God

How do i know that Strobel wasnt lying. In fact, how do you know the entire Bible was written under duress. "If you dont do this, you will die..." in fact, i dare you to prove to me that julius caesar really existed. have you ever seen him???


(im just kidding, but seriously, i refuse to take the word of a few individuals, secondary sources at that, for something as serious as this) there has to be universal consensus over something like this. ive done some research, and using MY OWN HEAD, and i think that God started evolution. but he doesnt take an active part in our lives. the main thing i have a problem w/ is that the bible is based upon the fact that we are gods only creation. of all the planets out there, he only bothered to create intelligent life on earth. That is a really key example of how humans twist religion to fit their own egotistical beliefs and insecureties.)


dang, that was long.

------------------
Starting at shortstop, for the Houston Astros, Nomar Garciaparra.
or
Starting at First Base, for the Boston Red Sox, Jeff Bagwell!!!

 

It was MUCH more the opposite way - "if you write this then you WILL die" - there was way more pressure for Christianity to be refuted then there was for it to be published.
Historically we know Julius Caesar existed because there were 19 documents (of reliability) that prove this to us. Sure I wasn't there, but if I only believe what I SEE then I probably wouldn't believe much at all As for the Bible, there are over 2000 documents (of reliability) that prove its historical accuracy(and it was written by the people who were there!!) . Don't believe me though, read that Strobel book nutcake recommended!

Actually the Bible doesn't really make any such claims. It DOES claim that God created EVERYTHING and then goes into the fact that God made everything on earth. Since the Bible is an account written by humans it makes no mention of life on other planets. We simply have no idea whether or not God did make life on other planets and the Bible doesn't shed any light on this issue for us, whether He did or not is probably a tad irrelevant to the message the Bible gives anyway


------------------

 

I'm not contesting the existence or divinity of Jesus, but the New Testament is far from a reliable historical document.

The New Testament is based on a source of Jesus's sayings called the Q. The four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) are not only based on the Q, but based on each other. Mark was written around 70 c.e., near the end of a Jewish rebellion. Matthew and Luke were written approximately 10 to 20 years later than Mark, with John being written around 90 c.e.

Mark was originally considered to be the most reliable depiction of Jesus's life because it was the earliest and the writing style was the least flamboyant. Biblical scholars now believe, after viewing the gospels collectively, that the gospels are wartime literature, contrived to represent Jesus in a politically expedient manner.

Aside from the fact that the New Testament is not a contemporaneous account of Jesus's life, please also consider the fact that the canonical gospels are four out of hundreds that were selected to be included in the bible. These four gospels were selected not for their accuracy, but for the ease with which the church could market the materials in local church communities.

What about the Gospel of Thomas? This gospel predates Matthew et al, but its sayings are dramatically different (more along the lines of we don't need no stinkin church). This gospel is very similar to the Q, without the added political embellishments of the New Testament gospels, but its acceptance into biblical lore would have severely damaged the church's position. What about the Book of Mary Magdalene? No one wants to believe the Jesus would have confided divine teachings to a woman, much less one of ill repute.

Finally, please do not attempt to present Strobel as unbiased. He has been a practicing minister for 20 years (long before the book quoted was written, he has written a book in which he creates dialogues Jesus would have with current public figures (can you say cash cow?) - also written before the book mentioned).

Josephus was writing about the same time as Mark, about a generation after the crucifixion.

500 witnesses? Did they get interviewed by local police? Marked in public record? Signed affidavits?
Huh? Again, written long after the fact...

Deep breath...sigh.

Yawn.


------------------
Talking to a dead hare about art

 

HECK YEAH!!!
Everything he said, times 3, squared.
Fact is, history is biased completely. There is no way to avoid bias in history. Its everywhere. The Bible is no exeption. Unless you have a ton of primary sources, i dont believe it.

------------------
Starting at shortstop, for the Houston Astros, Nomar Garciaparra.
or
Starting at First Base, for the Boston Red Sox, Jeff Bagwell!!!

 

rimbaud;
it's not strange that things were written down quite some time after Jesus' death, obviously you would realise that was the style of the times? Facts were preserved carefully and not written down at the exact time of the event occuring.

As for the 500 witnessess; They did't get interviewed by the local police, some of them got stoned by the local police for presenting such a preposterous story.
One of the gospels was written by a renowned historian - he took it upon himself to interview people, find out what happened and when and then make an orderly account of it all.

