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I have responded to these arguments many times in the past. See for instance Are There Credible Witnesses to the Resurrection, Part III don't have to look at your post, I have actually studied the evidence for Christ for many years and found it beyond any question. There are so many extra biblical references to Jesus Christ that we could piece together His entire life death and resurrection without ever opening the Bible. People such as Cornelius Tacitus "the greatest historian" of ancient Rome (55-120 AD), Gaius Suetonius Tranquillas, chief secretary of Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD), Flavius Josephus court historian for Emperor Vespasian (37-97 AD), Pliny the Younger, Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor around 112 AD, Emporer Hadrian in a letter to Minucius Fundanus, the Asian proconsul (117-138 AD), Mara Bar-Serapion, of Syria, writing from prison to his son (around 70 AD), Clement elder of Rome in a letter to the Corinthian church (95 AD), Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, letter to the Trallians (110-115 AD), and many others.
We can also trust the Gospel accounts themselves. The sheer number of copies that come to us from all over the region which all date to within that first and second century when these events are claimed to have taken place. Had the claims been about a made up Jesus that never existed there would have been someone leaving a record as such. However not one such contemporary rebuttal to the claims of the Gospels exists.
There is the writings of Papias Hierapolis (125 AD) which confirms the authorship of the Gospels by the Apostles of Christ. Likewise Irenaeus of Lyons (180 AD) confirms the authorship. Even in your own post you admit to the authorship of Mark and hold to the liberal view of it being written in 70 AD. Most of the liberal scholars are forced to at least date Matthew and Luke in the 80's, and John in the 90's. But look, even if we accepted those dates, that's still well within the lifetime of various eyewitnesses to the time of the life of Jesus, including hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as a corrective if false teachings about Jesus were going around, yet as I said there are none. This tells us it was just not ever in dispute.
These late dates for the gospels really aren't all that late when you consider other ancient texts that historians regard as generally trust worthy. For example two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after Alexander's death in 323 B.C., yet historians have no issues with them being trust worthy.
However there is reason to believe that the gospels were written down much earlier than the liberal scholars say. The book of Acts which was written by Luke, documents the ministry of Paul. However it ends without telling about his execution. Had it been written after his execution it certainly would have accounted it. We know that this event took place around A.D. 62 so the writing of Acts had to have ended before 62 when Paul was executed.
Also consider the fact that in 70 A.D. the Temple was destroyed just as Jesus had predicted, yet there is no mention of that in the text either. A Christian author writing after this would have certainly been excited to promote this fulfilled prophecy. The fact that it’s not there demonstrates it certainly was written in the sixty’s. Having established that, we can move backwards from there. Since Acts is the second of a two part work, Luke being the first part, then Luke must have been written earlier than that. Since Luke incorporates parts of the gospel of Mark, that means that Mark is even earlier. If you allow a year or two for each of these gospels to be written, you wind up with Mark being written in the 50's and not later than A.D. 60. If Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30 or 33 then we are talking about a maximum gap of less than 25 years. Compared with Alexander the Great, that's like a news flash.
Once again you simply ignore the verses In question. Had you kept on, you would have come to the verses that say animals were created after man.I fear that those who have trouble here do so because they want to. The original books didn't have chapter divisions so there was no chapter one and then chapter two. There was only one parchment containing the entire book. It would have read like this:
...And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being... (Genesis 1:29 - 2:7)We can see how the story flows from giving us the basic creation order to going back and giving us an enlarged look at what God did on the day He created man. Its very well written and very easy to comprehend.
You got questions, I got answers.
Utterly false. For example, name ONE source which establishes, say, the temptation of Christ by Satan.
This is a lie (not saying you are lying, just that whoever told you this is). There are ZERO copies which date to the first century.
The gospels were not written by the Apostles…
How can you say that they WOULD HAVE written corrective documents…
Either that, or I'm a glutton for punishment!Posting this in Physical and Life Sciences forum; you are the bravest man I know.
Good questions, of which I wish I had answers.jacks said:This question is not strictly "Creationism" (since to me it is obvious we are created) and may be more opinion than biblical interpretation, but what do you think is meant by Genesis 27? So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Was this a physical likeness? or does it reflect our nature in some way?
Right. So, Adam and Eve did or didn't die? The Bible doesn't say whether they died and went to hell, but I imagine that happened at some point? Why wouldn't that be noted, the first people ever to exist passing away and going to hell?
