as did the Apostle John who pastured the church for some time. Luke had opportunity to talk to all these people and more. His sources were the living witness of the church and Luke makes that crystal clear.

Actually, no my date for Acts was not at random. I gave you my reasons. And most critical scholarship basically agrees with me.

Modern scholarship has told us a lot of things for a long time. What they do is invariably move the date to the left by hundreds of years for dubious and highly subjective reasons. Just as Ramsey found they were wrong there is a recurring theme resounding in our time that the dates these critical scholars are setting are just plain wrong.

If Luke wants to be respected as a historian, then yes, he is required to tell us his sources. Otherwise, we have no idea where it came from.

That's odd since you rarely cite any source material, when you do it's seldom more then a title or a link.

I doubt if you even read the article I posted on Luke and Josephus. This simply is not the argument Carrier is making there. Do you care to actually read it before commenting?

I read a pretty interesting exchange where you thought someone copied from Josephus when there is no actual evidence and Luke wrote his Gospel account decades before Josephus started his scrolls.

Excuse me, but the books I mentioned were books like the forerunners of the Gospel of the Nazoreans and the Gospel of the Ebionites. From what we know about them, they are very much like Matthew, and, if anything, they tend to stress the humanity over his divinity. That is the opposite of Gnosticism, which tended to downplay his humanity.

The Carrier thesis portrays Paul as presenting a celestial Jesus, which would have been Docetism, Gnosticism or some other pagan mystery religion mythology that the church has categorically rejected it's entire history.

If Paul was the primary source for Acts, why does it conflict with the epistles of Paul? Why does Galatians say he went off and got his gospel on his own, but Acts says he got if from the disciples?

Paul is talking about the authentication of his Apostleship, the gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit with signs, miracles and mighty deeds. Paul would have meet the Apostles, or at least some of them at the Council of Jerusalem. They didn't quiz him on his knowledge of the ministry of Jesus. The confirming proof of Paul's Apostleship was churches and manifestations across Phoenicia, Cyprus and Galatia. There's no conflict there and what I've seen of your approach to apparent contradictions I guess I shouldn't be surprised your begging the question of proof again.

I am a little confused why you say this, because I included a paragraph explaining why I don't believe in Q, and gave you a supporting link.

I'm frankly not interested in why you don't believe in the Q document, there isn't a shred of evidence it ever existed. What is more Matthew didn't need to copy from Mark, Luke didn't either. John very seldom overlaps since he spent most of his time talking about the last three days and personal dialogues of Jesus rather then the fulfillment of prophecy and detailed accounts so rich in the synoptic Gospels.

Are you even trying to understand me?

I understand you just fine, I just disagree.

There is a reason for positing Q, and many conservative scholars agree that Matthew and Luke used Q. See, for instance, The Synoptic Problem, where a Dallas Seminary Professor argues for Q.

I, however, see a different way of explaining the synoptics. I think Luke actually used Matthew. If there was no Q, then, it sure looks like Luke knew about Matthew and blatantly and knowingly opposed him, without ever trying to reconcile the two. So if Luke thought Matthew could be ignored, why should we trust Matthew?

I think the church heard the living witnesses of the resurrection for decades. In the sixties they were losing Apostles and it became necessary to preserve the Apostolic witness since they were not going to be around forever. I see absolutely no reason for Q, whatsoever and if you have an argument for a late date or an apparent contradiction I'm all ears. Otherwise you should know, your dealing with an old school evangelical here, what I'm wondering is should I trust what your telling me at all.

If you trust Matthew, then yes, Joseph and Mary were Judean and had relocated in Galilee. But if you trust Luke, they were Galilean, and had only been at Bethlehem on a "business trip."

Do you even know what a Judean is?

Son of David (Luke 3:31), son of Judah…Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham (Luke 3:34).

The House of David was promised the throne in Jerusalem forever. The whole point of the two genealogies in Matthew and Luke is that Jesus was from the tribe of Judah and the House of David. No one ever suggests they are Galilean, even though them fleeing to Egypt and settling in Galilee was prophesied.

Very creative. Here is the text:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment, when Quirin'i-us was governor of Syria.
And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. (Luke 2:1-3)

There is no question in my mind that this refers to the census under Quirinius, in 6 AD, and hence, we have a contradiction with Matthew which puts it at 4 BC.

This point has been answered with exegetical notes, I return my former answer back.

The adjective protos may mean “first” or “earlier”, “former” and thus:

First census” must be taken in it’s Hellenistic connotations asthe first of two, and then we must expand the clause a little.”This census was before the census which Quirinius, governor of Syria, made”

…Thus Luke recognizes that the well known census under Quirinius took place in A.D. 6-7. He is not speaking of that one, however, the census of which he is speaking took place before (proto) that one. (The Census and Quirinius: Luke 2:2. Wayne Brindle)

Jesus told his disciples to tarry (literally sit) in Jerusalem. Yes, the word is sometimes used in a phrase such as "sit on the throne", in which case the sitting is obviously metaphorical. Obviously, if a King is said to sit on the throne for years, it does not mean that the King never got up to use the "porcelain throne". But in Luke, I find no evidence that "tarry" is metaphorical. The obvious meaning is to stay in Jerusalem, which contradicts Matthew that says to leave and go to Galilee.

Here it means reside as opposed to returning to their homes in Galilee. No where does Jesus tell them not to go to Galilee, in fact we know they were directed to return there and met him on some mountain. Most likely the mount of transfiguration and given the thriving ministry he had there probably the site where he appeared to as many as 500 at one time. There no hint of a contradiction there, it's just you setting up a straw man and ignoring the proper exposition of the text given the context and the exegesis of the word for, 'tarry'. Baseless as always.

OK, that is all for now. Thanks for coming. Next time we will take up John. Then I will finish this series with a talk on the Early Church Fathers. I will stay for a few questions, and then move on to other topics. Please feel free to leave you comments and questions on this thread.

From the theater to the park, at the bar and in the bakery, he continues to mount his soapbox at will and seemingly at random. I wonder at the wisdom of following him around like this, who's behavior is more questionable, him for doing this or me following him around in a loincloth, holding a butterfly. More and more I worry, where is he trying to take me. Curious, very curious indeed.

doubtingmerle · Mar 5, 2017

Good evening. Let's continue on our search, not having found the evidence I would want in Matthew, Mark or Luke. We must leave no stone unturned, so tonight let's look at John.

Once again, we find the author of this book does not identify himself. He does however, hint at a source. John 21:24 says, "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true." In context, this refers to a mysterious "disciple whom Jesus loved" that appears only in the book of John. We don't know who he was, but the book of John claims him as a source. Some have claimed he is John, but they cannot prove that.

Note that the author is not saying "I am the disciple whom Jesus loved". No, he says "he is the disciple that testifies these things", that is the writer of John claims to have a witness, a source, the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Again we will call the author by the name John since that is what everybody calls him, but we do not know the author's real name.

Neither do we know when the book was written. Since the author appears to be aware of the other books including Luke (and the other books appear to not know of John), and since the concepts expressed are quite advanced from Mark, critical scholars date John after the other gospels, typically in the range of 90 -120 AD.

John has a refreshing way of writing. Rather than copy Mark with changes, as others appeared to be doing, John apparently reads the others, decides he can do better, and starting with a plain piece of papyrus, writes a different gospel. John simply ignores much of the other gospels up until passion week. Instead he inserts new stories. In John, for the first time, we learn that Jesus turned water into wine, that the first person getting into a certain pool after an angel stirred the water was healed, and that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. But are these stories true?

Let's break here, and talk about the new stories. Mark had let the cat out of the bag. Not only were people copying Mark with changes, but people started to come up with all sorts of different stories about Jesus. In the Infancy Gospel of John we learn:
-

At the age of 5, Jesus formed twelve sparrows out of mud, clapped his hands and told the birds: "Off you go!". They flew away. Later, Jesus collected some water. Another boy, Annas, scattered the water. Jesus cursed Annas and he instantly withered up. Later, Jesus and Zeno were playing on the roof of a house. Zeno fell to the ground and was killed. Jesus restored him to life At the age of 8, he planted a single seed of wheat. It yielded 100 bushels of grain. He distributed most of it to the beggars of the Village. (See The Gospels of Mary and Judas. The infancy gospels of Thomas and James )

In the Infancy Gospel of James we learn that Joseph won Mary's hand in marriage because a dove flew out of his staff. We learn that Jesus was born in a cave where Salome performed an exam to prove Mary a virgin, losing her hand in the process, but it was miraculously restored. In the Gospel of Judas we find that Judas was the good guy, and did what Jesus wanted. And in the Gospel of Peter we read, that the cross itself follows Jesus out of the tomb, and answers a question. (See Gospel of Peter - Wikipedia )

I mention these stories, not because I think they are true, but to illustrate the new phenomenon of people trying to outdo each other in their tales of Jesus. I think most Christians will agree that many of these new stories are simply wrong. And yet a new cottage industry has sprung up, and people are busy spinning tales about Jesus. In light of that, when we start to see new stories like we read in John that have never been told before, should we believe them?

Not only are the stories that John tells very different, but the message is very different. Whereas the other gospels have Jesus dispensing simple folk wisdom, as in the Sermon on the Mount, the book of John really has no moral teaching other than to love. Instead, we find John's Jesus giving endless lectures on theology and his own greatness, proclaiming himself the way, the truth and the life; declaring himself the light of the world; and even claiming "before Abraham was I am". Where is any of that in the other gospels? One can understand how different authors might emphasize different things, but how can the other three authors show no interest in these grand statements of Jesus at all, while John shows no interest in their folk morality? It sure looks like people are using Jesus to claim he said what they wanted him to say, rather than accurately reporting what happened.

And what about the signs? Mark had reported that Jesus gave no signs. Matthew ups that to one, saying that they Jesus gave them the sign of the prophet Jonah. But when we get to John, we read that Jesus gave many signs. So how many signs were there? Was the story simply developing with time?

With this in mind, we turn to John's account of the resurrection, the richest story so far. John writes:

The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. (John 20:1-2)

And immediately we find a discrepancy. Although the other accounts say Mary came with other women (and disagree on who she came with) John has her coming seemingly alone. And John says nothing of the man (grave robber?) that Mark reports in the tomb, or the angel of Matthew, or the two men in shining garments (Elton John look alikes?) of Luke, but instead finds Mary seeing the stone rolled away, and running away. Whereas Mark says she did not tell anybody, and Matthew says she ran with great joy to tell the disciples, John has her run to tell the disciples she does not know what happened. So did she run with fear and tell nobody, did she run with joy to say he was risen, or did she run in confusion and say she did not know?

Notice also, that in Matthew, Mary meets the risen Jesus on the way to the disciples, and holds a conversation with him. But in John she gets to Peter, and says she does not know what happened to the body. If Matthew is correct, she had just seen Jesus. Why didn't Mary know?

Later, we again find Mary still confused about Jesus. We read she returned to the tomb to investigate:

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,
And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. (John 20:11-13)

Wait, Matthew told us she saw Jesus when leaving the tomb, and yet John has her coming back to the tomb looking for a body that she cannot find. Again, why did not Mary know?The story gets stranger:

And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John 20:14-17)

Wait. According to Matthew she had just seen Jesus and talked to him, after knowing him for years. And yet here she is searching in the garden for a body, and does not even recognize Jesus when she sees him. John and Matthew conflict.

We move on and find Jesus meeting up with 10 of the disciples on Easter evening, in a story that closely parallels Luke. The problem is, Luke specifically says that there were 11 disciples there, John says there were 10. John says that the eleventh, Thomas, does not see Jesus until a week after Easter. So did Thomas see Jesus on Easter, as Luke records, or did he miss the first meeting, and see Jesus for the first time a week later?

With that, John concludes his book:

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book:
But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:30-31)

But wait, no he doesn't! He pops right back with another story of Jesus and the disciples on a fishing adventure before ending the book a second time with a similar ending. Many have observed that this chapter must have been a later addition. Somebody just came along and had another good story, and tacked it unto the end of the book. Fine, but is that accurate history?

So I see a lot of tales being added in John, with no effort to correlate with that which was written before. The contradictions are glaring. Can this be history?

If I am to believe in a resurrection, I will need good evidence. I am not finding it in these anonymous, conflicting books.

OK, let's take a break, and I will be back to take some more questions after the intermission.

mark kennedy · Mar 5, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Good evening. Let's continue on our search, not having found the evidence I would want in Matthew, Mark or Luke. We must leave no stone unturned, so tonight let's look at John.

I found plenty, you found what you had already determined.

Once again, we find the author of this book does not identify himself. He does however, hint at a source. John 21:24 says, "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true." In context, this refers to a mysterious "disciple whom Jesus loved" that appears only in the book of John. We don't know who he was, but the book of John claims him as a source. Some have claimed he is John, but they cannot prove that.

No one seriously questioned the Gospel according to John was authored by the Apostle John. He wrote it during his time in Ephesus, John emphasizes his relationship with Jesus as well as how Jesus related to others. Unlike modern skeptics the early church knew the author was the Apostle John:

Early traditions help to identify the author as John. Irenaeus, a disciple of John's disciple Polycarp, is of the earliest extant sources to associate John with the fourth Gospel. Like the other Gospels, the title "According to John" (KATA IWANNHN) is found in the earliest manuscripts. (BLB)

Note that the author is not saying "I am the disciple whom Jesus loved". No, he says "he is the disciple that testifies these things", that is the writer of John claims to have a witness, a source, the disciple whom Jesus loved.

John sometimes spoke of himself in the second person in the Gospel, there's no real question that the author is the disciple who was an eye witness of these things.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe. (John 19:35)

This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. (John 21:24)

Neither do we know when the book was written. Since the author appears to be aware of the other books including Luke (and the other books appear to not know of John), and since the concepts expressed are quite advanced from Mark, critical scholars date John after the other gospels, typically in the range of 90 -120 AD.

He is mentioned repeatedly in the other books. John and James, his older brother (Acts 12:2), were known as “the sons of Zebedee” (Matt. 10:2–4), and Jesus gave them the name “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). John was an apostle (Luke 6:12–16) and one of the 3 most intimate associates of Jesus (along with Peter and James—cf. Matt. 17:1; 26:37), being an eyewitness to and participant in Jesus’ earthly ministry (1 John 1:1–4). After Christ’s ascension, John became a “pillar” in the Jerusalem church (Gal. 2:9). He ministered with Peter (Acts 3:1; 4:13; 8:14)

John has a refreshing way of writing. Rather than copy Mark with changes, as others appeared to be doing, John apparently reads the others, decides he can do better, and starting with a plain piece of papyrus, writes a different gospel. John simply ignores much of the other gospels up until passion week. Instead he inserts new stories. In John, for the first time, we learn that Jesus turned water into wine, that the first person getting into a certain pool after an angel stirred the water was healed, and that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. But are these stories true?

You seem to think there were libraries and internet cafes all over the ancient world. If John heard the other scrolls read they wouldn't have been new information for him. John was with Jesus from the beginning, he is not trying to write a better Gospel, he is simply sharing the Gospel in a Pastoral way. John is theologically rich, spending a great deal of time on the ministry of the Holy Spirit after the ascension as related by Christ himself. John apparently knew the High Priest, and Peter who earlier had tried to take on a Roman Legion was scared to death by a little girl:

Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he also went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. But Peter stood outside at the door. Then the disciple who was known to the high priest went out and spoke to the doorkeeper, and brought Peter in. At this, the servant girl watching the door said to Peter, “Aren’t you also one of this man’s disciples?” “I am not,” he answered. (John 18:15-17)

Ever wonder how we know what happened at the trial? It's because John was there, the other Apostles apparently fled. He was also present at the cross and one of the first to see Jesus alive after the resurrection.

Let's break here, and talk about the new stories....

Not really into heretical literature, I prefer Grecko Roman mythology myself. Free style Gnostics don't interest me much.

I mention these stories, not because I think they are true, but to illustrate the new phenomenon of people trying to outdo each other in their tales of Jesus. I think most Christians will agree that many of these new stories are simply wrong. And yet a new cottage industry has sprung up, and people are busy spinning tales about Jesus. In light of that, when we start to see new stories like we read in John that have never been told before, should we believe them?

Being accepted in the canon required a good deal more then a creative flair. Apostolic authority and well established recognition among the churches from Syria to Rome for hundreds of years. You seem to have completely overlooked the purpose and true history of these records. For one thing they were read to the congregation, if another congregation wanted a copy they had to spring for a papyrus scroll which wasn't exactly cheap. Then you needed a scribe who would faithfully reproduce the original, down to an exact word count at the end of the letter or narrative. For hundreds of years Christians were considered enemies of humanity and of the Roman empire, a Christian confession in the first century was a death sentence.

Not only are the stories that John tells very different, but the message is very different. Whereas the other gospels have Jesus dispensing simple folk wisdom, as in the Sermon on the Mount, the book of John really has no moral teaching other than to love.