The other gospels?
It's well known that the early church was beseiged with "false" gospels. There are contstant warnings to be on the lookout for such things, people were presenting all sorts of ideas - and there was plenty to be confused about regarding the true gospel as well!
You are right in suggesting that there were many other gospels (books/whatever!) written at the time. This is of course no surprise, I'm certain that if we'd been there then each of us would've written our own story! As for which gospels were chosen; the reasoning was quite simple. The ones which had the best "roots" were chosen. ie the Gospels which had the most historical accuracy - the ones which had documentation dating back to the orignal copies.
Considering the books of the Bible were assembled several hundred years AFTER the gospels were written this sort of precaution was necessary to make sure that "flawed" information didn't get into the Bible. Have you ever played Chinese whispers? Maybe something like that happened to the gospel of Thomas, maybe they just didn't have an accurate original to include.
Forunately we have a "checkpoint" with which we can compare the gospels we have. There are letters written to some of the earliest churches by a man who saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead (but not before). He was not taught the gospel, but received it direct from Jesus. 17 years after he had been teaching all the churches around the place, he decided that he should check his message with those 11 who had been taught by Jesus and walked around with him etc. Strangely enough the stories match up perfectly! You can compare what he writes to other churches with what Jesus says.

Strobel;
I can't vouch for Strobel having never read any of his stuff, I recommended him because it seems that it is easy enough to get a hold of and nutcake seems to know what he's on about. Books I would recommend may be hard to find, but Paul Barnett's "who rolled the stone away" would be good (whether or not that exists in print in America is beyond me) - also "A Sneaking Suspicion" by John Dickson isn't bad. Funnily enough those books are written by people who have been ministers for an amount of time too....

If I wanted to learn about baskteball I would probably ask someone who has been playing/coaching for a long time. To find out why I would believe in Jesus I would ask someone who would have some sort of idea. If you want a book that is by someone who didn't believe (after his research he decided that Christianity was true) then I do have a good one - I forget the title and who wrote it right now though - but as soon as I find it/ figure it out, I'll be sure and let you know.

Of course it's darn hard to prove things that happened ages ago to 100% clarity, but then again it's hard to prove things that happened yesterday to 100% clarity.

Jesus walked on earth, there's no doubt about that. Do you believe that he rose from the dead? THAT is the question.

------------------

 

Ok, been on vacation and now can reply. I can't let this thread die so easily.

Dr,

Apparently, you believe what no other historian believes about oral tradition of the time. You try having to tell a story for sixty years and see how much it has changed at the end (by you and, even more, by others). Where is your evidence to support this rigorous attention to details. Fact is, the bible was composed of traveling stories, poems, and songs. Based both on regional occurences and earlier folklore/mythology (as I discussed earlier).

500 Witnesses:

Again, where is the proof of this? Don't you find it a little convenient that it is a neat, tidy (yet still compelling) 500? Additionally, if there are these 500 people and they are 100% reliable, then why are there still biblical scholars and other religions? 500 witnesses - case closed.

You throw out numbers and conjecture, but - as it stands now - hardly a convincing argument.

Gospels:

Actually, you seem to have it confused. Early letters ended up being the foundation for the New Testament. Many of these letters are attributed to Peter and Paul, but differ so much in style and education, that there is no way they could all be from the same person. Additionally, some letters attributed to Paul quote from the gospel of Luke - impossible because Luke was composed after his death.

Also, keep in mind that the original texts of the gospels were written in Greek, with the exception of Matthew. This allowed for many false or inaccurate translations. Hence, the "virgin" mary (which could also be translated to "young woman").

Also, there were often gaps of 100 or so years between the original papyrus writings and the translations - often resulting in the collection of fragments - editing, guessing, etc.

There are simply far too many variables to accept anything written as "historical fact."

Every credible biblical scholar should, and indeed does, teach this.

It is convenient to say that only gospels which did not get selected suffer from "chinese whispers" results.

Thomas is not a narrative, unlike others - it consist mostly of quotes (everything being prefaced with, "And Jesus said"). Many of these sayings are directly quoted in the three Synoptic Gospels. So most likely they all came from the same other separate written text. That being the case, why should a gospel embellished by narrative be more plausible?

Again, you throw out a lot, but none of it is very strong. Decades of modern religous scholarship are not so foolish. In intellectual terms, you offer no substantial debate, only your certainty that your faith is inarguable and does not need to be questioned.

For future reference, it really does no good to promote the ideas of books or authors with which you are not familiar.

As far as Barnett, a sample from the Australian Theological Book Review sums up his methods:

"The answer is simply that he wants Christian faith to be shored up by history. He wants history to give the believer the relief of certainty. In his view, the believer is uncomfortable with historical vacillation. Yet that is the nature of history. It is a human construct; it is capricious. No amount of history, good or bad, can be expected to support religious faith.

"In short, this book is intended for the fundamentalist (not meant pejoratively) Christian who accepts the New Testament as, by definition and without substantiation, a historically reliable source and who has the need to base personal Christian belief on history."


