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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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 Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:38 am Post subject: |
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| These aren't exactly smoking gun stuff. "Hey, oppressed, whipped people, you're going to be a great nation one day." What oppressed people doesn't have such prophesies? The Muslims sure do. The North American Indians sure do. |
How many Baal worshippers, philistines, amorites, jebusites, etc do you know at the moment? I heard of a country called Israel the other day  Isn't that funny. |
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Porter_Goss
Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Location: The Wrong Side of Right
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:32 am Post subject: Re: Jesus, Lord, Liar or Lunatic |
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| laogaiguk wrote: |
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I cannot personally conclude that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic. The only other alternative is that He was the Christ, the Son of God, as He claimed. |
I believe this sentence is enough to sway intelligent readers not to bother wasting the few minutes I did. |
Thanks. |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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| rapier wrote: |
| There are no contradictions in the bible. Just misunderstandings by skeptics who simply read the Bible in English on their own terms and do not even bother to try to understand it in terms that those who wrote it would. |
What about this:
2 Samuel 8:3-4 says "David smote also Hadadezer...and took from him...seven hundred horsemen..." 1 Chronicles 18:3-4 says "David smote Hadarezer...and took from him...seven thousand horsemen..."
Please explain how this was taken out of context. Or am I reading it "on my own terms?" And if it's simply a typo, why didn't the most powerful being in the Universe prevent such an error from occurring at the printer's? Does God not protect and preserve His word?
This error is just one of many. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
| Quote: |
| These aren't exactly smoking gun stuff. "Hey, oppressed, whipped people, you're going to be a great nation one day." What oppressed people doesn't have such prophesies? The Muslims sure do. The North American Indians sure do. |
How many Baal worshippers, philistines, amorites, jebusites, etc do you know at the moment? I heard of a country called Israel the other day Isn't that funny. |
The Mormons certainly moved to Utah based on prophesy. Jonestown wasn't created to get into the kool aid manufacturing business. Lots of religious groups migrate and create communities and even nations based on what they think is prophesy in a religious text. Arabs kinda went from a polytheistic, loosely organized tribal people to a major world religion in a very short span of time. You think maybe they acted on what they believed was prophecy? And that they control one of the world's economic levers isn't to them proof of the veracity of their religion and prophesy? Did god give the jews all that oil, power, and money? Nooooo. He gave it to the Muslims, didn't he? Tut tut. That Koran is just a bunch of squiggly lines and contains no prophecy that Muslims interpret as earnestly as Rapier and Xian as being solid proof that the promises Allah made have been fulfilled? Didn't the Vedas predict quantum physics 'n' all that crap? Good golly, only a people with a direct line to god like the Hindus could have know about quantum physics!
Simply because you've only heard of Israel doesn't mean Israel is the only example of a cryptic prophesy resulting in a nation springing up. Your ignorance is not evidence.
There's a notion called "self fulfilling prophesy". "We think it's mapped out this way, so that's the way we do it." |
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Xian
Joined: 08 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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MMT,
My apologies, I posted the wrong link. Anyway, here is a link to early secular accounts of Jesus.
http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html
I know you might have reasons to not agree, that is fine. Knowledge without revelation doesn't 'save' (as Christians put it). I post it to show that when it comes to evidence, Christianity above any other religion and cult has historical and archaelogical evidence that confirms the events it claims. New and Old Testament. It isn't the blind faith people claim it to be, despite many of us having no idea about many of these things when we first believed. |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:41 pm Post subject: |
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The extra-Biblical "evidence" of Jesus is simply a couple historians who said things like "there's a group of people who claim this Jew died and rose from the dead three days later."
It's no different than a modern-day historian writing "there's a group of people who think they've been abducted by aliens." 2,000 years from now will people be pointing that out as proof that aliens visited the Earth? |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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| SirFink wrote: |
What about this:
2 Samuel 8:3-4 says "David smote also Hadadezer...and took from him...seven hundred horsemen..." 1 Chronicles 18:3-4 says "David smote Hadarezer...and took from him...seven thousand horsemen..."
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Its one of several copyist errors, none of which change the theology or instruction of the bible. The vast majority of these variations are single letter or number variations that make very minor changes in the text, and the copyists were extremely honest in the way that they transmitted these errors down through the ages, afraid to make changes that would ��correct�� the discrepancies in fear of the fact that they would be tampering with the Word of God. As a result, the variations come down to us in complete honesty.
As the scriptures were laboriously copied by hand down the generations, it appears that someone added an extra zero to the figure. But the rest of the passage indicates the error and with the perspective that 1000 chariots were mentioned, 700 horsemen appears more reasonable. But its not important. It doesn't challenge the existence of God or the message of the bible. And the error was always highlighted/ annotated by the copyist. |
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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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A few months ago, we had a thread about Did Jesus Really Exist?
He's what I originally wrote there.
(It refutes everything provided in the link.)
"It has served us well, this myth of Christ."
- Pope Leo X, 16th, century
Like many Christians, I took it as a given that there was a historical Jesus Christ.
He may not have walked on water or come back from the dead, but underneath the fastactic tales accreted onto him, there was a wandering, first-century rabbi whose wisdom has touched us all.
Like many, I thought that there was ample historical documentation of his existance, left to us by the Romans.
Right?