Matthew is writing to a largely Jewish audience which is why the entire Sermon on the Mount is presented, Luke had an abbreviated version. The Sermon on the Mount would have been in the Kidron valley just outside the east gate of Jerusalem. The rise continued up the the Mount of Olives, Bethany and Gethsemane. That valley was the site of Ezra's reading of the Law that records 40,000 in attendance during the time of the fall feasts so all of Israel was required to be there. John's writing style is lite on narrative and lessons, creating personal narratives. Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, meeting with Jesus in the evening probably shortly after the Sermon on the Mount (John 3), the Samaritan woman at the well, (John 4), probably on the trip returning to Galilee. There is a profound moral to John's account of the feeding of the 5,000, they only wanted him to be king because they we feed and their bellies were full. In chapter 8 Jesus has a long dialogue during Tabernacles where he scathingly indicts the Scribes and Pharisees calling them, 'children of your father the devil'. His core message was that he was the light of the world and following that encounter he heals a man born blind, confirming his profession.

Which brings us to a crucial point, when the miracle was investigated and it was obviously a miracle they still didn't believe:

And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. (John 9:39)

No moral teaching huh?

And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness did not comprehend...But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:5, 12-13)

That's a profound moral responsibility for revelation of the gospel and the promise of the washing, renewing and regeneration of the Holy Spirit. Two themes that transcend his Gospel account, he spends half the book on the last three days of Jesus life. This includes three chapters in the Upper Room discussing the ministry of the Holy Spirit following the resurrection and ascension. John also has as his final lesson something that doesn't appear in the other Gospels, he is asking Peter, 'do you love me?' Peter responds, 'Lord you know that I love you', what is not apparent in the English is that they are using two different words. Jesus is saying, 'agape', the love of God that carries the idea of a spirit of sacrifice. Peter keeps responding with, 'phileo', which is a friend that is like family. Finally Jesus asks Peter if he loves him, 'phileo', implying, Peter are you even my friend? Peter replies Lord I love (agape) you and Jesus shows him the way he will die holding out his hands indicating crucifixion. That's the same message of the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for jso they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5:11,12)

Instead, we find John's Jesus giving endless lectures on theology and his own greatness, proclaiming himself the way, the truth and the life; declaring himself the light of the world; and even claiming "before Abraham was I am". Where is any of that in the other gospels? One can understand how different authors might emphasize different things, but how can the other three authors show no interest in these grand statements of Jesus at all, while John shows no interest in their folk morality? It sure looks like people are using Jesus to claim he said what they wanted him to say, rather than accurately reporting what happened.

John most clearly teaches the deity of Christ, 'All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made' (John 1:3). This core doctrine is the key doctrine defended in Christian Apologetics, rejecting the Trinity has long been the quickest way to be branded a heretic. John's Gospel is deeply theological and the interaction of Christ with people underscores another central theological theme, a personal relationship with Christ.

And what about the signs? Mark had reported that Jesus gave no signs. Matthew ups that to one, saying that they Jesus gave them the sign of the prophet Jonah. But when we get to John, we read that Jesus gave many signs. So how many signs were there? Was the story simply developing with time?

It's like a call from a skeptic demanding proof, when no proof is ever convincing enough, Jesus says they are not getting a performance they will just ignore. The only proof his skeptics were going to get was the resurrection, three days and nights in the grave. John did describe some 8 miracles but didn't dwell on the bulk of them. The ones he relates are relevant to the transcendent themes of his message.

With this in mind, we turn to John's account of the resurrection, the richest story so far. John writes:

The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. (John 20:1-2)

And immediately we find a discrepancy. Although the other accounts say Mary came with other women (and disagree on who she came with) John has her coming seemingly alone. And John says nothing of the man (grave robber?) that Mark reports in the tomb, or the angel of Matthew, or the two men in shining garments (Elton John look alikes?) of Luke, but instead finds Mary seeing the stone rolled away, and running away. Whereas Mark says she did not tell anybody, and Matthew says she ran with great joy to tell the disciples, John has her run to tell the disciples she does not know what happened. So did she run with fear and tell nobody, did she run with joy to say he was risen, or did she run in confusion and say she did not know?

Your getting various accounts of the encounters with the angels, which I'm not going to sort out for you. As far as the women running in fear and telling no one, you have to stop and think where are they running? They are going to tell the disciples and not stopping to talk to anyone else along the way. When the police investigate something and there are a group of people saying the exact same thing they generally throw it out. Different people will see things differently, it takes a little time and discernment to sort this out.

Notice also, that in Matthew, Mary meets the risen Jesus on the way to the disciples, and holds a conversation with him. But in John she gets to Peter, and says she does not know what happened to the body. If Matthew is correct, she had just seen Jesus. Why didn't Mary know?

I'm not sure what specific verses your talking about here but it was a busy morning. The Apostles didn't believe them at first, later they would investigate and the series of events have a number of possible scenarios.

Later, we again find Mary still confused about Jesus. We read she returned to the tomb to investigate:

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,
And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. (John 20:11-13)

Wait, Matthew told us she saw Jesus when leaving the tomb, and yet John has her coming back to the tomb looking for a body that she cannot find. Again, why did not Mary know?The story gets stranger:

And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John 20:14-17)

Initially she didn't know what had happened, the Apostles didn't believe it at first but eventually it dawned on them that the Lord had told them about this. They get there and find only the burial shroud and Mary has broke down and started crying, Jesus appears to her. Jesus doesn't appear to Peter until after he has run off on that fishing trip to Emmaus. Jesus appears to them repeatedly in the days that follow so your getting different accounts sometimes taken out of sequence.

Wait. According to Matthew she had just seen Jesus and talked to him, after knowing him for years. And yet here she is searching in the garden for a body, and does not even recognize Jesus when she sees him. John and Matthew conflict.

It also says that on the road to Emmaus they didn't recognize him. It also said earlier they were told that he would be resurrected after three days and they didn't believe because God didn't give them the understanding. That's not a contradiction, it's a timeline sequence problem. When you can't wrap your mind around the nuances of a word like 'tarry' I suppose I'm not surprised your having difficulty with these passages.

We move on and find Jesus meeting up with 10 of the disciples on Easter evening, in a story that closely parallels Luke. The problem is, Luke specifically says that there were 11 disciples there, John says there were 10. John says that the eleventh, Thomas, does not see Jesus until a week after Easter. So did Thomas see Jesus on Easter, as Luke records, or did he miss the first meeting, and see Jesus for the first time a week later?

He appeared to them more then once over time.

With that, John concludes his book:

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book:
But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:30-31)

But wait, no he doesn't! He pops right back with another story of Jesus and the disciples on a fishing adventure before ending the book a second time with a similar ending. Many have observed that this chapter must have been a later addition. Somebody just came along and had another good story, and tacked it unto the end of the book. Fine, but is that accurate history?

What? John says Jesus performed many miracles and you want to ramble on about their fishing trip?

So I see a lot of tales being added in John, with no effort to correlate with that which was written before. The contradictions are glaring. Can this be history?

These are conflicting reports, as a matter of fact evangelicals have worked on these endlessly. Usually they are resolved but occasionally there is a direct contradiction. This really comes down to minor details and some real problems with sorting out the actual sequence of events from anecdotal reports. Theologically it creates no serious issues, like the ending of Mark, maybe in goes in there or maybe not. Eye witness accounts often conflict, details can get fuzzy and figuring it out can be tedious. I don't mind these little puzzles but they have to be organized and addressed systematically. The problem with you is even when it's clearly reconciled you'll go right back to the argument again and again.

Like I say, I like dealing with these apparent contradictions but you don't want to make direct comparisons.

If I am to believe in a resurrection, I will need good evidence. I am not finding it in these anonymous, conflicting books.

You haven't bothered with anything evidencial yet. These arguments are nothing new and even though you had the makings of a couple of interesting points you swirled it all together until it's impossible to discern whim from wisdom.

OK, let's take a break, and I will be back to take some more questions after the intermission.

Take your time, these arguments aren't going anywhere, they never do.

lesliedellow · Mar 6, 2017

bhsmte said:
In regards to credible witnesses, I will just say this; if we were in a court of law, anything written by anonymous authors about the resurrection, would be considered hearsay.

Anonymous, although Papias seems to have heard of a Gospel of Mark, irrespective of whether or not you think he is correct in believing that Mark had Peter looking over his Shoulder as he wrote.

In any case, as one Christian scholar asked, if the attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John weren't early, how were they referred to in the first and second centuries? As Gospel 1, Gospel 2, Gospel 3 and Gospel 4?

mark kennedy · Mar 6, 2017

lesliedellow said:
Anonymous, although Papias seems to have heard of a Gospel of Mark, irrespective of whether or not you think he is correct in believing that Mark had Peter looking over his Shoulder as he wrote

He appears to have been well acquainted with the history of Mark, without that comment in his writings who would have guessed Peter was John Mark's source? The church would never have accepted it if it were not inextricably linked to Apostolic authority.

In any case, as one Christian scholar asked, if the attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John weren't early, how were they referred to in the first and second centuries? As Gospel 1, Gospel 2, Gospel 3 and Gospel 4?

They do seem to be organized according to their dates, the earliest to the latest. Except Matthew appears to have been written some time later then Mark but it provides an invaluable link to the Old Testament. Matthew is Hebrew in it's orientation, Mark Roman, Luke is Gentile and John is focused on theological issues, especially the personal relationship of the believer with Christ.

During the first century the originals and early copies were susceptible to text variation and papyrus doesn't usually last more then a hundred years. For me the issue at the heart of these writings is the church would have had to be thoroughly familiar and nearly unanimously convinced of the Apostolic witness. The late date is untenable based on that alone, the late date nullifies the apostolic witness baring a nearly perfect oral tradition, which seems unlikely.

doubtingmerle · Mar 6, 2017

OK, everybody have a seat, please. Did you enjoy the wine and cheese?

mark kennedy said:
The New Testament is clear that Christ arose in the same body that died and was buried:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō) the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

Specifically, he was buried and rose again.

And that he was buried, and that he 'rose again' (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō) the third day according to the scriptures (1 Cor. 15:4)

Not given a new celestial body in heavens but the body that was buried, 'rose again'.

Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. (Rom. 4:25)

Rose again (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō), is frequently used in the NT in the sense of "raising”…of Christ's "raising" the dead, Mat 11:5; Mar 5:41; Luke 7:14; John 12:1, 9, 17;…of the resurrection of believers, Mat 27:52; John 5:21; 1Cr 15:15, 16, 29, 32, 35, 42-44, 52; 2Cr 1:9; 4:14; of unbelievers, Mat 12:42 Mat 12:41, (Vines New Testament Dictionary)

The New Testament church spanned the 1st century world from Jerusalem to Greece and Rome who's witness was founded on the testimony of the Apostles regarding the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. The witness of resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers at the return of Christ is the foundation of the gospel. Always has been.

Christ 'rose again', ἐγείρω, is used in multiple forms indicating the same body that died, rose again:

Rose again (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō) to arouse from the sleep of death, to recall the dead to life:

with νεκρούς added, John 5:21; Acts 26:8; 2 Corinthians 1:9.

ἔγειρε [Rec. ἐγεῖραι) arise, Mark 5:41;

passive ἐγείρου, Luke 8:54;

ἐγέρθητι, arise from death, Luke 7:14;

ἐγείρονται οἱ νεκροί, Matthew 11:5; Luke 7:22; Luke 20:37; 1 Corinthians 15:15, 16, 29, 32 (Isaiah 26:19);

ἐγείρειν ἐκ νεκρῶν, from the company of the dead; John 12:1, 9; Acts 3:15; Acts 4:10; Acts 13:30; Romans 4:24; Romans 8:11; Romans 10:9; Galatians 1:1; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; Hebrews 11:19; 1 Peter 1:21; passive, Romans 6:4, 9; Romans 7:4; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 20; John 2:22; John 21:14; Mark 6:16; Luke 9:7;

ἀπό τῶν νεκρῶν, Matthew 14:2; Matthew 27:64; Matthew 28:7 (νεκρόν ἐκ θανάτου καί ἐξ ᾅδου, Sir. 48:5; for הֵקִיץ, 2 Kings 4:31);

ἐγείρειν simply: Acts 5:30; Acts 10:40; Acts 13:37; 1 Corinthians 6:14; 2 Corinthians 4:14;

passive, Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:23; Luke 24:6; Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15:4, etc. (Thayer's Greek Lexicon)

The entire New Testament is saying that, you read it six times and missed that core doctrine?

I don't see where this Greek word for "rose again" prohibits the belief that one could die in one body and raise in another. After all, I think you believe that of Paul, that he died in one body, which is now gone, and he will raise again in another body. If your Greek word will not allow that for Paul, then Paul will never live again. See Greek Lexicon .

But if it allows it for Paul, your argument is defeated.

There is a chain of custody, the living witness and legacy of the Apostles, the church. We are not talking about a single ledger, we are talking about a large selection of the best preserved historical documents from history.

Excuse me, but you were referring to a legal principle that applies to the originals of documents. As you do not have the originals, your legal principle does not apply.

And no, we simply do not know what care was taken with the gospels in the first century of their existence. I will talk about that in my next lecture.

We do have an extraordinarily well preserved representation of the autograph, with 99.5% accuracy:

Norman Geisler stated that "Textual scholars Westcott and Hort estimated that only one in sixty of these variants has significance. This would leave a text 98.3% percent pure." This means that out of the total number of variants within the New Testament, the text is 99% accurate and clean from any major doctrinal errors. In comparison to other ancient books, the New Testament is by far the most accurate. For instance, Bruce Metzger estimated, "that the Mahabharata of Hinduism is copied with only about 90% accuracy and Homer's Iliad with about 95%" (Geisler, 1991, p533). By comparison he estimated the New Testament is about 99.5% accurate. (The Historical Reliability of the New Testament)

I don't know about his numbers, but regardless, he can only be referring to the accuracy when comparing documents past the second century, for that is the only manuscripts we have of any appreciable length. This is irrelevant to my claim, that the documents leading into the third century could have been corrupted early before they were widely distributed.

I understood completely, I just think it's a load of flapdoodle. We know exactly who he is talking about, don't be ridiculous.

Excuse me, but I had explained to you that we don't know what book Papias thought Mark wrote. You responded that we know what person he meant by "Mark". I responded that you had misunderstood, that I was talking about not knowing what book Papias was talking about. And what do you do? You respond that you understand, and repeat the exact same misunderstanding.

Can you not see how this gets frustrating?

What Mark says is that the generation that sees this:

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven. Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. (Mark 13:24-30)

You have the cart before the horse here, and as usual, you are completely oblivious to the context. The generation that sees this at the end of the tribulation, the heavens shaken, the Son of Man coming in power and glory and the translation of believers. That is the generation that will see the prophecy fulfilled completely.

In my lecture on Mark, I explained why this is referring to Mark's generation. Your quote begins by saying this happens "in those days", immediately after the fall of Jerusalem. And the chapter repeatedly refers to "you" which, in context, means you four disciples listening to me. And he says you (disciples) will see the Son of Man come. And finally "this generation" means "this generation", not "that generation". So yes, he is promising the Son of Man will come in the first century.

Homer’s Iliad is the second best preserved document from antiquity, there are 643. The New Testament is represented by 25,000 copies. The history of the Golic Wars in the first century B.C. There are ten existing manuscripts of that, the oldest one is a thousand years after Caesar wrote…Herodotus could be the father of historians, he was the son of the first historian. He wrote in the fifth century before Christ. We have eight manuscripts of Herodotus’ history and the earliest is 1300 years after he wrote…the history of the Peloponnesian war written by Thucydides, we have eight manuscripts of that, the earliest is 1300 years later. (The Fitting End to Mark’s Gospel, Mark 16:9-20, John MacArthur)

Once again, 25,000 copies from the Middle Ages mean nothing. We have complete copies from the fourth century.

The issue is what happened before the middle of the second century.

Matthew was an Apostle, we know a good deal about him:

Matthew, called Levi, was a Jew of Galilee, but of what city is uncertain. He held the place of publican, or tax-gatherer, under the Roman government, and his office seems to have consisted in collecting the taxes within his district, as well as the duties and customs levied on goods and persons, passing in and out of his district and province, across the lake of Genesareth…He is generally allowed to have written first, of all the evangelists; but whether in the Hebrew or the Greek language, or in both, the learned are not agreed, nor is it material to our purpose to inquire; the genuineness of our present Greek gospel being sustained by satisfactory evidence. The precise time when he wrote is also uncertain, the several dates given to it among learned men, varying from A.D. 37 to A.D. 64. The earlier date, however, is argued with greater force, from the improbability that the Christians would be left for several years without a general and authentic history of our Savior's ministry; from the evident allusions which it contains to a state of persecution in the church at the time it was written; from the titles of sanctity ascribed to Jerusalem, and a higher veneration testified for the temple than the comparative gentleness with which Herod's character and conduct are dealt with, that bad prince probably being still in power; and from the frequent mention of Pilate, as still governor of Judea. (Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf 1846)

Irrelevant. You would first need to prove that the person who wrote the first gospel was this person. See my lecture on Matthew above.

