I also don't agree that salvation can be reduced to a single question of history, which is what it seems to me you are trying to do.
Excuse me, but where did I ever say anything about salvation being reduced to a single question of history??? You brought this up before, and I told you this is not what I am saying.
Once more, I am not asking if you think historical views are the only aspect of salvation. I am asking if you think a person must agree that Jesus rose from the dead in order to escape hell. I am not asking if you think this is the only requirement.
You're sticking on the wrong thing. My view is not self-derived. This was my point. I take my view from what every evangelical Christian I know regards as the Word of God. But even if what I call the Word of God isn't the Word of God, this doesn't change the fact that my views are drawn from it rather than from my own imagination. I made this point because you were referring to my point of view as solely my own, which it wasn't.
Sir, I have told you multiple times that I understand that many agree with you. I have told you that you are following the broad way, for there are millions that agree. Nowhere have I ever said that your views are self-derived or solely on your own.
Where in the heck are you coming up with this stuff? Please, please stick with what I say. It is irritating to constantly remind you that I am not saying the things that you make up and claim that I am saying.
Help me out here, please. What do I need to do to get you to understand what I am actually writing? Should I use a bigger font? More repetition? A different color? A different language?
Please, please, please, respond to what I actually write, not to this stuff you make up about me.
How many times has the Bible been thought to be wrong on a historical point and then later found to be right? Many times! Here are a few instances:
The Hittites.
The Merneptah Stela.
The House of David Inscription.
The Mesha Stela, or Pharoah Shishak/Shoshenq Victory Lists.
The Ebla Tablets.
The Siloam Tunnel.
And so on.
Each of these archaelogical discoveries vindicates the record of Scripture - sometimes when it was thought certain that the Bible was in error about names, places, and customs.
So they have found archeolgical evidence for the reigns of Hezekiah and Omri? Yes, of course. Many books of the Bible that deal with the later history of Israel are widely recognized as historical.
This does nothing to prove that fantastic claims like the global flood or the escape of 600,000 Jewish men from Egypt happened.
And finding evidence that 2 Kings records history does nothing to prove that Matthew is history. Those are different books.
And what is your evidence for the claim that the tunnel of Siloam or the reign of Omri were widely thought to be in error before these finds were made?
Oh? That's not what you seem to be saying here:
4. I haven't yet found an impressive fullfilled prophecy. Can you show me one, please?
Read it again. I did not ask for a prophecy that impresses me. I asked for a prophecy that is impressive. Can you share one that is impressive, please?
He may, but this is something you must assume without any support from the passage where he talks about the appearance of Christ to the five hundred. The Gospels make it clear that Christ rose bodily. And Paul himself writes explicitly of Christ's resurrected body. It is, therefore, very unlikely that Paul meant that Jesus had appeared to the five hundred in a collective vision.
Paul appears to be totally unaware of the four gospels, so what they say about the resurrection is not necessarily what Paul says. Paul describes his sighting of Jesus as a vision. He includes his vision in his list of people that saw Jesus. That is strong evidence he thought all on that list saw what he saw, a vision.
Yes, Paul refers to a resurrected "body" in I Cor 15, but he calls it a spiritual body. He does not appear to be talking about a physical body.
At any rate, we have only Paul's word for it that these 500 saw Jesus. We do not have the testimony of a single person that says he personally saw the physically resurrected Jesus.
Sir, Clement of Rome and Justin Martyr never said that Matthew wrote the book of Matthew. If you think they did, please show me where.
I didn't say that they did, but only that they affirm the view of Tradition that Matthew was the author of the Gospel bearing his name.
Excuse me, but how can Clement and Justin affirm that Matthew is the author if they never wrote that he was? If you think they affirmed this, what evidence do you have that they affirmed this?
"Clearly" is a distortion of the facts. The debate over what Papias meant by "logia" is hardly concluded in favor of your position. In fact, there is good reason to think he meant "gospel" and not simply "sayings" when he used the term "logia."
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Does the word translated above as "sayings" (logia) mean that or "gospel"? That it could mean the latter is implied by Papias' use of the word in the title of his work, Interpretation of the Lord's Logia: it is arguable that Papias means "gospels" by logia. This is strengthened by the fact that Papias claimed that Mark made an arrangement of the logia of the Lord, the result of which is the Gospel of Mark. Clearly, the logia include not only what Jesus said but also what he did ("the things said or done by the Lord")"[/FONT]
Actually Papias said that Mark recorded the deeds and saying of the Lord. For Matthew he says only that he recorded sayings.
Papias never saw either of these books. He downplays the importance of reading such books. He relies on second hand information from people who talked to the apostles.
So we don't know what Papias thought that Matthew wrote, but we do know that Papias, who wrote a book about the saying of the Lord, did not have a copy of Matthew, and shows little desire to know what is written there. See
Papias of Hierapolis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .
LOL! What a slant you've given to the facts! There are ancient letters which criticise Eusebius and others which extol his virtues. There is by no means a unanimous consensus that Eusebius was utterly untrustworthy.
I didn't say that Eusebius was utterly untrustworthy. There is considerable controversy, however, about his reliability as a historian. One cannot say for sure that something is true, just because Eusebius said so. See
Eusebius of Caesarea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tertullian and Origin were after the 180 AD date I quoted
I'm not particularly interested in confining myself to the parameters
you chose to establish. I don't argue according to your restrictions.
Huh? In response to my assertion that nobody clearly identified Matthew as the writer of this book before 180 AD, you mentioned Tertullian and Origin. They in no way contradict my assertion about Matthew, for they wrote after 180 AD.
But it is an assumption that Matthew copied from Mark. It could easily be the other way around.
No sir, it is not just an assumption. The reasoning can be summed up by saying there was no good reason to write Mark if Matthew existed. It is, however, obvious, why one might want to alter Mark to produce the book of Matthew.
Matthew does offer his own first-hand observations and additions to Mark's account. His Gospel is longer than Mark's, after all.
Yes, I have already told you that Matthew adds stories that are not in Mark.
The point is that, where Matthew writes a story that Mark had used, then Matthew always uses Mark as his source with small changes, rather than write the same story from his own perspective. If Matthew was an eyewitness, then we would expect him to sometimes give his own version of a story that Mark includes, rather than copy Mark.