------------------
Talking to a dead hare about art

 

I'm not quite sure what you think I said about the oral tradition of the time (or maybe I'm not quite sure what I said) - but the books being written after the event is not unusual.
If we were to write a book about the murder of JFK now we would more then likely have more information then they had at the actual time. We would have the advantage of hindsight and our examination MAY be more complete - if we did no research and just wrote whatever we pleased then of course it would look stupid, but if we checked out the facts and interviewed people who had been there etc etc then we would be able to present a GOOD account of what went on.
This is the same principle adopted by some of the writers of the gospels. They interviewed the people who had seen things and wrote them down. Imagine if none of the things they had written had ever happened. Do you think their writings would have had ANY credibility?
Also imagine sitting there at your computer, and then having the roof cave in and an alien spaceship land and 7 little green men get out and show you a picture of a funny looking monster. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that is the sort of experience that you would never forget, and even if you decided to write something about it MUCH later (ie in 30-40 years time), you would remember the important details (that there were 7 martians and that they crashed through your roof and showed you a picture of that monster). Now you might not remember that they were 4'6 or if they were 4'3 or even 3'3, but that information is a little inconsequential to your story.

I was doing some public speaking the other day, the crowd was 100 people. Ok, so it might not have been exactly 100 people, but that is not really important, maybe it was 89, maybe it was 112, what IS relevant is that there was about 100 people listening to me speak.
The bible is NOT a history textbook. It's not intended to be. The fact that there were 574 or 431 or 512 people who saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead is quite irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that the DID see him.
For example, the feeding of the 5000; do you think it would've been EXACTLY 5000?
Or the feeding of the 4000; do you think it was EXACTLY 4000?
Or when the Philistine armies are numbered at 100,000 (or whatever) - the number is not exact, it represents a massive army.

Now as with any bunch of witnessess, the reliablity of an individual is not taken for granted. But when you have such a large number of people all claiming to have seen the man alive, then it really makes one start to wonder... maybe it should be "case closed", but it's too difficult a thing for people to believe in. It was then, and it's more difficult now because it happened in the past. Maybe people don't want to believe because Christianity tells people that they aren't neccessarily right and that they need to acknowledge that - there's plenty of other reasons too!

Acutally, Paul has quite his own style of writing - it is evident even in the English translation and his style is quite consistent. His letters are not identified by his style though, they are identified by his name being on them
Paul wrote most of the letters, Peter only wrote two, but his style in both is similar, although not as flamboyant or confusing as the manner with which Paul writes), plus Peter puts his name on his too.
The 1 letter which has confused ownership is the letter to the Hebrews. It is commonly attributed to Paul, but the style is so different that it couldn't be his, plus the fact that he didn't put his name on it like all his others! My belief is that it is written by Apollos - but it doesn't really matter who wrote it anyway!!

None of the letters written by ANY of the writers in the bible quote from Luke, Matthew, Mark or John! They DO quote, but when they do it is from psalms/proverbs/Isiah/ Hosea or another book from the old testament. This is unsurprising as the Old Testament was the scripture of the Jewish people (and still is) and Jesus claimed to be fulfilling the scriptures - the quotes show God's nature AND how Jesus' fulfills the prophecies made of him.

Ummm..... the text WAS in Greek, and was translated to Latin and recorded meticulously, if a mistake was made then the parchment was to be started again. Sure this is NO guarantee of success, but fortunately there are sources from just 100 years after the originals that are in pristine condition. These sources aid as a checkpoint, to see if the current translation measures up. Surprisingly it does!

I didn't say that; the gospels INCLUDED were the ones which had the best sources - the ones which could be traced right back reliably. Some of the others may well be fine, but without the sources it can't be said with any certainty, hence they weren't included. Whether or not they suffered from "chinese whispers" is not known, but what IS known is that they did not have a reliable source to draw from and for THAT reason were not included.

I think that is my point... decades of modern religious scholarship are NOT so foolish.
I didn't present the argument that my faith was inarguable, in fact far the opposite, I presented the case that my faith was NOT based on nothing and provided intellectual reasons as to why I do believe.

It's easy to quote a quote about a book that (I'm assuming) you haven't read. Try giving it a read with an open mind, you might be surprised. The book isn't bad!

Christianity isn't really a difficult thing to understand. It's not neccessary to be supra-intelligent (in fact I'm probably one of the dumbest people you've ever met!) - the message is simple, God wants us to be with him and He has provided a way for us to be there - believing that Jesus died in our place.
Do we accept that or not? - that's about as complicated as it gets, and everyone will make a decision one way or the other.

------------------