If you had some kind of primary sources I might, as it stands, I don't see the point.

I do have primary sources and have used them--the New Testament and other ancient documents.

Actually the primary question was the date of Acts:

It was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with the fixed idea that the work was a second-century composition and never relying upon its evidence as trustworthy for first-century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations. But there remained still one serious objection to accepting it as a first-century work. (St. Paul, The Traveler and the Roman Citizen, William Ramsey)

OK, so you found someone who said the book of Acts matches the geography of the area in 60 AD. So? I think that Acts was written sometime between 80-130 AD. I don't think the geography changed much from 60 AD to 100 AD. So how exactly does the fact that Acts closely matches what we now know of 60s geography prove Acts could not have been written in 100 AD?

And besides, the final editor of Luke probably used earlier sources. He could have actually used Paul's travel logs. That does not prove that Paul said the things that Acts claims, or that Luke was not written after 80 AD.

Any freshman English Composition student would cite their sources, ancient writers not so much.

Actually no, the best ancient historians talk about their sources and methods.

Compare the explicit methods of Arrian with Luke-Acts: Arrian records the history of Alexander the Great five hundred years after the fact. But he does so by explicitly stating a sound method. Arrian says he ignored all works not written by eyewitnesses, and instead only followed surviving ancient texts by actual eyewitnesses to Alexander's campaign. He names them and discusses their connections to Alexander. He then says that on every point on which they agree, he will simply record what they say, but where they significantly disagree, he will cite both accounts and identify the sources who disagree (and he appears to have followed this method as promised, though not always faithfully). [source]

Of course he does:

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)

He tells us these things were delivered 'unto us', from those who were, 'from the beginning were eyewitnesses'. He had ample opportunity to speak with Paul, the twelve Apostles, any number of the original 70 who were with Jesus, 'from the beginning'. Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene both are said to have relocated to Ephesus at some point, as did the Apostle John who pastured the church for some time. Luke had opportunity to talk to all these people and more. His sources were the living witness of the church and Luke makes that crystal clear.

No sorry, Luke does not name any of his sources. He does not even say he used sources. He says eyewitnesses had delivered the message, but he says he is writing based on "having had perfect understanding from the very first". He does not say how he got this perfect understanding, or if he interviewed a single witness.

That's odd since you rarely cite any source material, when you do it's seldom more then a title or a link.

I didn't come to cut and paste from the Internet. A link is fine.

However...

You will be pleased to know that I obliged you with a cut and paste of a paragraph from the Internet in this message. Are you happy?

I'm frankly not interested in why you don't believe in the Q document, there isn't a shred of evidence it ever existed.

I am curious why you are coming to my lectures, if you are not interested in why I believe what I do.

What is more Matthew didn't need to copy from Mark, Luke didn't either.

I explained this in the lecture in Matthew. How do you explain that Matthew and Mark insert the same parenthetical in the same place? How do you explain that they are often nearly word for word the same?

This point has been answered with exegetical notes, I return my former answer back.

The adjective protos may mean “first” or “earlier”, “former” and thus:

First census” must be taken in it’s Hellenistic connotations asthe first of two, and then we must expand the clause a little.”This census was before the census which Quirinius, governor of Syria, made”

…Thus Luke recognizes that the well known census under Quirinius took place in A.D. 6-7. He is not speaking of that one, however, the census of which he is speaking took place before (proto) that one. (The Census and Quirinius: Luke 2:2. Wayne Brindle)

And as I explained, Luke says this census was first taken when Quirinius was governor (6 AD). It does not say that it was first taken years before Qurinius took a second census.

Here it means reside as opposed to returning to their homes in Galilee. No where does Jesus tell them not to go to Galilee, in fact we know they were directed to return there and met him on some mountain. Most likely the mount of transfiguration and given the thriving ministry he had there probably the site where he appeared to as many as 500 at one time. There no hint of a contradiction there, it's just you setting up a straw man and ignoring the proper exposition of the text given the context and the exegesis of the word for, 'tarry'. Baseless as always.

How do you know "Tarry" in Luke means "to reside"? The obvious meaning is that Jesus told them to stay, to tarry, in Jerusalem. If it means "to reside", how did all the translators mistranslate it?

mark kennedy said:
No one seriously questioned the Gospel according to John was authored by the Apostle John. He wrote it during his time in Ephesus, John emphasizes his relationship with Jesus as well as how Jesus related to others. Unlike modern skeptics the early church knew the author was the Apostle John:

Early traditions help to identify the author as John. Irenaeus, a disciple of John's disciple Polycarp, is of the earliest extant sources to associate John with the fourth Gospel. Like the other Gospels, the title "According to John" (KATA IWANNHN) is found in the earliest manuscripts. (BLB)

Wait, your source is Irenaeus? Yes, yes. That is my source. In 180 AD Irenaeus credits the four gospels to the traditional authors. The problem is that we have no reliable mention of this before him, and this is too late to be authoritative.

You seem to think there were libraries and internet cafes all over the ancient world.

Libraries, some places. Internet cafes, not so much.

Not really into heretical literature, I prefer Grecko Roman mythology myself. Free style Gnostics don't interest me much.

You missed the point. The point is that people all over were making up stories about Jesus. In that environment, how can we trust the stories we read?

For one thing they were read to the congregation, if another congregation wanted a copy they had to spring for a papyrus scroll which wasn't exactly cheap. Then you needed a scribe who would faithfully reproduce the original, down to an exact word count at the end of the letter or narrative. For hundreds of years Christians were considered enemies of humanity and of the Roman empire, a Christian confession in the first century was a death sentence.

Uh huh, and how did the scattered readers in the late first century find a scribe when they wanted a copy of a gospel that another group had? As far as we can tell, they relied on amateurs. Creative amateurs, perhaps.

No moral teaching huh?

And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness did not comprehend...But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:5, 12-13)

The teaching to receive Jesus is very different from the folk wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount.

Your getting various accounts of the encounters with the angels, which I'm not going to sort out for you.

Try it some time.

In Matthew and John, Mary runs from the tomb. In Matthew she sees Jesus on the way before reaching the disciples. In John she then returns to the tomb, after Matthew says she had seen him, totally unaware that Jesus was risen. That contradicts.

When the police investigate something and there are a group of people saying the exact same thing they generally throw it out.

Uh I never heard of police throwing out the testimony because the witnesses all agree. Now if they all repeat the same memorized line, but differ greatly when pushed off the script, then yes, that is to be questioned. That is what we have in the gospels. When they get off the script as written if the first gospel, Mark, things go many different directions.

When you can't wrap your mind around the nuances of a word like 'tarry' I suppose I'm not surprised your having difficulty with these passages.

Please remember. We are not here to insult the intelligence of others. Please stick to issues.

What? John says Jesus performed many miracles and you want to ramble on about their fishing trip.

Four short lines is not a ramble.

And I was making a point. Somebody edited the book of John to add a story.

These are conflicting reports, as a matter of fact evangelicals have worked on these endlessly. Usually they are resolved but occasionally there is a direct contradiction. This really comes down to minor details and some real problems with sorting out the actual sequence of events from anecdotal reports. Theologically it creates no serious issues, like the ending of Mark, maybe in goes in there or maybe not. Eye witness accounts often conflict, details can get fuzzy and figuring it out can be tedious. I don't mind these little puzzles but they have to be organized and addressed systematically.

Ah, the eyewitnesses were fuzzy.

Just to clarify, then your Bible is not infallible? Fuzzy witnesses sometimes made mistakes in what they wrote?

The problem with you is even when it's clearly reconciled you'll go right back to the argument again and again.

Can you give me an example of a clearly reconciled argument that I went back to again?

Thanks for your questions. Anybody else? Yes, there in the back...

lesliedellow said:
although Papias seems to have heard of a Gospel of Mark, irrespective of whether or not you think he is correct in believing that Mark had Peter looking over his Shoulder as he wrote.

Papias heard of a book that Mark wrote, yes. But he apparently never read it; he does not quote it so we don't know what book he is referring to; and he implies that he really doesn't need to read it, for it wouldn't help him write his book on the sayings of Jesus. I don't see that as a ringing endorsement of Mark.

In any case, as one Christian scholar asked, if the attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John weren't early, how were they referred to in the first and second centuries? As Gospel 1, Gospel 2, Gospel 3 and Gospel 4?

Or Gospel 2, 8, 13, and 17? From what we can tell, there were many versions floating around, and none of them seem to be named early on.

OK, that is all for now. I will do one more lecture, on the Early Church Fathers. Then I will take a few questions and wrap this up. See you next time!

lesliedellow · Mar 6, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
heard of a book that Mark wrote, yes. But he apparently never read it; he does not quote it so we don't know what book he is referring to; and he implies that he really doesn't need to read it, for it wouldn't help him write his book on the sayings of Jesus. I don't see that as a ringing endorsement of Mark.

"The Elder used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory—though not in an ordered form—of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of chreiai,[Notes 1] but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything."

Anybody arguing that the above passage is a reference to anything other than the Gospel of Mark is indulging in wishful thinking.

Or Gospel 2, 8, 13, and 17? From what we can tell, there were many versions floating around, and none of them seem to be named early on.

During the second century there were gospels written for the benefit of gnostic sects, and there were gospels written for the entertainment of second century Christians, whose tastes seem to have been somewhat different from our own. There is no good reason to suppose that they originally bore a title different from the ones they have today.

mark kennedy · Mar 7, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
OK, everybody have a seat, please. Did you enjoy the wine and cheese?

Easy on the wine now...

I don't see where this Greek word for "rose again" prohibits the belief that one could die in one body and raise in another. After all, I think you believe that of Paul, that he died in one body, which is now gone, and he will raise again in another body. If your Greek word will not allow that for Paul, then Paul will never live again. See Greek Lexicon .

But if it allows it for Paul, your argument is defeated.

See it? I quoted Vine's and Thayer's at length including the grammatical constructions that always mean the same thing, 'rose again'. This by it's intrinsic and literal meaning bars the Carrier thesis of a celestial body that abandons the original earthly frame is a direct contradition of the New Testament doctrine of the resurrection in no uncertain terms.

Excuse me, but you were referring to a legal principle that applies to the originals of documents. As you do not have the originals, your legal principle does not apply.

As a matter of fact it does apply since there is a presumption of innocence (charity) putting the burden of proof on the accuser.

And no, we simply do not know what care was taken with the gospels in the first century of their existence. I will talk about that in my next lecture.

We have a much broader distance time wise between Galatians and Paul in the first century by that criteria yet it's almost never questioned. We do know and I doubt very seriously that your next 'lecture' will be any more evidential then the former ones.

I don't know about his numbers, but regardless, he can only be referring to the accuracy when comparing documents past the second century, for that is the only manuscripts we have of any appreciable length. This is irrelevant to my claim, that the documents leading into the third century could have been corrupted early before they were widely distributed.

You don't know because you don't understand the nature of bibliographical testing. What's more you seem oblivious to the cultural context of Apostolic authority and the universal acceptance of these scrolls from Syria to Rome.

Excuse me, but I had explained to you that we don't know what book Papias thought Mark wrote. You responded that we know what person he meant by "Mark". I responded that you had misunderstood, that I was talking about not knowing what book Papias was talking about. And what do you do? You respond that you understand, and repeat the exact same misunderstanding.

Can you not see how this gets frustrating?

My point is simply that Papias was not confused or ambiquise about who Mark was, or that he was clearly talking about the Gospel account that is attributed to him.

In my lecture on Mark, I explained why this is referring to Mark's generation. Your quote begins by saying this happens "in those days", immediately after the fall of Jerusalem. And the chapter repeatedly refers to "you" which, in context, means you four disciples listening to me. And he says you (disciples) will see the Son of Man come. And finally "this generation" means "this generation", not "that generation". So yes, he is promising the Son of Man will come in the first century.

Jesus is saying when you see these things, things that didn't happen in their lifetime, that's the generation that will see the return of Christ. This is from the Greek and in Greek context is king.

Once again, 25,000 copies from the Middle Ages mean nothing. We have complete copies from the fourth century.

Compare the New Testament, or the Old Testament for that matter, to any historical text and there is no close second, period.

The issue is what happened before the middle of the second century.

By your standard everything we have from antiquity is hopelessly ambiquise since the New Testament has the best preserved writings from history. Your not arguing evidence or standards, just mildly rationalistic skepticism.

Irrelevant. You would first need to prove that the person who wrote the first gospel was this person. See my lecture on Matthew above.

Asked and answered.

I do have primary sources and have used them--the New Testament and other ancient documents.

The New Testament is primary source, I doubt seriously you understand the weight of that admission.

OK, so you found someone who said the book of Acts matches the geography of the area in 60 AD. So? I think that Acts was written sometime between 80-130 AD. I don't think the geography changed much from 60 AD to 100 AD. So how exactly does the fact that Acts closely matches what we now know of 60s geography prove Acts could not have been written in 100 AD?

That's "authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor" (Ramsey). Things do change over decades and the further left on the time line you get the harder it is to fill in the details. Luke is detail rich and offers extensive details with regards to people, places, customs and events.

And besides, the final editor of Luke probably used earlier sources. He could have actually used Paul's travel logs. That does not prove that Paul said the things that Acts claims, or that Luke was not written after 80 AD.

You base that on what? Your personal copy of the logs? The key concept you have dodged, just like you dodged the concept of the bodily resurrection is Apostolic authority.

Actually no, the best ancient historians talk about their sources and methods.

Compare the explicit methods of Arrian with Luke-Acts: Arrian records the history of Alexander the Great five hundred years after the fact. But he does so by explicitly stating a sound method. Arrian says he ignored all works not written by eyewitnesses, and instead only followed surviving ancient texts by actual eyewitnesses to Alexander's campaign. He names them and discusses their connections to Alexander. He then says that on every point on which they agree, he will simply record what they say, but where they significantly disagree, he will cite both accounts and identify the sources who disagree (and he appears to have followed this method as promised, though not always faithfully). [source]

Historical narratives often do refer to writings they are predicated on but Luke is discussing his investigation in a Christian context. You can't honestly expect an historical narrative of the Hebrews or early Christians to conform to a Roman methodology and it's absurd to disqualify it as historical on that basis. It's interesting that you have now introduced the Carrier thesis when you went to so much trouble to bury it.

No sorry, Luke does not name any of his sources. He does not even say he used sources. He says eyewitnesses had delivered the message, but he says he is writing based on "having had perfect understanding from the very first". He does not say how he got this perfect understanding, or if he interviewed a single witness.

Nor is he required to.

I am curious why you are coming to my lectures, if you are not interested in why I believe what I do.

I'm interested in your arguments because you are the first person on here that makes an actual argument. You may well be the first person that hasn't descended into endless ad hominems even though you succumbed to them repeatedly. I don't want you to misunderstand this, I very much enjoy responding to your posts and appreciate some of your arguments. I suspected at one point you lacked the courage of you convictions but I have to hand it to you, you are able to regain your composure even after catastrophic meltdown.

I am interested in why you believe, I just think the way your are constructing these arguments is neglecting key evidencial considerations.

I explained this in the lecture in Matthew. How do you explain that Matthew and Mark insert the same parenthetical in the same place? How do you explain that they are often nearly word for word the same?

Oral tradition, all the Apostles were on the same page with regards to doctrine and redemptive history. Think about it, most people in ancient Israel and then the early church were illiterate and certainly didn't have access to the actual scrolls. The law was read on various occasions as a matter of law in the Old Testament and the scrolls of the Apostolic witness were read in the churches regularly. When they agree it's supposedly plagiarism and when they differ its contradiction. So when is it ever; unique perspective, insight or agreement on the particulars?

And as I explained, Luke says this census was first taken when Quirinius was governor (6 AD). It does not say that it was first taken years before Qurinius took a second census.

Luke never gives exact dates and the wording suggests ambiguity with regards to exact times. That's not a contradiction, thats one of the limits of the language and literary device being used.

How do you know "Tarry" in Luke means "to reside"? The obvious meaning is that Jesus told them to stay, to tarry, in Jerusalem. If it means "to reside", how did all the translators mistranslate it?

Context is king in Greek, it all depends on the context that term is used in. The word can be used other ways but the core meaning is to dwell:

Dwell, Dwellers, Dwelling (Place)-"to sit down," denotes "to dwell," in Act 18:11 (RV, "dwelt," for AV, "continued"). (see Vines G2523 καθίζω kathizō)

Wait, your source is Irenaeus? Yes, yes. That is my source. In 180 AD Irenaeus credits the four gospels to the traditional authors. The problem is that we have no reliable mention of this before him, and this is too late to be authoritative.

This is 2,000 years ago dude, you don't get to deal with it like one of Donald Trump's tweets.

Libraries, some places. Internet cafes, not so much.

Churches for several hundred years were peoples homes and having those scrolls would have been a guarded secret.