I have responded to these arguments many times in the past. See for instance Are There Credible Witnesses to the Resurrection, Part II
I see… you’re one of those who think that making a statement rise up and walk on all fours will show it to be false. Obviously I didn’t mean every facet of Jesus life. Not even the gospels themselves cover that. The point I was making still stands, and here’s a clue, not even the most liberal but respected scholars of today deny the existence of Jesus. That’s how well established it is.
There once was a famous Chef named Harland David Sanders (aka Colonel Sanders) who had a special 8 page multi-million dollar recipe for fried chicken. Suppose he gave full copies of the recipe to 8 very trusted close friends for safe keeping before he opened his first restaurant in 1930. After about 30 years his Kentucky Fried Chicken business had become very popular. Then in 1964 racial riots begun to break out around the country. Also around that time some business men approached Sanders, who were interested in buying his business and recipe. However the store where he had stored his original recipe was burned to the ground by rioters. So the Colonel called one of his 8 friends who had a copy of the recipe, but his friend told him his copy had been destroyed years ago in a flood. Another friend had been burglarized some time back and the thieves trashed his house. Only about three pages of his copy of the recipe survived. After calling his other 6 remaining friends he found all had similar bad news for the Colonel. But amazingly he discovered that each friend had lost only a different section of their copies and the Colonel was able to piece together a complete copy of the actual original recipe using all the remaining pieces of copies.
What I have just described here of course is fiction but it is an example of what is called the science of textual criticism, and how it works and works quite well. Historian F.E. Peterson tells us that the New Testament books were the most widely copied and circulated books of all of antiquity. Today there are more than 5,300 Greek manuscript copies that date to within a century of the actual event. There are more than 10,000 Latin manuscript copies, and 9300 other early manuscript copies from that time period. Also we have more than 24,000 manuscript portions of copies of the New Testament, some that date to within 50 years of the crucifixion.
https://winteryknight.com/2012/02/11/earliest-manuscript-of-the-new-testament-discovered/
Earliest fragment from Book of Mark found? | God Reports
Untrue, consider the testimonies we have that say otherwise. Papias in around A.D. 125 specifically confirmed that Mark carefully and accurately recorded Peter's eyewitness accounts of the events, and even stated that Mark made no mistake and did not include any false statement. Papias also told us that Matthew (the disciple) had preserved the teachings of Jesus as well.
Irenaeus of Lyons writing in about A.D. 180 confirmed the authorship of Matthew that Matthew had written his own Gospel account among the Hebrews in their own tongue. He said when Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome they found the church there. After their departure, Mark, “the disciple” and interpreter of Peter “the disciple,” himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter's preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, “the disciple” of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his Gospel while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.
For starters Philo-Judaeus lived in the Roman providence of Egypt at the time. I guess he didn’t get CNN so he probably didn’t know what was happening over in Israel. However Roman/Jewish war reporter Josephus wrote about the subject. He was a non-Christian “Jewish” first century historian (meaning he was unsympathetic to the cause), who described the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus" for transgressing the Law of God. His writings date to around A.D. 93 and describe "a wise man named Jesus, who performed many surprising feats, won over many Jews, was condemned to be crucified by Pilate, and the tribe of Christians who called after him has still to this day not disappeared." Josephus was mainly only concerned in his writings with reporting about the Jewish war, so of course there wasn’t much there. Archaeology has substantiated all of his claims concerning the war, which is evidence he was a reliable historian. We would not have expected Josephus as a non-Christian to be too interested in spending a lot of time or details surrounding Jesus. However what he does establish for us is: A) Jesus was a spiritual leader because He “won over many Jews.” B) Jesus was crucified as the gospels claim by a Roman leader named Pilate. C) Jesus had started some sort of movement that was still active over 60 years after His death.
Now at this point is where anyone who has been listening to the liberal critics, will want to cry foul ball. “The Josephus comments were tampered with by Christian zealots…so we can’t trust them as reliable”…right? Well the thing that these critics seem to miss is yes there is a citation of Josephus that is known to have been tampered with by zealots, but there are actually other citations that were not. Citations such as were published by Professor Shlomo Pines in 1971 which were found in both Arabic and Syriac. These citations did not have the tampered with portions. They were written just as I stated above showing he was a reliable source.