You missed the point. The point is that people all over were making up stories about Jesus. In that environment, how can we trust the stories we read?

The way you determine something is counterfeit is by comparing it to the genuine. The other writings that were rejected were rejected because they didn't match the Apostolic witness. You may not know but the church knew then just as it knows now the genuine from the heretical.

Uh huh, and how did the scattered readers in the late first century find a scribe when they wanted a copy of a gospel that another group had? As far as we can tell, they relied on amateurs. Creative amateurs, perhaps.

Pure, undiluted supposition. The first century seen a lot of synagogues going up and they all wanted the scrolls of the Old Testament. They were the earliest Christians and were well acquainted in how those copies were made, meticulously. No one was getting creative with it except heretics which were readily discernible from the genuine.

The teaching to receive Jesus is very different from the folk wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount.

Nonsense, the Sermon on the Mount was focused on the law of Moses and how it related to faith in Christ. John is very different because he is very theological in his orientation and pastoral in his approach.

In Matthew and John, Mary runs from the tomb. In Matthew she sees Jesus on the way before reaching the disciples. In John she then returns to the tomb, after Matthew says she had seen him, totally unaware that Jesus was risen. That contradicts.

You can't handle a straight forward definition of the word, 'tarry', there is no way I'm doing a synoptic synthesis for you.

Uh I never heard of police throwing out the testimony because the witnesses all agree. Now if they all repeat the same memorized line, but differ greatly when pushed off the script, then yes, that is to be questioned. That is what we have in the gospels. When they get off the script as written if the first gospel, Mark, things go many different directions.

Funny, I've heard several cops and one federal agent tell me that they do.

Well the cheese and wine was good, the exchange was rather easy and the early church fathers sound like a hoot. See you next time...

doubtingmerle · Mar 7, 2017

Good evening. In my final lecture, we will look briefly at the early church fathers.

We have a good picture of the church of the 40's and 50's, through the writings of Paul and his followers. Books like Hebrews, James, and I Peter may also be from this period. All share the trait that they make no reference to the gospels, probably because the gospels had not yet been written. Not only that, but they show very little interest in any details of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul's writings could have easily been written by one who had thought Jesus had abandoned his body to rise in another body, or by someone who had come to believe the resurrection years after the claimed event, based only on rumor or conjecture.

Looking at books written before the gospels, we don't know a whole lot about the 12 disciples. Paul implies they taught the same message as him, but they disputed with him on keeping details of the law. For all we know their message was just like the message we find in Paul, with few details about a resurrection, having never actually seen such a thing.

After Paul and the other apostles leave the scene, we see a number of gospels that fill in missing details. But I have shown reasons to question them. What did the church think? How did they react to these books? Let's see.

Let's begin with a brief survey of what we can learn from the known first century Christian books that were written after Paul.

[long pause]

Well that about sums it up. We don't know if any Christian books were even written in that range. And books that some say may have been written then, such as the Didache, Revelation, or the Gospel of Thomas, say next to nothing about a resurrection.

The gap ends with Clement, probably writing about 90-120 AD. But we find him amazingly short on gospel details. He writes about the crucifixion, but as I have pointed out before, he draws his information from Isaiah, not the gospels. He writes:

For Christ is with them that are lowly of mind, not with them that
exalt themselves over the flock.
The scepter of the majesty of God, even our Lord Jesus Christ, came
not in the pomp of arrogance or of pride, though He might have done
so, but in lowliness of mind, according as the Holy Spirit spake
concerning Him.
For He saith Lord, who believed our report? and to whom was the arm
of the Lord revealed? We announced Him in His presence. As a child
was He, as a root in a thirsty ground. There is no form in Him,
neither glory. And we beheld Him, and He had no form nor
comeliness, but His form was mean, lacking more than the form of
men. He was a man of stripes and of toil, and knowing how to bear
infirmity: for His face is turned away. He was dishonored and held
of no account. [Clement 16:1-3]

To prove that Jesus suffered humbly, Clement turns to Isaiah as proof. Had he no gospel that he could have used to show how Christ humbly suffered? If he did, he does not mention it. After quoting the whole chapter of Isaiah, and some verses from Psalms, he ends his chapter like this:

[quoting Psalms] All they that beheld me mocked at me; they spake with their lips;
they wagged their heads, saying, He hoped on the Lord; let Him
deliver him, or let Him save him, for He desireth him.
Ye see, dearly beloved, what is the pattern that hath been given unto
us; for, if the Lord was thus lowly of mind, what should we do, who
through Him have been brought under the yoke of His grace? [ibid]

What does Clement learn from these sources? That the Psalms were prophetic? No, he says that we learn from them that the Christ is humble. That is the source Clement has on the crucifixion. He makes not even a glance at a written gospel.

We find the same thing in I Peter. The book claims to be by Peter, but when it comes to describing the crucifixion, his best source of what it was like seems to be Isaiah 53! (See I Peter 2:21-25) So could it be that the story of the crucifixion and resurrection were simply invented from scripture, and tacked unto the life of Jesus after the fact?

Clement and the other early second century Christian writers do credit various one line moral teachings to Jesus, that look like the Sermon on the Mount, but not exactly. Perhaps the writers got the gist from the gospels, but other sources are equally likely, such as he heard it by word of mouth, or he read it in one of the many other books about Jesus that Luke refers to. So into the early second century, we have no concrete proof that church leaders even had copies of our gospels. Of course they may have, but the evidence did not survive in the few books that survived from the period.

So did the immediate followers of the apostles approve of the four gospels? Or did they approve of alternate gospels? Or was there no written gospel they approved of? We don't know. They did not weigh in on this.

Around 140 AD, we have the first written confirmation that a book about Jesus was being used in the church. This was Marcion, who was later widely regarded as a heretic. But he made the first move. He took what was apparently a copy similar to Luke, and, according to his claim, cleaned up the corruptions that others had put there. But the other Christians, of course, argued that their version was indeed correct, and that Marcion was the one corrupting it. Who really knows who told the truth?

Finally around 150 AD we finally find somebody calling a book about Jesus by name. Justin Martyr uses a book called The Memoirs of the Apostles as his source. He quotes from it. His quotes from it our close to our gospels, but not exact. Some think it was an actual book by that name. Some think that was just his term for the Gospels, and he was using a different version of one or more of our gospels. Regardless, what he quotes is not the same as our gospels. For instance, three times he quotes that God told Jesus "This day have I begotten you" at the baptism, even though our gospels say "in whom I am well pleased" at that place. If he was indeed quoting from a version of our gospels, then somewhere editing was done.

By 180 AD Irenaeus, for the first time, mentions the four gospels as being written by the four traditional authors. The tradition stuck. From then on those names were used by most everybody, and detailed quotes began to appear in church writings. It was no longer a question that the gospels were being recognized in the church. But that is too late in time to know it is accurate.

In the first 100 years after Jesus, we simply have no record that the gospels were received in the church. Who was transmitting them? What care did they use in copying them? Did they even consider them accurate, or were they simply stories that anybody could improve at will? We simply do not know.

So we have seen reasons to doubt the resurrection stories that were added to the gospels by the authors. When we consider that some of those changes may have been later changes, that gives us even more reason to doubt them.

Resurrections are rare, if they happen at all. When you look at the evidence, is there good reason to doubt?

Thanks for listening. Feel free to leave your comments. We will take a short break, and I will be back to take some questions.

lesliedellow · Mar 7, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Good evening. In my final lecture, we will look briefly at the early church fathers.

We have a good picture of the church of the 40's and 50's, through the writings of Paul and his followers. Books like Hebrews, James, and I Peter may also be from this period. All share the trait that they make no reference to the gospels, probably because the gospels had not yet been written.

For the sake of being Devil's Advocate, it may be that they had been written, but were not yet in wide circulation. Or they had been written, and were in wide circulation, but did not yet have any particular authority for Paul and his associates. After all, who would have needed written sources if, as Paul did, they had access to the twelve apostles?

We are talking about a time when the printing press was centuries into the future.

Keep yourself entertained, do.

mark kennedy · Mar 7, 2017

lesliedellow said:
For the sake of being Devil's Advocate, it may be that they had been written, but were not yet in wide circulation. Or they had been written, and were in wide circulation, but did not yet have any particular authority for Paul and his associates. After all, who would have needed written sources if, as Paul did, they had access to the twelve apostles?

We are talking about a time when the printing press was centuries into the future.

Keep yourself entertained, do.

There are a couple of thing here, the most important being the Apostle's doctrine. Pushing the date of authorship to the left neglects a very important issue with regards to the early church, the authority of Christ and the Apostles was foundational.

mark kennedy · Mar 9, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Looking at books written before the gospels, we don't know a whole lot about the 12 disciples. Paul implies they taught the same message as him, but they disputed with him on keeping details of the law. For all we know their message was just like the message we find in Paul, with few details about a resurrection, having never actually seen such a thing.

After Paul and the other apostles leave the scene, we see a number of gospels that fill in missing details. But I have shown reasons to question them. What did the church think? How did they react to these books? Let's see.

Let's begin with a brief survey of what we can learn from the known first century Christian books that were written after Paul.

[long pause]

Well that about sums it up.

Baseline Standards for Internal Evidence:

When I was active in the Origins debate I would find something I knew, from the scientific literature, was an indisputable fact, and press for a reaction from Darwinians. The most obvious one was the Indels (insertions/deletions) which are gaps in the comparison of the chimpanzee and human genomes. They invariably ignored the 90 million base pair that are obvious from the scientific literature. This discussion has been no different, since the subject matter relates to a Biblical exposition the meaning of two words translated, 'tarry' and 'rose again', have explicit literal meanings, that are, completely ignored:

Dwell, Dwellers, Dwelling (Place)-"to sit down," denotes "to dwell," in Act 18:11 (RV, "dwelt," for AV, "continued"). (see Vine's G2523 καθίζω kathizō)

Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. (Rom. 4:25)
Rose again (G1453 ἐγείρω egeirō), is frequently used in the NT in the sense of "raising”…of Christ's "raising" the dead, Mat 11:5; Mar 5:41; Luke 7:14; John 12:1, 9, 17;…of the resurrection of believers, Mat 27:52; John 5:21; 1Cr 15:15, 16, 29, 32, 35, 42-44, 52; 2Cr 1:9; 4:14; of unbelievers, Mat 12:42 Mat 12:41, (Vines New Testament Dictionary)

It's as if doubtingmerel is on a carousel and I'm watching him go round and round. As he passes he will ask, 'where does it say Jesus was raised in the same body he was crucified and buried in', claiming there isn't a single verse he has ever seen. This is my primary proof text and it comes down to the actual meaning of a single word from the best exegetical scholarship available. The word is invariably translated 'rose again' or something to that effect 144 times (1453. ἐγείρω egeiró) in the New Testament it is used to speak of the resurrection. Not once is it used to speak of being removed from the old frame and put into a new one, that is a fabrication of the Pauline doctrine of the resurrection called, the Carrier thesis. Seven times in 1 Corinthians 15, this form, ἐγείρεται, is used to speak of the resurrection, clearly indicating the same body Christ was crucified and buried in is the same one that was resurrected. Every time he comes around he asks where the verse is and I have given him lexicon and dictionary definitions along with 144 occurrences of the word in the New Testament.

Exact same thing with 'tarry' which is simply a commandment to take up residence in Jerusalem until the coming of the Holy Spirit. This in no way bars a trip to Galilee but doughtingmerel wants to insist that Matthew and Luke are making contradictory statements, in spite of the carefully prepared exposition with explicit exegetical notes.

This is a clear baseline indicating he will not concede the obvious, why bother with more subtle nuance or a synoptic synthesis of the resurrection? He has proven himself oblivious to what is involved in a sound exposition of the Scriptures like this one:

Matthew is writing to a largely Jewish audience which is why the entire Sermon on the Mount is presented, Luke had an abbreviated version. The Sermon on the Mount would have been in the Kidron valley just outside the east gate of Jerusalem. The rise continued up the the Mount of Olives, Bethany and Gethsemane. That valley was the site of Ezra's reading of the Law that records 40,000 in attendance during the time of the fall feasts so all of Israel was required to be there. John's writing style is lite on narrative and lessons, creating personal narratives. Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, meeting with Jesus in the evening probably shortly after the Sermon on the Mount (John 3), the Samaritan woman at the well, (John 4), probably on the trip returning to Galilee. There is a profound moral to John's account of the feeding of the 5,000, they only wanted him to be king because they we feed and their bellies were full. In chapter 8 Jesus has a long dialogue during Tabernacles where he scathingly indicts the Scribes and Pharisees calling them, 'children of your father the devil'. His core message was that he was the light of the world and following that encounter he heals a man born blind, confirming his profession.

Which brings us to a crucial point, when the miracle was investigated and it was obviously a miracle they still didn't believe:

And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. (John 9:39) (see post #23)

The concluding remarks of Luke, punctuated by a quote from Isaiah, brings an old expression to mind. None so blind as those who will not see:

Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. (Acts 28: 26,27)

External Evidence:

According to Simon Greenleaf, who authored, 'Treatise on the Law of Evidence' (3 vols., 1842–1853), and which remained a standard textbook in American law throughout the Nineteenth century. This is the evidencial standard by which the Gospels should be evaluated:

Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forger, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise. (Simon Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists)

Luke writing to a Roman Governor, probably Sergius Paulus of Cyprus, discusses his approach to his investigation of the truth concerning Christ and the Apostles:

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)

William Ramsey investigated the Tübingen theory that Luke and Acts was written in the second century. Having been taught this throughout his collegiate carrier simply accepted it until he investigated it himself. the primary question was the date of Acts:

It was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with the fixed idea that the work was a second-century composition and never relying upon its evidence as trustworthy for first-century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations. But there remained still one serious objection to accepting it as a first-century work. (St. Paul, The Traveler and the Roman Citizen, William Ramsey)

That question was the Northern vs. Southern Galatia issue. That was the final obstacle in rejecting the Tübingen theory and accepting Acts as a first century work. Sir William Ramsey rejects the Tübingen theory that places the date of the original writing sometime in the second century. Instead Ramsey found the book of Acts as an "authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor". He tells us:

“That Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historical sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely as much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians” (St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, William Ramsey).

Bibliographical Testing

The dating of the oldest fragments are working their way back to the first century:

The Matthew fragments redated by Thiede are at Magdalen College (Oxford). They are called The Magdalen Papyrus (listed as Greek 17 and p64). There are three fragments written on both sides, together representing 24 lines from Matthew 26:7-33. Two of the three fragments are a little larger than 4 x 1 cm.; the other is smaller, 1.6 x 1.6 cm. Another two fragments, located in Spain, are called the Barcelona Papyrus (P. Barc. inv. 1/p67) and contain portions of Matthew 3:9, 15; 5:20-22, 25-28...

...More than 40 years later Thiede reexamined the fragments, using state-of–the-art electronic scanners with close analysis of the paper, ink, letter formation, line length, and other factors to redate the fragments to around A.D. 60. Thiede’s tests and skill appear to be well within responsible papyrology, although his conclusions have met with strong opposition from critics. I have examined most of the critical articles and have found their criticisms less convincing than Thiede’s conclusions. (Eyewitness to Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence about the Origin of the Gospels CRI)

Clearly the jury is still out but Higher Criticism and Liberal Theology have their work cut out for them because the date is moving further to the right. This is a long range trend in Biblical scholarship. One thing is for sure, it's not as cut and dried as your trying to make it.

In 1995 the German scholar Carsten Peter Thiede took another look at Papyrus 64 in light of recent discoveries. Thiede concluded that based upon comparison with other papyri known to date to the late 1st century and before, an earlier date of 70-100 AD. should be assigned to Papyrus 64 (and thus the other two papyri produced by the same scribe).[4] This generated an uproar in the scholarly world. Graham Stanton, a liberal scholar who had written extensively on Matthew, published a book later the same year which began with a chapter dismissing Thiede’s arguments because he had compared manuscripts from different locations.In response to this Thiede devoted an entire book to the subject in 1996 entitled The Jesus Papyrus.

While it must be acknowledged that Thiede has a bit of a sensational flair, the evidence which he presents is reasonable and should not be so quickly dismissed. Some of Thiede’s critics, including Stanton, hold the belief that the gospels were not verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit, but formed through an editorial process by the early church using a hypothetical text of Jesus’ sayings they call Q. Such critics cannot escape the fact that if they accept a first century date for a surviving gospel manuscript their liberal theories crumble. This cannot avoid coloring their appraisal of Thiede’s dating. (New Testament Manuscripts from the First Century By Kyle Pope)

That's just one example of how the New Testament is clearly native to a first century origin and the second century idea is based on moving the date to the left and claiming there is no evidence. That's only because they are not looking in the right place.

By far the clearest indication of duplicity in these arguments is the core, Carrier thesis, that Paul taught a mythical celestial Jesus.

doubtingmerle said:
I will call them the blue view and the red view, and describe them in color coded text below.

First the blue view. This view says that people have a body and a soul. Paul's body died, but his soul survived and went to heaven. God then will give him (or already has given him) a new body. Whether this body is past or future is immaterial to the discussion. Whether this body is exactly like other human bodies, or made of indestructible atoms, or made of anti-matter, or is made of some sort of spiritual stuff is not the issue. The blue view states that Paul's soul came out of his old body, and lives forever in a new body or rebuilt body that God gives him.

Now the red view. The red view says that people have a body and that is it. There is no soul. Paul died. So sad, too bad, Paul is dead. There is no soul to survive. Weeks later his body is badly decayed. So sad, too bad, Paul is dead. No soul, no Paul. Then suddenly, a miracle, the decay process reverses, and up pops Paul, as though it had only been a coma.

So which way is it? I understand Greeks and many Christians would have been open to the blue view. The Pharisee leaders supported the red view. That has been the debate here. I argue that Paul supported the blue view. Quid argued that Paul could have never, ever questioned the Pharisee position on this, and so therefore supported the red view.

Clearly Paul taught neither the red view nor the blue view, they are two sockpuppet strawman arguments. Doughtingmerle is sitting on a stage with a red sockpuppet on his right hand and blue sockpuppet of his left. The left is the mythical Jesus, celestial body resurrection aka the Carrier thesis. The red one an exclusively naturalistic explanation, 'Paul was just in a coma'. Notice he never uses the word resurrection because that's simply not going to be allowed as an option. He derailed two threads with this and the moderators had to do an extensive clean up in the wake.

Quid est Veritas reacted strongly to this disingenuous false dilemma:

Quid est Veritas? said:
Doubting Merle, you have been spreading a miasma of misinformation here.

I am largely in accord with Mark Kennedy here, Paul receiving a glorified body at the parousia and being with Jesus at death.
I repeatedly spoke of Christ-in-us, our OT 'ruach' becoming of Christ and thus surviving as the dead in Christ, but gaining a Nephesh at the parousia.
I even posted two articles explaining this in depth. This accords with the Pharisee view of a bodily resurrection, which of course entailed Nephesh and Ruach conceptualisations.

Yet somehow you have concocted some Shibboleth in your mind and ascribed it to me as some heresiarch, the 'red view' you here stated. The red view if anything sounds more Sadducee, at least initially. This clearly shows that you are either being duplicitous, lack comprehension or failed to read anything I wrote.

Please stop besmirching my name by ascribing views to me that do not accord with what I said in any way, shape or form. Luckily the other participants of this thread seem to be able to read and realise your characterisation is erroneous. There are anyway far more views than the two you propose.

Once again though, I am tired of the mendacity.

Good day Sir.

The idea that Paul was teaching a 'spiritual resurrection' has not been qualified because clearly Paul is teaching a bodily resurrection of Christ. Not just that Christ was raised but that it fulfilled predictive prophecy concerning Christ and this witness is uniform across all Christian Scripture and throughout Christian history:

Christ died for our sins (Matt 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 24:36; John 19:30)
He was buried (Matt 27:60; Mark 15:46; Luke 23:53; John 19:40)
He was raised on the third day (Matt 28:6; Mark 16:6; Luke 24:3; John 20:2)
He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (Matt 28:16-17; Mark 16:7; Luke 24:36; John 20:19)

What the Carrier thesis and doubtingmerle are saying sounds like Docetism, not Biblical Christianity. Docetism was unequivocally rejected at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and is regarded as heretical by the Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, and Coptic Church…Docetism is broadly defined as any teaching that claims that Jesus' body was either absent or illusory.

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes. (Ignatius of Antioch letter to the Smyrnaeans, 7:1, 110 AD) (Docetism, Wikipedia)

This is found no where in the New Testament and completely rejected in all Christian traditions. Docetism of this nature is found in the Koran and strictly opposed to a bodily resurrection:

And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger — they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise. (Qur'an, Sura 4:157–158)

Liberal Theology introduced this idea back in the eighteenth century:

"This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that Jesus never came into the world "in the flesh", but only seemed to; (I John 4:2) and it was given some encouragement by Paul's lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts to insist that Jesus did not even "seem" to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods." (Grant, Michael. Jesus. 2004) (Docetism, Wikipedia)

The premise is that Paul was teaching some kind of a mythic, 'spiritual resurrection', except Paul and Christians down through the ages have always taught the bodily resurrection of Christ in no uncertain terms. He is saying, 'the resurrection story told in the Gospels, of a Jesus risen in the flesh, does not represent what the original disciples believed' (Evidence Against Resurrection of the Flesh, Richard Carrier).

Ultimately this comes down to how you are going to respond to a standard of proof, the availability of evidence and a disciplined method of separating truth from error:

Christianity does not profess to convince the perverse and headstrong, to bring irresistible evidence to the daring and profane, to vanquish the proud scorner, and afford evidences from which the careless and perverse cannot possibly escape. This might go to destroy man's responsibility. All that Christianity professes, is to propose such evidences as may satisfy the meek, the tractable, the candid, the serious inquirer." (Simon Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists)

The internal, external and bibliographical testing has been earnestly presented. Let the living testimony of the Apostolic witness stand on it's own merits and let the chips fall where they may. There are at least 7 letters of Paul that are beyond dispute with regards to authorship and date. These include Galatians, Romans I Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. The New Testament church spanned the 1 century world from Jerusalem to Greece and Rome who's witness was founded on the testimony of the Apostles regarding the death, burial and resurrection of Christ:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

The witness of resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers at the return of Christ is the foundation of the gospel. Always has been. If the clear testimony of Scripture is to be so grossly misrepresented then I see little reason to continue to engage with little more then good natured banter. The time when I could take these arguments seriously has passed, I offer this as my final refutation of the Carrier thesis, from an evidencial frame of reference, since the premise is essentially fallacious.

I'll continue to monitor the thread and respond as I see fit but I see no reason to believe it remotely resembles a serious inquiry into the evidence for the resurrection.

Grace and peace,
Mark

doubtingmerle · Mar 9, 2017

OK, did everybody enjoy the ice cream bar at the intermission?

We have time for some questions. Who will be first? Yes, Mr. Wolf...

Ed1wolf said:
No, I demonstrated earlier that Marcion plainly corrupted the originals due to his anti-Semitic viewpoint. We know the originals were written mostly by jews and within the Judaic and Torahic worldview. So it is with the gnostics also are anti semitic worldview.

You demonstrated no such thing. Marcion differed with Judaism, but that does not make him anti-semitic. Anti-semitism is different from having a dispute on doctrine.

But even if Marcion was anti-semitic, that does not prove he was wrong when he said others were editing the gospels.

Anyone else? Yes, of course, Mr. Kennedy...

mark kennedy said:
See it? I quoted Vine's and Thayer's at length including the grammatical constructions that always mean the same thing, 'rose again'. This by it's intrinsic and literal meaning bars the Carrier thesis of a celestial body that abandons the original earthly frame is a direct contradition of the New Testament doctrine of the resurrection in no uncertain terms.

Wait, this is in response to my question as to whether the phrase "rose again" could apply to Paul, even if his body is gone. I see you refuse to answer. You are in a pickle, aren't you? For if you say that Paul could rise again in a different body, then your whole argument that this word could never apply to somebody arising in a different body is defeated. And if you say Paul could not rise again in a different body, then Paul will never live again, for his old body is gone. So you just ignore the question, don't you?

If you say it could apply to Paul in a different body, then the cat is out of the bag, and I will want to know why it could not also apply to Jesus in a different body.

We have a much broader distance time wise between Galatians and Paul in the first century by that criteria yet it's almost never questioned. We do know and I doubt very seriously that your next 'lecture' will be any more evidential then the former ones.

Galatians is also questioned. All New Testament books are questioned. We simply do not know what could have been changed from the time they were written until they were widely distributed.

What's more you seem oblivious to the cultural context of Apostolic authority and the universal acceptance of these scrolls from Syria to Rome.

Please show me one apostle who stated in writing that he authorizes the gospels we have. Please show me one person writing in the first century with apostolic authority that says any or all of our gospels have apostolic authority. You simply made this up.

Please show me one piece of evidence that any of the gospels was universally accepted from Syria to Rome in the first century. You simply made this up.

Jesus is saying when you see these things, things that didn't happen in their lifetime, that's the generation that will see the return of Christ. This is from the Greek and in Greek context is king.

Then why does Mark have Jesus say that "you", that is, you four disciples that I am talking to will see the Second Coming? Why does he say it will happen "in those days", referring to the days of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? I have asked you this before, and you simply ignore the questions.

Compare the New Testament, or the Old Testament for that matter, to any historical text and there is no close second, period.

In terms of number of copies within 1500 years of writing, yes. But in terms of numbers of copies within 1500 years of writing, the National Enquirer has them all beat.

Again 25,000 copies from the Middle Ages, or a million copies of a supermarket tabloid mean nothing. What matters is the accuracy of the original, and the accuracy of the transmission to the point where it was mass produced.

By your standard everything we have from antiquity is hopelessly ambiquise since the New Testament has the best preserved writings from history. Your not arguing evidence or standards, just mildly rationalistic skepticism.

Actually everything in antiquity is questioned, for all sources are fallible. However there are many secular events that are testified by multiple completely independent accounts, something we do not have for the New Testament claims.

That's "authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor" (Ramsey). Things do change over decades and the further left on the time line you get the harder it is to fill in the details. Luke is detail rich and offers extensive details with regards to people, places, customs and events.

Wow, I say Acts was written between 80 - 130 AD. And you claim Acts is so accurate about society in 60 AD, that he could not have possible written in 80 AD? I disagree.

If what you say is true, then how can you possibly claim that Luke, even if he wrote in 50 AD, should be trusted when he writes about things in 30 AD? If people in 80 AD knew nothing about the culture of 60 AD, as you claim, why are you trusting a book about Jesus written after 50 AD?

You base that on what? Your personal copy of the logs? The key concept you have dodged, just like you dodged the concept of the bodily resurrection is Apostolic authority.

I didn't say I knew Luke's sources. I say he could have written in 80 AD and used sources written in 60 AD. That is so obvious, I don't believe you even ask me to prove it.

Historical narratives often do refer to writings they are predicated on but Luke is discussing his investigation in a Christian context. You can't honestly expect an historical narrative of the Hebrews or early Christians to conform to a Roman methodology and it's absurd to disqualify it as historical on that basis.

Wait, you were the one making the claim that nobody documented their sources back then. Now, you are changing that to Hebrews and early Christians did not document their sources? Regardless of whether every Christian was doing this, since Luke does not tell us his sources, we have no way of knowing if he had good sources.

It's interesting that you have now introduced the Carrier thesis when you went to so much trouble to bury it.

Uh, no, read the page I quoted. It was written by Carrier, but it in no way is talking about the mythical Jesus thesis. You just made that up. And even if the page was about the mythical Jesus, that in no way means that, because I quote a paragraph there that is relevant to this thread, that I am now hyjacking my own thread to talk about the mythical Jesus, something I have repeatedly told you I am trying not to do. I have confined my discussion of the mythical Jesus to other threads, and tried to keep this thread on topic.

Oral tradition, all the Apostles were on the same page with regards to doctrine and redemptive history. Think about it, most people in ancient Israel and then the early church were illiterate and certainly didn't have access to the actual scrolls. The law was read on various occasions as a matter of law in the Old Testament and the scrolls of the Apostolic witness were read in the churches regularly.

How can oral tradition account that both Matthew and Mark inserted the same parenthetical, "Let the reader understand" at the same place? If this phrase is something that had come down through oral tradition, it would have said, "Let the hearer understand".

How is it that Matthew and Mark use the same wording when telling the same story? Was Matthew just repeating what he had memorized? If so, why trust Matthew as a source if he is just writing words he was given to memorize? Eyewitnesses use their own words.

And if you are going to claim verbal tradition about Jesus was so strong, have you just affirmed my assertion that Clement could have known about the saying of Jesus from verbal tradition, rather than from reading the gospels?

When they agree it's supposedly plagiarism and when they differ its contradiction. So when is it ever; unique perspective, insight or agreement on the particulars?

No sir, the problem is not that Matthew and Mark agree. If your younger brother turns in an essay with the same paragraphs that were in your essay last year, can he argue that it is not plagarism, that you just agree on the point being expressed? Well no, if he uses your paragraphs, that is plagarism.

And Matthew uses Mark's paragraphs.

Luke never gives exact dates and the wording suggests ambiguity with regards to exact times. That's not a contradiction, thats one of the limits of the language and literary device being used.

Uh no, Luke is specific that this taxation happened when Quirinius was governor, putting the birth of Jesus at 6 AD or later, which contradicts Matthew that puts it at 4 BC.

Context is king in Greek, it all depends on the context that term is used in. The word can be used other ways but the core meaning is to dwell:

Dwell, Dwellers, Dwelling (Place)-"to sit down," denotes "to dwell," in Act 18:11 (RV, "dwelt," for AV, "continued"). (see Vines G2523 καθίζω kathizō)

If you believe both Matthew and Luke, then you have the events in this order:

1. Jesus meets the women fleeing the tomb and tells them to tell the disciples to go meet him in Galilee
2. Jesus then meets them right there in Jerusalem.
3. There he tells them to tarry in Jerusalem.
4. They leave and go to Galilee, and meet him there as though it was the first time.

None of that makes sense. Why tell them to go to Galilee if you will meet them right where they are this afternoon? And why tell them to stay in Jerusalem if you want them to go to Galilee?

The way you determine something is counterfeit is by comparing it to the genuine. The other writings that were rejected were rejected because they didn't match the Apostolic witness. You may not know but the church knew then just as it knows now the genuine from the heretical.

Fair enough.

But my point is that there were many gospels, as Luke himself says. How do you know which were genuine? You cannot simply take some, assume they are genuine, and then say, since they match the ones you assumed genuine, therefore they are genuine. That is arguing in a circle.

External Evidence:

According to Simon Greenleaf, who authored, 'Treatise on the Law of Evidence' (3 vols., 1842–1853), and which remained a standard textbook in American law throughout the Nineteenth century. This is the evidencial standard by which the Gospels should be evaluated:

Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forger, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise. (Simon Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists)

As I explained before, that is a legal principle that applies only to originals. You do not have the originals, but copies of copies. And that principle only allows you to bypass the normal witness testimony required about the actual writing of the book for some books written more than 30 years ago. It applies only to getting the book into evidence. It does not mean everything it says is true. I have linked to details on this principle, and you just ignore it.

William Ramsey investigated the Tübingen theory that Luke and Acts was written in the second century. Having been taught this throughout his collegiate carrier simply accepted it until he investigated it himself. the primary question was the date of Acts:

It was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with the fixed idea that the work was a second-century composition and never relying upon its evidence as trustworthy for first-century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations. But there remained still one serious objection to accepting it as a first-century work. (St. Paul, The Traveler and the Roman Citizen, William Ramsey)

That question was the Northern vs. Southern Galatia issue. That was the final obstacle in rejecting the Tübingen theory and accepting Acts as a first century work. Sir William Ramsey rejects the Tübingen theory that places the date of the original writing sometime in the second century. Instead Ramsey found the book of Acts as an "authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor". He tells us:

“That Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historical sense; he fixes his mind on the idea and plan that rules in the evolution of history, and proportions the scale of his treatment to the importance of each incident. He seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely as much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians” (St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, William Ramsey).

All Ramsey is saying is that the geography and customs that Luke records is close to what he found about the state of the area in 60 AD. That in no way confirms that Paul said any of the things claimed in Acts, or that any of the miracles occurred. And it does not prove Luke could not have written in 100 AD with accurate source documents on what the area was like in 60 AD.

Bibliographical Testing

The dating of the oldest fragments are working their way back to the first century:

The Matthew fragments redated by Thiede are at Magdalen College (Oxford). They are called The Magdalen Papyrus (listed as Greek 17 and p64). There are three fragments written on both sides, together representing 24 lines from Matthew 26:7-33. Two of the three fragments are a little larger than 4 x 1 cm.; the other is smaller, 1.6 x 1.6 cm. Another two fragments, located in Spain, are called the Barcelona Papyrus (P. Barc. inv. 1/p67) and contain portions of Matthew 3:9, 15; 5:20-22, 25-28...

...More than 40 years later Thiede reexamined the fragments, using state-of–the-art electronic scanners with close analysis of the paper, ink, letter formation, line length, and other factors to redate the fragments to around A.D. 60. Thiede’s tests and skill appear to be well within responsible papyrology, although his conclusions have met with strong opposition from critics. I have examined most of the critical articles and have found their criticisms less convincing than Thiede’s conclusions. (Eyewitness to Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence about the Origin of the Gospels CRI)

Clearly the jury is still out but Higher Criticism and Liberal Theology have their work cut out for them because the date is moving further to the right. This is a long range trend in Biblical scholarship. One thing is for sure, it's not as cut and dried as your trying to make it.