Once again you simply ignore the verses In question. Had you kept on, you would have come to the verses that say animals were created after man.
I doubt that anyone here makes that claim, except about the version of Christianity creationists preach, which is not more than 200 years old.That's why I find it funny whenever I hear someone claim that Christianity is a relatively new religion. I fully expect to see Adam and Eve in heaven.
Right. So, Adam and Eve did or didn't die? The Bible doesn't say whether they died and went to hell, but I imagine that happened at some point? Why wouldn't that be noted, the first people ever to exist passing away and going to hell?
Funny little quip about CNN followed by accepted evidence from a guy who wasn't even born when Jesus died. Oh, the irony. Maybe Josephus had CNN in the womb?
I was only about 3 months old when JFK was killed and my wife wasn't even born, but both of us can sure tell you all about him. I doubt the same is true for most people who were grown but living in other countries at the time. Being raised in the region and constantly encountering the people who were there, is surprisingly beneficial.
um...but....you have access to "CNN."
And...you're still missing the point. But that's ok. The further you dig, the more you are defeating your own original argument.
No I totally get your point. You are saying that your out of the country reporter that never had anything to say should trump my in country reporter who wasn't born until 4 years after the death of Christ. And the point to my reply was that my reporter had lived around the story his whole life and encountered eyewitness after eyewitness day after day. While your reporter did not even live close to the events and since the gospel was just starting to be shared by Paul to the Gentiles in the late 50s It was likely that he had no reason to try and discredit someone he had never heard of. However people who were actually in the area of Jerusalem between 30 to 33 AD would have had plenty of reason to discredit the claims being made about Jesus if they knew they were not true.
No I totally get your point. You are saying that your out of the country reporter that never had anything to say should trump my in country reporter who wasn't born until 4 years after the death of Christ. And the point to my reply was that my reporter had lived around the story his whole life and encountered eyewitness after eyewitness day after day. While your reporter did not even live close to the events and since the gospel was just starting to be shared by Paul to the Gentiles in the late 50s It was likely that he had no reason to try and discredit someone he had never heard of. However people who were actually in the area of Jerusalem between 30 to 33 AD would have had plenty of reason to discredit the claims being made about Jesus if they knew they were not true.
Because he isn't?For another example, why is Matthew the only source for King Herod ordering the killing of infants?
Did Macrobius fabricate it too?Adam Clarke's Commentary said:This cruelty of Herod seems alluded to in very decisive terms by Macrobius, who flourished toward the conclusion of the fourth Century. In his chapter De jocis Augusti in alios, et aliorum rursus in ipsum, he says, Cum audisset inter pueros, quos in Syria Herodes, rex Judeorum, intra bimatum jussit interfici, filium quoque ejus occisum, ait, Melius est Herodis PORCUM esse, quam FILIUM. "When he heard that among those male infants about two years old, which Herod, the king of the Jews, ordered to be slain in Syria, one of his sons was also murdered, he said: 'It is better to be Herod's HOG than his SON.'" Saturn. lib. ii. c. 4. The point of this saying consists in this, that Herod, professing Judaism, his religion forbade his killing swine, or having any thing to do with their flesh; therefore his hog would have been safe, where his son lost his life.
So, they didn't "surely die" then, and the serpent was correct? They certainly didn't die physically on the day as the Bible predicted on eating the fruit... Also, where does the Bible say that Adam and Eve should expect a saviour to be born?Death here is talking about both spiritual and physical death. They spiritually died that day when they became separated from God. But life was so powerful in them that even though they were spiritually separated from God they lived a very long time after that. But they physically did die. But God had promised them that He would send them a Savior. He told them that from the seed of the woman One would be born who would crush the head of the serpent. This is telling us that this One to come would destroy what Satan had done here this day. Crushing the head implies a final and thorough destruction. But, God says He will bruise His heal. This is talking about wounds that are only temporary in nature. This One to come would once and for all destroy sin but He would be wounded in the process. Adam and Eve actually named their first child "Cain" which meant man from God. This shows us that by faith they were trusting in the One who was to come and thought that Cain might be Him. Obviously he wasn't but they were the first to place "faith" in the Messiah or Christ to come. You could even say they were the first "Christians." That's why I find it funny whenever I hear someone claim that Christianity is a relatively new religion. I fully expect to see Adam and Eve in heaven.
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