In 1995 the German scholar Carsten Peter Thiede took another look at Papyrus 64 in light of recent discoveries. Thiede concluded that based upon comparison with other papyri known to date to the late 1st century and before, an earlier date of 70-100 AD. should be assigned to Papyrus 64 (and thus the other two papyri produced by the same scribe).[4] This generated an uproar in the scholarly world. Graham Stanton, a liberal scholar who had written extensively on Matthew, published a book later the same year which began with a chapter dismissing Thiede’s arguments because he had compared manuscripts from different locations.In response to this Thiede devoted an entire book to the subject in 1996 entitled The Jesus Papyrus.

While it must be acknowledged that Thiede has a bit of a sensational flair, the evidence which he presents is reasonable and should not be so quickly dismissed. Some of Thiede’s critics, including Stanton, hold the belief that the gospels were not verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit, but formed through an editorial process by the early church using a hypothetical text of Jesus’ sayings they call Q. Such critics cannot escape the fact that if they accept a first century date for a surviving gospel manuscript their liberal theories crumble. This cannot avoid coloring their appraisal of Thiede’s dating. (New Testament Manuscripts from the First Century By Kyle Pope)

You are talking about the claim of one man. The dating of these scraps have been strongly opposed by scholars as inaccurate.

Clearly Paul taught neither the red view nor the blue view, they are two sockpuppet strawman arguments. Doughtingmerle is sitting on a stage with a red sockpuppet on his right hand and blue sockpuppet of his left. The left is the mythical Jesus, celestial body resurrection aka the Carrier thesis. The red one an exclusively naturalistic explanation, 'Paul was just in a coma'. Notice he never uses the word resurrection because that's simply not going to be allowed as an option. He derailed two threads with this and the moderators had to do an extensive clean up in the wake.

This is total nonsense. Again the famous "red" and "blue" paragraphs were just to illustrate belief in spirit survival vs soul sleep. In no sense was I trying to misrepresent anybody. In no sense did I ever say Paul was just in a coma. In no sense did I say those who believe in spirit survival could not believe in a new body at the Paruosia. In no sense was the concept expressed there about people believing Paul thought his spirit could survive death the same thing as belief in a mythical Jesus. You have followed my over three threads repeating these misunderstandings of what I said.

And what does it matter? Even if it was true that I made the mistakes you claim in a past thread, so what? Why follow me around the Internet to hound me about it?

But the odd things is that you are simply misrepresenting what I said. I was never saying the stupid things you claimed I said.

What the Carrier thesis and doubtingmerle are saying sounds like Docetism, not Biblical Christianity. Docetism was unequivocally rejected at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and is regarded as heretical by the Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, and Coptic Church…Docetism is broadly defined as any teaching that claims that Jesus' body was either absent or illusory.

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes. (Ignatius of Antioch letter to the Smyrnaeans, 7:1, 110 AD) (Docetism, Wikipedia)

This is found no where in the New Testament and completely rejected in all Christian traditions. Docetism of this nature is found in the Koran and strictly opposed to a bodily resurrection:

And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger — they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise. (Qur'an, Sura 4:157–158)

Oh for crying out loud! The paragraph about spirit survival was intended to portray that some people think their ancestors are still alive, even though their bodies are in the grave. In no sense are people who teach that their grandmother went to heaven teaching docetism.

But what does any of that matter here? It is in a long forgotten thread. You bring it up repeatedly in multiple threads, apparently in a desperate attempt to get dirt on me, and you refuse to accept my explanation that I was not saying what you claim. How can any of this possibly help you?

mark kennedy · Mar 10, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Wait, this is in response to my question as to whether the phrase "rose again" could apply to Paul, even if his body is gone. I see you refuse to answer. You are in a pickle, aren't you? For if you say that Paul could rise again in a different body, then your whole argument that this word could never apply to somebody arising in a different body is defeated. And if you say Paul could not rise again in a different body, then Paul will never live again, for his old body is gone. So you just ignore the question, don't you?

It's not a real question and what I showed you the real world meaning of the word and you want to ask a question that presupposes something it could not possibly mean. Absent from the body, present with the Lord, the soul can exist apart from the body, the body cannot live apart from the spirit. You think your little rhetorical trap is cleaver but I know it's a clumsy slight of hand trying to make the Pauline doctrine of the bodily resurrection disappear and no one is fooled.

If you say it could apply to Paul in a different body, then the cat is out of the bag, and I will want to know why it could not also apply to Jesus in a different body.

It's not a different body. That's begging the question in circles, you just take your little carousel ride around and round and every time you ask your rhetorical question you'll get the same irrefutable lexicon definition that means the body is 'raised again'.

Galatians is also questioned. All New Testament books are questioned. We simply do not know what could have been changed from the time they were written until they were widely distributed.

All the New Testament bibliographical testing and manuscript evidence indicates the New Testament is unparalleled in it's preservation and meticulous proliferation. Matthew and Mark are especially well preserved especially as compared to Galatians. I'm convinced from the content of your arguments you haven't a clue why that is.

Please show me one apostle who stated in writing that he authorizes the gospels we have. Please show me one person writing in the first century with apostolic authority that says any or all of our gospels have apostolic authority. You simply made this up.

Wow, I actually overestimated you. I thought you actually knew why the secular world does the full court press on the Gospels and concedes 7 Pauline epistles. The whole reason the New Testament was preserved in the first place was the Apostolic witness. That's why the push to move everything to the left, it's an attempt to undermine the foundational apostolic authority of Scripture, they do the same thing with the Pentateuch. Thought you understood that, guess your just fishing.

Please show me one piece of evidence that any of the gospels was universally accepted from Syria to Rome in the first century. You simply made this up.

(2) Authentication on the human side. Three issues were important here: (a) Was the author an apostle or did he have the endorsement of an apostle? Mark wrote the gospel of Mark, but he did so under Peter’s endorsement. Luke, as a close associate of the Apostle Paul, wrote under the endorsement of his authority. (b) Universal acceptance was another key factor. On the whole, was the book accepted by the church at large? The recognition given a particular book by the church was important. By this standard, a number of books were rejected. There were some books that enjoyed an acceptance by a few, but were later dropped for a lack of universal acceptance. Then there were a few books that some questioned because of doubts about the author, not the content, but were later accepted because the majority accepted them. (The Bible: The Holy Canon of Scripture)

Then why does Mark have Jesus say that "you", that is, you four disciples that I am talking to will see the Second Coming? Why does he say it will happen "in those days", referring to the days of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? I have asked you this before, and you simply ignore the questions.

I didn't ignore it, I just put the quote back in it's natural, literary context, the generation that sees 'these things', will see the return of Christ. As usual you ignored it just as you've ignored the clear testimony and evidential history of Scripture all along.

In terms of number of copies within 1500 years of writing, yes. But in terms of numbers of copies within 1500 years of writing, the National Enquirer has them all beat.

The National Enquirer wasn't written in the first century and neither was the humanist manifesto.

Again 25,000 copies from the Middle Ages, or a million copies of a supermarket tabloid mean nothing. What matters is the accuracy of the original, and the accuracy of the transmission to the point where it was mass produced.

Ok, now your expanding your fallacious repertoire to include a satirical non sequitur. You want to compare apples to apples trying to find something from the century.

Actually everything in antiquity is questioned, for all sources are fallible. However there are many secular events that are testified by multiple completely independent accounts, something we do not have for the New Testament claims.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John are all independent sources, I'm talking about manuscript and bibliographical evidential reason here.

Wow, I say Acts was written between 80 - 130 AD. And you claim Acts is so accurate about society in 60 AD, that he could not have possible written in 80 AD? I disagree.

I say the bulk of the New Testament was written between 60 AD and 70 AD. But that's based on 2,000 years of Christian scholarship, you wouldn't understand.

If what you say is true, then how can you possibly claim that Luke, even if he wrote in 50 AD, should be trusted when he writes about things in 30 AD? If people in 80 AD knew nothing about the culture of 60 AD, as you claim, why are you trusting a book about Jesus written after 50 AD?

It took you a while but you came up with a pretty good question there, this isn't a litmus test. I drew my conclusion after a long look at the circumstances of the early church. They were expecting Christ to return in their life times, Christians often feel that way to this day. Reality started setting in when they started losing Apostles, so the preservation of the Apostolic witness became of paramount importance. Most of Paul's letters were written in response to churches who had issues and questions for Paul, but we don't have the letter of the Corinthians to Paul or even a clue what they asked except from his answers.

I didn't say I knew Luke's sources. I say he could have written in 80 AD and used sources written in 60 AD. That is so obvious, I don't believe you even ask me to prove it.

I'm way beyond challenging you for an evidential argument, you appear to be incapable of one. I know roughly what his sources would have been because I know the cultural context it was written in.

Wait, you were the one making the claim that nobody documented their sources back then. Now, you are changing that to Hebrews and early Christians did not document their sources? Regardless of whether every Christian was doing this, since Luke does not tell us his sources, we have no way of knowing if he had good sources.

Luke didn't write Luke or Acts for you, you don't get to critically review him nor do you get to establish some capriccios standard for citation. Luke gets to write his narrative as he sees fit and cite what he deems appropriate.

Uh, no, read the page I quoted. It was written by Carrier, but it in no way is talking about the mythical Jesus thesis. You just made that up. And even if the page was about the mythical Jesus, that in no way means that, because I quote a paragraph there that is relevant to this thread, that I am now hyjacking my own thread to talk about the mythical Jesus, something I have repeatedly told you I am trying not to do. I have confined my discussion of the mythical Jesus to other threads, and tried to keep this thread on topic.

You have argued relentlessly for the Carrier thesis in all three threads and even in the post I'm responding to. You just think I'm not going to notice that your palming the Carrier thesis which is why you were asking about what body Paul is in now. Your just not that cleaver, I don't think your fooling anyone, not even yourself.

How can oral tradition account that both Matthew and Mark inserted the same parenthetical, "Let the reader understand" at the same place? If this phrase is something that had come down through oral tradition, it would have said, "Let the hearer understand".

It's pretty common for a speaker, especially preachers to say something like that. When they are getting to a key principle they are probably using an expression common to the Apostles when they were preaching. It's a literary feature dude, nothing more.

How is it that Matthew and Mark use the same wording when telling the same story? Was Matthew just repeating what he had memorized? If so, why trust Matthew as a source if he is just writing words he was given to memorize? Eyewitnesses use their own words.

The Apostles taught many of the same things in many the same ways. Your not asking anything substantive here.

And if you are going to claim verbal tradition about Jesus was so strong, have you just affirmed my assertion that Clement could have known about the saying of Jesus from verbal tradition, rather than from reading the gospels?

I went back and did a little background reading on Clement and he seems pretty concerned about the Corinthians. His writings are Pastoral, he was a minister. I remember I got a kick out of Irenaeus talking about the Gospel of John. He was very good at resolving issues between the eastern and western church but perhaps not a great historian or scholar. We have to take these writings as we find them and consider what the author is actually trying to say before we go hyper critical on their veracity.

No sir, the problem is not that Matthew and Mark agree. If your younger brother turns in an essay with the same paragraphs that were in your essay last year, can he argue that it is not plagarism, that you just agree on the point being expressed? Well no, if he uses your paragraphs, that is plagarism.

No if he is just saying the same thing in the same way. When Obama was running for President he had his picture taken, a photographer took the picture and photoshopped it. When the judge who reviewed the case saw that it was taken from a photograph someone else had taken he decided it was plagiarism. In the appeal it was decided it had to be 70% unique or public domain. This isn't that cut and dried and the Apostles taught a certain way, the synoptics reflect that.

And Matthew uses Mark's paragraphs.

You don't know that and I find your argument pedantic at best.

Uh no, Luke is specific that this taxation happened when Quirinius was governor, putting the birth of Jesus at 6 AD or later, which contradicts Matthew that puts it at 4 BC.

The original is less analytic

If you believe both Matthew and Luke, then you have the events in this order:

1. Jesus meets the women fleeing the tomb and tells them to tell the disciples to go meet him in Galilee
2. Jesus then meets them right there in Jerusalem.
3. There he tells them to tarry in Jerusalem.
4. They leave and go to Galilee, and meet him there as though it was the first time.

None of that makes sense. Why tell them to go to Galilee if you will meet them right where they are this afternoon? And why tell them to stay in Jerusalem if you want them to go to Galilee?

I'm not doing a synoptic synthesis with you, you can't acknowledge a clear definition, that would be way beyond you at this point.

Fair enough.

But my point is that there were many gospels, as Luke himself says. How do you know which were genuine? You cannot simply take some, assume they are genuine, and then say, since they match the ones you assumed genuine, therefore they are genuine. That is arguing in a circle.

Not if you have access to the Apostles and eye witnesses. Trump tweets that his place in New York was bugged, the press is saying he has no proof of that. You and I are having ice cream at intermission and meet one of the Trump staffers who tells us that he saw a document pertaining to this but couldn't elaborate because it was classified. BTW, that's just a hypothetical, but don't you think we are going to consider that pretty credible even though we don't really know anything about the content?

As I explained before, that is a legal principle that applies only to originals. You do not have the originals, but copies of copies. And that principle only allows you to bypass the normal witness testimony required about the actual writing of the book for some books written more than 30 years ago. It applies only to getting the book into evidence. It does not mean everything it says is true. I have linked to details on this principle, and you just ignore it.

You know, I studied for a year and met a couple of pretty accomplished scholars. Invariably they would emphasis that the marks of human handling make the Scriptures more credible in their eyes. I noticed you didn't spend a lot of time on Acts, for the last couple of years I've been fascinated by the book. We would know next to nothing about the early church after the resurrection without it and it is detail rich, clear and concise. I've never seen anything to seriously doubt the veracity or traditional dating of the New Testament. I never took everything the Bible said was true just because it was worded a certain way. I got interested in expositional and exegetical studies much later. The evidence for the veracity of Scripture is compelling and the arguments of skeptics are shameless in comparison. I'll take an honest narrative over a ruthless skepticism any day.

All Ramsey is saying is that the geography and customs that Luke records is close to what he found about the state of the area in 60 AD. That in no way confirms that Paul said any of the things claimed in Acts, or that any of the miracles occurred. And it does not prove Luke could not have written in 100 AD with accurate source documents on what the area was like in 60 AD.

Ramsey is saying that he was convinced it was written in the second century and then found it to belong to the first century.

You are talking about the claim of one man. The dating of these scraps have been strongly opposed by scholars as inaccurate.

Scholarship along these lines from secular skeptics have proven themselves to be dubious and biased at best.

This is total nonsense. Again the famous "red" and "blue" paragraphs were just to illustrate belief in spirit survival vs soul sleep. In no sense was I trying to misrepresent anybody. In no sense did I ever say Paul was just in a coma. In no sense did I say those who believe in spirit survival could not believe in a new body at the Paruosia. In no sense was the concept expressed there about people believing Paul thought his spirit could survive death the same thing as belief in a mythical Jesus. You have followed my over three threads repeating these misunderstandings of what I said.

In that time that I've followed your posts I noticed you are loathe to use the word resurrection and grossly misrepresent the Apostolic creed reflected in 1 Corinthians 15. Your red and blue sock puppet questions do not allow or even mention the bodily resurrection, it's bogus, disingenuous and riddled with fallacious slight of hand. I understand perfectly and I'm not falling for it.

And what does it matter? Even if it was true that I made the mistakes you claim in a past thread, so what? Why follow me around the Internet to hound me about it?

Your one of those rare posters who actually wants to take on Christian apologetics. Like I told you, I'm not like the others, I've been through the culture wars. The only thing that would be better is a formal debate, now that would be a lot of fun for me.

But the odd things is that you are simply misrepresenting what I said. I was never saying the stupid things you claimed I said.

I wouldn't characterize them as stupid, just fallacious.

Oh for crying out loud! The paragraph about spirit survival was intended to portray that some people think their ancestors are still alive, even though their bodies are in the grave. In no sense are people who teach that their grandmother went to heaven teaching docetism.

Were the Carrier thesis true then Paul would be teaching docetism, I watched his videos and he opens with it for crying out loud. I know your trying to pass off the same thing and while you might think it's cleaver I know it's just plain wrong.

But what does any of that matter here? It is in a long forgotten thread. You bring it up repeatedly in multiple threads, apparently in a desperate attempt to get dirt on me, and you refuse to accept my explanation that I was not saying what you claim. How can any of this possibly help you?

I'll tell you like I have told so many Darwinians, it didn't take me that long to get what I needed from these discussions. I found the evidential aspects, the relevant source material and the philosophical underpinnings and patterns. What makes me curious, what keeps me coming back, what has me wrapped in a morbid fascination is you. I'm not here to learn more about Apologetics even though I invariably do. I'm studying you and that is more then enough to keep my attention indefinitely.

Now you have exhausted your arguments about Paul, the Gospels and the Early Church Fathers. I can't wait to see where you go from here.

doubtingmerle · Mar 11, 2017

Thank you everybody for listening. I really must move on. I have been on this topic for 5 months. I will take a few more questions and move on.

mark kennedy said:
It's not a different body. That's begging the question in circles, you just take your little carousel ride around and round and every time you ask your rhetorical question you'll get the same irrefutable lexicon definition that means the body is 'raised again'.

Excuse me, but how can Paul possibly be raised again in the same body? His body has decayed and is gone. We have discussed this numerous times. The only way that Paul could ever bodily raise again is if God were to make him a new body. Some say God will make him an exact duplicate of the body he had. OK, but that is a duplicate, not the same body.

And if you believe Paul's spirit survived death and will some day live in a duplicate of his earthly body, why could not God do that at any time, even while his original body is half decayed? Why not simply leave the stinking corpse behind and live on in a new body?

And if you think Paul could rise in a duplicate of his original body, why can it not be that Paul thought the same about Jesus?

All the New Testament bibliographical testing and manuscript evidence indicates the New Testament is unparalleled in it's preservation and meticulous proliferation.

So far you have not shown us no real evidence that the NT was accurately preserved before 150 AD. That is the critical time period. Endless mentions of the numerous copies made with care in the Middle Ages is irrelevant.

(2) Authentication on the human side. Three issues were important here: (a) Was the author an apostle or did he have the endorsement of an apostle? Mark wrote the gospel of Mark, but he did so under Peter’s endorsement. Luke, as a close associate of the Apostle Paul, wrote under the endorsement of his authority. (b) Universal acceptance was another key factor. On the whole, was the book accepted by the church at large? The recognition given a particular book by the church was important. By this standard, a number of books were rejected. There were some books that enjoyed an acceptance by a few, but were later dropped for a lack of universal acceptance. Then there were a few books that some questioned because of doubts about the author, not the content, but were later accepted because the majority accepted them. (The Bible: The Holy Canon of Scripture)

Excuse, me but the canon was formed in the third and fourth century. I was talking about the first century and the first half of the second century. You have shown no sign of universal acceptance of any gospel in that time frame. Mentioning that 200 years later these books were put together into a canon does not deal with the first century problem.

I didn't ignore it, I just put the quote back in it's natural, literary context, the generation that sees 'these things', will see the return of Christ. As usual you ignored it just as you've ignored the clear testimony and evidential history of Scripture all along.

Oh please, I gave you three reasons why we should understand Mark 13 as talking about the second coming in the first century. You ignored all three. I repeated the reasons in another post. You ignored them again.

You just repeat over and over that the end of Mark 13 applies to a later generation, but have not given one bit of evidence for your claim. You just keep repeating your claim without evidence.

The dismal failure of Mark 13 in his prediction of the soon coming Son of Man is evidence that the writer did not have prophetic foreknowledge.

The National Enquirer wasn't written in the first century and neither was the humanist manifesto.

What does that have to do with the price of eggs in China?

Again, the issue is that you are claiming that 25,000 copies in the Middle Ages prove the New Testament is reliable. If your claim is true, then 25,000 copies of the National Enquirer prove it is reliable. Same argument. Both are fallacious. The issue is the lack of credibility for the gospels when first written, and secondarily, the untrustworthy copying before the end of the second century.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John are all independent sources, I'm talking about manuscript and bibliographical evidential reason here.

If they are independent sources, why do later gospels simply copy from the earlier ones, often word for word?

Luke didn't write Luke or Acts for you, you don't get to critically review him nor do you get to establish some capriccios standard for citation. Luke gets to write his narrative as he sees fit and cite what he deems appropriate.

I am sorry, but asking a historian to name his sources is not a capricious standard for citation. I simply showed you how other ancient historians documented their sources and methods. We have none of that for the gospels. Sure, they can choose to write without mentioning their sources, but that gives us reason to doubt. The problem is that you take these books with no mentioned sources, and try to say they are more reliable than documented sources from antiquity.

You have argued relentlessly for the Carrier thesis in all three threads and even in the post I'm responding to.

This is completely false. I have worked tirelessly in this thread and the previous thread to keep the two topics separate. And you know that. You know that I have not one time argued for the view that Jesus was a mythical person in these two threads. Although that is my personal belief, and I have argued that in the other threads I linked to, I have tried to keep this thread and its predecessor on topic. The topic of this thread, and its predecessor, is whether the Jesus of the gospels physically rose again.

You have repeatedly confused these two topics: 1)whether Jesus was thought to have rose in a spiritual body and 2) whether the entire story of Jesus started as pure myth that got written later as history. The "Carrier thesis" of the mythical Jesus says that he never existed at all, that it was purely myth that got written down later as though it was history. That is very different from the view presented in these two threads, that the gospels at core could have been about a historical man, who died and was thought to have risen again, either in a different body or the same body

It's pretty common for a speaker, especially preachers to say something like that. When they are getting to a key principle they are probably using an expression common to the Apostles when they were preaching. It's a literary feature dude, nothing more.

Wait, this is a literary feature in speech? When do speakers ever use the phrase, "Let the reader understand". That is something that writers use, not speakers. Speakers would say, "Let the hearers understand". The concept that for years people were repeating the story of Mark 13 and always saying "Let the reader understand" after mentioning the abomination of desolation is preposterous. But even if it is true, that Matthew just wrote down what everybody had memorized and was repeating, how does that make Matthew an eyewitness? Eyewitnesses say what they saw.

I went back and did a little background reading on Clement and he seems pretty concerned about the Corinthians. His writings are Pastoral, he was a minister. I remember I got a kick out of Irenaeus talking about the Gospel of John. He was very good at resolving issues between the eastern and western church but perhaps not a great historian or scholar. We have to take these writings as we find them and consider what the author is actually trying to say before we go hyper critical on their veracity.

Understood that is the message of Clement. The problem is some here have claimed he mentions Matthew by name. That is completely false. Some here have claimed that he quotes Matthew. That is basically false, as the only thing he says from the gospels are a few short moral statements that resemble Matthew and Luke. For instance, Clement 13:2 says,

for thus He spake Have mercy, that ye may receive mercy: forgive, that it may be forgiven to you. As ye do, so shall it be done to you. As ye give, so shall it be given unto you. As ye judge, so shall ye be judged. As ye show kindness, so shall kindness be showed unto you. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured withal to you.

We can see themes here from the Sermon on the Mount, and the last phrase is almost verbatim. But basically these are just short moral teachings that could have simply been characteristic teachings of the group. If you find two books in America talking about not counting your chickens before they hatch or that a penny saved is a penny earned, you don't say one book copied the other. You recognize that these are just common phrases of the times. Likewise, the phrases in Clement could be simply reflecting a common background, not direct quotes of a gospel.

But when Clement and other early church fathers before the middle of the second century talk about Jesus himself, they make no reference at all to a gospel account of his life. In fact, they barely even refer to the life of Jesus. If the gospels were so well received, why this silence?

Interestingly, people will quote places like this in Clement to show that he copied from Matthew (though he clearly did not) but on the other hand will vehemently denied that Matthew copied from Mark. Why? As I showed to you, Matthew is often word for word the same as Mark in the same sequence. Matthew clearly copied Mark. But people say that is not copying. Then, when Clement shows the same themes as Matthew or Luke jumbled up, people claim Clement is copying Matthew or Luke. What we have here is special pleading. A different standard is used as needed. That has nothing to do with sound reasoning.

I'm not doing a synoptic synthesis with you, you can't acknowledge a clear definition, that would be way beyond you at this point.

Excuse me, but I have acknowledged that you think the word translated "tarry" in Luke could mean "dwell". Every translation I checked says either "tarry", "stay", "abide", or "remain" in Jerusalem. None says "dwell". So if dwell is the only possible correct translation of this, how did all the translators I checked miss it?

Again, Matthew tells the disciples to go to Galilee to meet Jesus, even though Luke says he met them in Jerusalem hours later. Luke has Jesus tell them to tarry (stay, abide, remain) in Jerusalem, but Matthew says they went to Galilee to meet Jesus. How do you make sense of this? You simply ignore the conflict between the accounts.

I watched his videos and he opens with it for crying out loud. I know your trying to pass off the same thing and while you might think it's cleaver I know it's just plain wrong.

Of course Carrier in his video about the mythical Jesus, talks about the mythical Jesus. Carrier strongly supports that view.

Again, the issue is that I quoted a different work by Carrier (here) where Carrier is arguing that, if Jesus existed, then Paul was probably not talking about a physical resurrection. The view that Paul taught that Jesus existed and arose in a spiritual body is not the same thing as the view that the story of Jesus was simply a mythical event in Paul's mind, which later got written as an earthly story. But as I explained to you multiple times, you simply equate the two, even though they are totally different. In the article I quoted, Carrier is arguing for the spiritual resurrection view, not the mythical Jesus view.

And yet somehow, since I quote a paragraph about historical methods from this webpage, you take this as evidence that I am secretly hijacking my own thread to get away from the stated topic, to discussion of the mythical Jesus. That is complete nonsense. I am not hijacking my own thread. I am not trying to divert this thread from the stated topic, the resurrection of Jesus, to a different topic, whether Jesus existed.

You have claimed numerous times that I am trying to secretly hijack my own thread and divert it to talking about the mythical Jesus. I have told you repeatedly that I am not doing this. You have not shown one quote--not one single quote--proving your delusion. If you want to keeping posting this odd claim, show us the evidence. You refuse. You just keep repeating the false claim without any evidence. Why?

Ok, on that note, I shall move on. There are many other things to do. Thanks for listening. I hope this was helpful. Good bye!

mark kennedy · Mar 11, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Thank you everybody for listening. I really must move on. I have been on this topic for 5 months. I will take a few more questions and move on.

Well thanks for the slight of hand, shell game and imaginary evidential arguments, it's been a hoot.

Excuse me, but how can Paul possibly be raised again in the same body? His body has decayed and is gone.

And now he attempts a perilous argument from incredulity based on shameless naturalistic presupposition. That is exactly what Paul, his Pharisee brethren and Christians have always believed. The resurrection happens for everyone since, and including Adam, even if their body has long since turned to dust. Five months on the topic of the resurrection and you still have the audacity to pretend you do not know the Christan doctrine of the bodily resurrection. I'm sure your consumed with incredulity here but what all Christians have believed for 2000 years has not been hidden under a rock. It's not a logical argument to suggest mystery religion celestial paganism or exclusively naturalistic causation and disallow the actual doctrine and historical event under consideration. Just say no to fallacious circular logic.

We have discussed this numerous times. The only way that Paul could ever bodily raise again is if God were to make him a new body.

Only you believe that the soul of Paul could not survive being absent from the body and still be present with the Lord until the Pariousia. Every Christian you have tried that empty rhetoric on has corrected you but you would appear to be oblivious to obvious facts.

Some say God will make him an exact duplicate of the body he had. OK, but that is a duplicate, not the same body.

No it's the same body, raised again, except the mortal put on the immortal. There is absolutely nothing in Scripture to suggest a duplicate and virtually all secular scholars realize Paul, the Apostles and Christians for the last 2000 years unambiguously teach a bodily resurrection. The only one who thinks the Carrier thesis is the only option to exclusively naturalistic causation.

And if you believe Paul's spirit survived death and will some day live in a duplicate of his earthly body, why could not God do that at any time, even while his original body is half decayed?

I don't believe that this strawman satirical fallacious false logic represents anything more then a lack of the courage of your own beliefs. If you actually believed your own premise you would have stood it up to the acid test of evidential reason rather then this absurd strawman.

Why not simply leave the stinking corpse behind and live on in a new body?

Actually I have wondered the same thing about your Carrier thesis arguments.

And if you think Paul could rise in a duplicate of his original body, why can it not be that Paul thought the same about Jesus?

So you've been getting away with this circular flapdoodle for five months and no one has burned this flimsy straw man to the ground? I just wish I could have gotten here sooner because it didn't take me five minutes.

So far you have not shown us no real evidence that the NT was accurately preserved before 150 AD. That is the critical time period. Endless mentions of the numerous copies made with care in the Middle Ages is irrelevant.

Invariably your fallacious false dilemma is exceeded only by your immunity to legal rules of evidential logic and empirical archaeological details. By you standards there would be no historical documents from antiquity that can stand as primary source evidence. That is of course except for the fact that you neither consider bore offer evidential argument. You just ride the Carrier fallacies in circles with the presuppositional theme music playing like a broken record in the background

Excuse, me but the canon was formed in the third and fourth century. I was talking about the first century and the first half of the second century. You have shown no sign of universal acceptance of any gospel in that time frame. Mentioning that 200 years later these books were put together into a canon does not deal with the first century problem.

There is no first century problem, the church has always known the genuine from the counterfeit, the pagan from the Judaeo-Christian, the Apostolic from the Gnostic, the Pauline doctrine of the bodily resurrection from docetism even if you don't.

Oh please, I gave you three reasons why we should understand Mark 13 as talking about the second coming in the first century. You ignored all three. I repeated the reasons in another post. You ignored them again.

I have long believed that ignoring fallacious rhetoric was an ineffective apologetic, I have always preceded to expose it to actual logic and reason.

You just repeat over and over that the end of Mark 13 applies to a later generation, but have not given one bit of evidence for your claim. You just keep repeating your claim without evidence.

Oh but I did which requires little more then quoting it in context. I even listed the things that qualify the generation Jesus was referring to. But just like actual definitions, real world logic and evidential details you are the eyes that will not see.

The dismal failure of Mark 13 in his prediction of the soon coming Son of Man is evidence that the writer did not have prophetic foreknowledge.

Speaking of dismal failures I hope this means your going to ditch the Carrier thesis along with these other gross misrepresentations of the clear testimony of Scripture.

The issue is that you are claiming that 25,000 copies in the Middle Ages prove the New Testament is reliable. If your claim is true, then 25,000 copies of the National Enquirer prove it is reliable. Same argument. Both are fallacious. The issue is the lack of credibility for the gospels when first written, and secondarily, the untrustworthy copying before the end of the second century.

No the issue is that your not comparing Apple's to Apple's.

If they are independent sources, why do later gospels simply copy from the earlier ones, often word for word?

Ten to thirty years of Apostolic.teaching on the subject becoming oral tradition for one thing.

am sorry, but asking a historian to name his sources is not a capricious standard for citation. I simply showed you how other ancient historians documented their sources and methods. We have none of that for the gospels. Sure, they can choose to write without mentioning their sources, but that gives us reason to doubt. The problem is that you take these books with no mentioned sources, and try to say they are more reliable than documented sources from antiquity.

No you just tried to grade a first century historical narrative like it was a modern English composition essay and equivocated it with tabloid trash.

This is completely false. I have worked tirelessly in this thread and the previous thread to keep the two topics separate. And you know that. You know that I have not one time argued for the view that Jesus was a mythical person in these two threads. Although that is my personal belief, and I have argued that in the other threads I linked to, I have tried to keep this thread and its predecessor on topic. The topic of this thread, and its predecessor, is whether the Jesus of the gospels physically rose again.

You have worked tirelessly to avoid any mention of Christ being raised again and when called to defend your thesis you turned your slight of hand into a multi-thread shell game. Your straw man arguments finally burnt to the ground your finally ready to get off your fallacious carousel. About time.

You have repeatedly confused these two topics: 1)whether Jesus was thought to have rose in a spiritual body and 2) whether the entire story of Jesus started as pure myth that got written later as history. The "Carrier thesis" of the mythical Jesus says that he never existed at all, that it was purely myth that got written down later as though it was history. That is very different from the view presented in these two threads, that the gospels at core could have been about a historical man, who died and was thought to have risen again, either in a different body or the same body

You refused to defend your actual argument because it's baseless. When you couldn't escape reality kicking your door down you abandoned a three you worked for five months for another where you argued the exact same thing for a couple of weeks.

Wait, this is a literary feature in speech? When do speakers ever use the phrase, "Let the reader understand". That is something that writers use, not speakers. Speakers would say, "Let the hearers understand". The concept that for years people were repeating the story of Mark 13 and always saying "Let the reader understand" after mentioning the abomination of desolation is preposterous. But even if it is true, that Matthew just wrote down what everybody had memorized and was repeating, how does that make Matthew an eyewitness? Eyewitnesses say what they saw.Understood that is the message of Clement. The problem is some here have claimed he mentions Matthew by name. That is completely false. Some here have claimed that he quotes Matthew. That is basically false, as the only thing he says from the gospels are a few short moral statements that resemble Matthew and Luke. For instance, Clement 13:2 says,

for thus He spake Have mercy, that ye may receive mercy: forgive, that it may be forgiven to you. As ye do, so shall it be done to you. As ye give, so shall it be given unto you. As ye judge, so shall ye be judged. As ye show kindness, so shall kindness be showed unto you. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured withal to you.

We can see themes here from the Sermon on the Mount, and the last phrase is almost verbatim. But basically these are just short moral teachings that could have simply been characteristic teachings of the group. If you find two books in America talking about not counting your chickens before they hatch or that a penny saved is a penny earned, you don't say one book copied the other. You recognize that these are just common phrases of the times. Likewise, the phrases in Clement could be simply reflecting a common background, not direct quotes of a gospel.

But when Clement and other early church fathers before the middle of the second century talk about Jesus himself, they make no reference at all to a gospel account of his life. In fact, they barely even refer to the life of Jesus. If the gospels were so well received, why this silence?

Interestingly, people will quote places like this in Clement to show that he copied from Matthew (though he clearly did not) but on the other hand will vehemently denied that Matthew copied from Mark. Why? As I showed to you, Matthew is often word for word the same as Mark in the same sequence. Matthew clearly copied Mark. But people say that is not copying. Then, when Clement shows the same themes as Matthew or Luke jumbled up, people claim Clement is copying Matthew or Luke. What we have here is special pleading. A different standard is used as needed. That has nothing to do with sound reasoning.

Excuse me, but I have acknowledged that you think the word translated "tarry" in Luke could mean "dwell". Every translation I checked says either "tarry", "stay", "abide", or "remain" in Jerusalem. None says "dwell". So if dwell is the only possible correct translation of this, how did all the translators I checked miss it?

Again, Matthew tells the disciples to go to Galilee to meet Jesus, even though Luke says he met them in Jerusalem hours later. Luke has Jesus tell them to tarry (stay, abide, remain) in Jerusalem, but Matthew says they went to Galilee to meet Jesus. How do you make sense of this? You simply ignore the conflict between the accounts.

Of course Carrier in his video about the mythical Jesus, talks about the mythical Jesus. Carrier strongly supports that view.

Again, the issue is that I quoted a different work by Carrier (here) where Carrier is arguing that, if Jesus existed, then Paul was probably not talking about a physical resurrection. The view that Paul taught that Jesus existed and arose in a spiritual body is not the same thing as the view that the story of Jesus was simply a mythical event in Paul's mind, which later got written as an earthly story. But as I explained to you multiple times, you simply equate the two, even though they are totally different. In the article I quoted, Carrier is arguing for the spiritual resurrection view, not the mythical Jesus view.

And yet somehow, since I quote a paragraph about historical methods from this webpage, you take this as evidence that I am secretly hijacking my own thread to get away from the stated topic, to discussion of the mythical Jesus. That is complete nonsense. I am not hijacking my own thread. I am not trying to divert this thread from the stated topic, the resurrection of Jesus, to a different topic, whether Jesus existed.

You have claimed numerous times that I am trying to secretly hijack my own thread and divert it to talking about the mythical Jesus. I have told you repeatedly that I am not doing this. You have not shown one quote--not one single quote--proving your delusion. If you want to keeping posting this odd claim, show us the evidence. You refuse. You just keep repeating the false claim without any evidence. Why?

Ok, on that note, I shall move on. There are many other things to do. Thanks for listening. I hope this was helpful. Good bye!

Bye now, see you around.

Ed1wolf · Mar 12, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
OK, did everybody enjoy the ice cream bar at the intermission?

We have time for some questions. Who will be first? Yes, Mr. Wolf...

You demonstrated no such thing. Marcion differed with Judaism, but that does not make him anti-semitic. Anti-semitism is different from having a dispute on doctrine.

But even if Marcion was anti-semitic, that does not prove he was wrong when he said others were editing the gospels.

Anyone else? Yes, of course, Mr. Kennedy...

Wait, this is in response to my question as to whether the phrase "rose again" could apply to Paul, even if his body is gone. I see you refuse to answer. You are in a pickle, aren't you? For if you say that Paul could rise again in a different body, then your whole argument that this word could never apply to somebody arising in a different body is defeated. And if you say Paul could not rise again in a different body, then Paul will never live again, for his old body is gone. So you just ignore the question, don't you?

If you say it could apply to Paul in a different body, then the cat is out of the bag, and I will want to know why it could not also apply to Jesus in a different body.

Galatians is also questioned. All New Testament books are questioned. We simply do not know what could have been changed from the time they were written until they were widely distributed.

Please show me one apostle who stated in writing that he authorizes the gospels we have. Please show me one person writing in the first century with apostolic authority that says any or all of our gospels have apostolic authority. You simply made this up.

Please show me one piece of evidence that any of the gospels was universally accepted from Syria to Rome in the first century. You simply made this up.

Then why does Mark have Jesus say that "you", that is, you four disciples that I am talking to will see the Second Coming? Why does he say it will happen "in those days", referring to the days of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? I have asked you this before, and you simply ignore the questions.

In terms of number of copies within 1500 years of writing, yes. But in terms of numbers of copies within 1500 years of writing, the National Enquirer has them all beat.

Again 25,000 copies from the Middle Ages, or a million copies of a supermarket tabloid mean nothing. What matters is the accuracy of the original, and the accuracy of the transmission to the point where it was mass produced.

Actually everything in antiquity is questioned, for all sources are fallible. However there are many secular events that are testified by multiple completely independent accounts, something we do not have for the New Testament claims.

Wow, I say Acts was written between 80 - 130 AD. And you claim Acts is so accurate about society in 60 AD, that he could not have possible written in 80 AD? I disagree.

If what you say is true, then how can you possibly claim that Luke, even if he wrote in 50 AD, should be trusted when he writes about things in 30 AD? If people in 80 AD knew nothing about the culture of 60 AD, as you claim, why are you trusting a book about Jesus written after 50 AD?

I didn't say I knew Luke's sources. I say he could have written in 80 AD and used sources written in 60 AD. That is so obvious, I don't believe you even ask me to prove it.

Wait, you were the one making the claim that nobody documented their sources back then. Now, you are changing that to Hebrews and early Christians did not document their sources? Regardless of whether every Christian was doing this, since Luke does not tell us his sources, we have no way of knowing if he had good sources.

Uh, no, read the page I quoted. It was written by Carrier, but it in no way is talking about the mythical Jesus thesis. You just made that up. And even if the page was about the mythical Jesus, that in no way means that, because I quote a paragraph there that is relevant to this thread, that I am now hyjacking my own thread to talk about the mythical Jesus, something I have repeatedly told you I am trying not to do. I have confined my discussion of the mythical Jesus to other threads, and tried to keep this thread on topic.

How can oral tradition account that both Matthew and Mark inserted the same parenthetical, "Let the reader understand" at the same place? If this phrase is something that had come down through oral tradition, it would have said, "Let the hearer understand".

How is it that Matthew and Mark use the same wording when telling the same story? Was Matthew just repeating what he had memorized? If so, why trust Matthew as a source if he is just writing words he was given to memorize? Eyewitnesses use their own words.

And if you are going to claim verbal tradition about Jesus was so strong, have you just affirmed my assertion that Clement could have known about the saying of Jesus from verbal tradition, rather than from reading the gospels?

No sir, the problem is not that Matthew and Mark agree. If your younger brother turns in an essay with the same paragraphs that were in your essay last year, can he argue that it is not plagarism, that you just agree on the point being expressed? Well no, if he uses your paragraphs, that is plagarism.

And Matthew uses Mark's paragraphs.

Uh no, Luke is specific that this taxation happened when Quirinius was governor, putting the birth of Jesus at 6 AD or later, which contradicts Matthew that puts it at 4 BC.

If you believe both Matthew and Luke, then you have the events in this order:

1. Jesus meets the women fleeing the tomb and tells them to tell the disciples to go meet him in Galilee
2. Jesus then meets them right there in Jerusalem.
3. There he tells them to tarry in Jerusalem.
4. They leave and go to Galilee, and meet him there as though it was the first time.

None of that makes sense. Why tell them to go to Galilee if you will meet them right where they are this afternoon? And why tell them to stay in Jerusalem if you want them to go to Galilee?

Fair enough.

But my point is that there were many gospels, as Luke himself says. How do you know which were genuine? You cannot simply take some, assume they are genuine, and then say, since they match the ones you assumed genuine, therefore they are genuine. That is arguing in a circle.

As I explained before, that is a legal principle that applies only to originals. You do not have the originals, but copies of copies. And that principle only allows you to bypass the normal witness testimony required about the actual writing of the book for some books written more than 30 years ago. It applies only to getting the book into evidence. It does not mean everything it says is true. I have linked to details on this principle, and you just ignore it.

All Ramsey is saying is that the geography and customs that Luke records is close to what he found about the state of the area in 60 AD. That in no way confirms that Paul said any of the things claimed in Acts, or that any of the miracles occurred. And it does not prove Luke could not have written in 100 AD with accurate source documents on what the area was like in 60 AD.

You are talking about the claim of one man. The dating of these scraps have been strongly opposed by scholars as inaccurate.

This is total nonsense. Again the famous "red" and "blue" paragraphs were just to illustrate belief in spirit survival vs soul sleep. In no sense was I trying to misrepresent anybody. In no sense did I ever say Paul was just in a coma. In no sense did I say those who believe in spirit survival could not believe in a new body at the Paruosia. In no sense was the concept expressed there about people believing Paul thought his spirit could survive death the same thing as belief in a mythical Jesus. You have followed my over three threads repeating these misunderstandings of what I said.

And what does it matter? Even if it was true that I made the mistakes you claim in a past thread, so what? Why follow me around the Internet to hound me about it?

But the odd things is that you are simply misrepresenting what I said. I was never saying the stupid things you claimed I said.

Oh for crying out loud! The paragraph about spirit survival was intended to portray that some people think their ancestors are still alive, even though their bodies are in the grave. In no sense are people who teach that their grandmother went to heaven teaching docetism.

But what does any of that matter here? It is in a long forgotten thread. You bring it up repeatedly in multiple threads, apparently in a desperate attempt to get dirt on me, and you refuse to accept my explanation that I was not saying what you claim. How can any of this possibly help you?

I am not saying that Marcion was anti-Semitic in the sense that he hated jews, he just hated Yahweh and Hebraisms and Hebrew culture and any hint of Hebrew teachings in the NT. Which makes no sense it was written by mostly jews. So that proves that he was editing them far more than any one in the orthodox camp. Since they kept all the Hebraic influences which also means that it is older. I know you disagree and I have already covered this so I think it may time for me to move to other issues. You just keep bringing up stuff I have already dealt with.

doubtingmerle · Aug 20, 2017

Greetings folks,

I enjoyed my "guest lecture" experience on this thread, but have been busy on other things lately. I thought I would come back to address some of the concerns here.

As you recall, my point is that Paul is not a witness to the resurrection. In fact, Paul seems to be talking about a resurrection in a different body, not in the body that died. And the gospels to me are not credible as history. So I don't see the evidence I would need to believe in a resurection.

Let's looks at some of the objections here:

mark kennedy said:
And now he attempts a perilous argument from incredulity based on shameless naturalistic presupposition. That is exactly what Paul, his Pharisee brethren and Christians have always believed. The resurrection happens for everyone since, and including Adam, even if their body has long since turned to dust. Five months on the topic of the resurrection and you still have the audacity to pretend you do not know the Christan doctrine of the bodily resurrection. I'm sure your consumed with incredulity here but what all Christians have believed for 2000 years has not been hidden under a rock. It's not a logical argument to suggest mystery religion celestial paganism or exclusively naturalistic causation and disallow the actual doctrine and historical event under consideration. Just say no to fallacious circular logic.

I see you avoided the question. Again, here is the question you had just quoted:

How can Paul possibly be raised again in the same body? His body has decayed and is gone.

There is no way possible for Paul to rise again in his same body. His body is gone. The only way possible for Paul to rise in a body is for God to make him a duplicate body. If you don't think his body will be a duplicate of his old body, please explain how Paul can have a body other than a duplicate body, if his body is gone. You have simply ignored the question.

And if Paul or his followers thought Paul could rise in a duplicate body, why could it not be that they thought Jesus arose in a duplicate body?

Only you believe that the soul of Paul could not survive being absent from the body and still be present with the Lord until the Pariousia. Every Christian you have tried that empty rhetoric on has corrected you but you would appear to be oblivious to obvious facts.

I have said nothing about Paul not thinking he survived being absent from the body. Please address what I actually say.

No it's the same body, raised again, except the mortal put on the immortal. There is absolutely nothing in Scripture to suggest a duplicate and virtually all secular scholars realize Paul, the Apostles and Christians for the last 2000 years unambiguously teach a bodily resurrection. The only one who thinks the Carrier thesis is the only option to exclusively naturalistic causation.

How can it possibly be the same body?

Suppose a Christian is an organ donor and his liver goes into another Christian after he dies. If God were to somehow make that liver (without making a duplicate liver) who gets that liver in the resurrection? Many Christians would say that God makes a duplicate, and gives each a liver at the resurrection. Others would say there is no such thing as a liver in the resurrection. But few would say both have the same liver for eternity.

I don't believe that this strawman satirical fallacious false logic represents anything more then a lack of the courage of your own beliefs. If you actually believed your own premise you would have stood it up to the acid test of evidential reason rather then this absurd strawman.

This is in response to:

And if you believe Paul's spirit survived death and will some day live in a duplicate of his earthly body, why could not God do that at any time, even while his original body is half decayed?

And apparently you are still saying the body that God will give Paul is not a duplicate, but how does your view differ from the person that believes that Paul resurrects in a duplicate body at the resurrection. Both seem to be saying the same thing, only using different words. If your words mean the same thing as a duplicate body, why not just say "duplicate body", which we all understand.

mark kennedy · Aug 20, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
Greetings folks,

I enjoyed my "guest lecture" experience on this thread, but have been busy on other things lately. I thought I would come back to address some of the concerns here.

Ug says the cave man!

As you recall, my point is that Paul is not a witness to the resurrection. In fact, Paul seems to be talking about a resurrection in a different body, not in the body that died. And the gospels to me are not credible as history. So I don't see the evidence I would need to believe in a resurection.

No one witnessed the resurrection, they encountered the risen Savior.

Let's looks at some of the objections here:

And now he attempts a perilous argument from incredulity based on shameless naturalistic presupposition. That is exactly what Paul, his Pharisee brethren and Christians have always believed. The resurrection happens for everyone since, and including Adam, even if their body has long since turned to dust. Five months on the topic of the resurrection and you still have the audacity to pretend you do not know the Christan doctrine of the bodily resurrection. I'm sure your consumed with incredulity here but what all Christians have believed for 2000 years has not been hidden under a rock. It's not a logical argument to suggest mystery religion celestial paganism or exclusively naturalistic causation and disallow the actual doctrine and historical event under consideration. Just say no to fallacious circular logic.

I see you avoided the question. Again, here is the question you had just quoted:

How can Paul possibly be raised again in the same body? His body has decayed and is gone.

It's a miracle, you wouldn't understand.

There is no way possible for Paul to rise again in his same body. His body is gone. The only way possible for Paul to rise in a body is for God to make him a duplicate body. If you don't think his body will be a duplicate of his old body, please explain how Paul can have a body other than a duplicate body, if his body is gone. You have simply ignored the question.

God knows how to raise the dead, it's called resurrection and it's a promise of the Gospel. You want me to explain how God does what only God can do, that will sink into circular arguments early.

And if Paul or his followers thought Paul could rise in a duplicate body, why could it not be that they thought Jesus arose in a duplicate body?

I have said nothing about Paul not thinking he survived being absent from the body. Please address what I actually say.

How can it possibly be the same body?

Suppose a Christian is an organ donor and his liver goes into another Christian after he dies. If God were to somehow make that liver (without making a duplicate liver) who gets that liver in the resurrection? Many Christians would say that God makes a duplicate, and gives each a liver at the resurrection. Others would say there is no such thing as a liver in the resurrection. But few would say both have the same liver for eternity.

This is in response to:

And if you believe Paul's spirit survived death and will some day live in a duplicate of his earthly body, why could not God do that at any time, even while his original body is half decayed?

And apparently you are still saying the body that God will give Paul is not a duplicate, but how does your view differ from the person that believes that Paul resurrects in a duplicate body at the resurrection. Both seem to be saying the same thing, only using different words. If your words mean the same thing as a duplicate body, why not just say "duplicate body", which we all understand.

Repeating the same circular question based on a false assumption isn't going to get you a different answer. Were you interested in discussing actual evidence or just argue the same thing in circles? Yours is an argument from incredulity, I haven't encountered on of those in a while.

If your going to make an argument for the Carrier thesis I suggest you get on with it.

Have a nice day

Mark

lesliedellow · Aug 20, 2017

doubtingmerle said:
How can Paul possibly be raised again in the same body? His body has decayed and is gone.

There is no way possible for Paul to rise again in his same body. His body is gone. The only way possible for Paul to rise in a body is for God to make him a duplicate body.

And if Paul or his followers thought Paul could rise in a duplicate body, why could it not be that they thought Jesus arose in a duplicate body?

Without reading the rest of your post, the obvious answer is that there is probably not a single atom in your body which was there ten years ago. So you can say that you now have a duplicate of your original body if you want, but I doubt if you think in those terms in your normal everyday life.

Are There Credible Witnesses to the Resurrection, Part II

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