First of all, we should understand that there are very few periods in the history of the ancient world that are as well-documented as when the emperors Caesar Augustus and Tiberius reigned.
In the first and second centuries, there were approximately forty historians writing in the Roman Empire.
Only three seem to mention this Yeshua of Nazareth: Flavius Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, and Suetonius.
In Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews," he wrote one paragraph describing Jesus as a wise man who was crucified by Pilate. Most historians believe that this paragraph to be partly or completely a forgery that was inserted into the text by an unknown Christian. The passage "appears out of context, thereby breaking the flow of the narrative." Even many Christian historians have acknowledged it as a forgery since the early 1800s.
One reason for this is because the passage is not mentioned by any Christian church fathers, not even those who quoted Josephus, until the middle of the fourth century, when Eusebius suddenly "found" it.
Even the Catholic Encyclopedia, unwilling to acknowledge the passage as a forgery, grudgingly concedes: "The passage seems to suffer from repeated interpolations."
Another reason for this is because Josephus not only lived around the same time and place as Jesus, but was a well-educated Jewish priest whose passion was to study his people and their history. He wrote forty chapters about a single king, but only one paragraph about a man whom many believed was the Messiah?
Furthermore, his group, the Pharisees, had been accused not only of executing an innocent man, but of deicide. Josephus was known to be a fierce debater, and it's almost inconceivable that he would have penned this without any kind of rebuttal.
In his book "Annals," Tacitus wrote that arson in the city was started by followers of "Christus" who "was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate." There are two problems with this:
1. He was an imperial writer, and no imperial document would ever refer to Jesus (or anyone else, for that matter) as "Christ."
2. Pilate was not a "procurator," but a prefect, and Tacitus would have known that.
Also, this passage is not mentioned by any early Christian church fathers, including Tertullian (who read and quoted Tacitus extensively) and Clement of Alexandria (whose job was to scour Pagan sources for evidence of Jesus). In fact, no mention of this passage was ever made before the fifteenth century. Nor are Christ, Christianity, or Christians ever mentioned in any of Tacitus' other writings.
This seems to be another example of an interpolation.
In "The Lives of the Caesars," Suetonius wrote: "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Emperor Claudius in 49 CE] expelled them from Rome."
Many people have concluded that "Christ" was misspelled into "Chrestus."
However, Chrestus was in fact a common Greek name.
Also, Claudius reigned from 41 to 54, around ten to fifteen years after the crucifiction of Christ, so it is likely that the reference is to a Jewish agitator in Rome by the name of Chrestus.
To conclude that this ambiguous passage is historical evidence of Yeshua of Nazareth requires connecting some distant dots.
As Tom Harpur (a former Anglican priest) wrote in "The Pagan Christ," the further back in time we go, the more and more ethereal Yeshua of Nazareth becomes.
Review:
Out of about forty historians, only three make mention of Jesus.
Out of those three, two seem to be interpolations, and the third, ambiguous.
I didn't mention Pliny the Younger because he's almost not worth talking about.
He describes Christians, but that is not evidence of any supposed historical Jesus.
If someone describes the beliefs and practices of Greek Pagans, is that evidence as to the existance of Zeus?
Of all the books dealing with this topic, the best are probably
The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus, by Earl Doherty
and
Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ", by Earl Doherty
| Xian wrote: |
I know you might have reasons to not agree, that is fine. Knowledge without revelation doesn't 'save' (as Christians put it). I post it to show that when it comes to evidence, Christianity above any other religion and cult has historical and archaelogical evidence that confirms the events it claims. New and Old Testament. It isn't the blind faith people claim it to be, despite many of us having no idea about many of these things when we first believed. |
Actually, as you can see, there really isn't any credible historical evidence for a historical Jesus, so it is, in fact, a matter of faith, and not of fact. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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Now you seemed to indicate there were documents by third parties that testified to Jesus' miracles 'n' junk. To quote you:
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| So you had a good read of the links and conclude that the several historical testimonies given by people who were neutral or opponents of Christ were actually lying about the miracles or seeing the resurrected Christ and some of the other testimony that they presented? What a great tactic for those people (witnesses), write that a man who was a danger to their stability, performed miracles and done deeds as recorded in the Bible. Jesus' opponents (or neutral) might say (after His death), "how about we write that this guy, who claims to be the Messiah, but we don't believe it, rose from the dead"? |
Nothing in that URL really says anything more than "well, this contemporary reports there was a nice fellow named Jesus and he has some followers who believe some stuff." I don't dispute Jesus existed. I just dispute your notion it can be boiled down to a simple Christ/Crazy/Liar argument. If we had something in Jesus' own handwriting, maybe the argument holds. But you continually refuse to accept the argument hinges upon things that may well be myths spun by anonymous gospel writers (identified only by tradition). You want us to just take the gospel writers' word for it. Lots of outspoken reformers hang, especially if they're going up against a highly orthodox religion. Jesus ain't Captain Unique there. History shows us the ardent followers of all kinds of great men are not the most accurate scribes and tend to spin history to build their leader up, exculpate their actions, and/or assign them divine powers/origins. See Pythagoras.
| Quote: |
| Christianity above any other religion and cult has historical and archaelogical evidence that confirms the events it claims. |
Well, Islam doesn't have really solid archaeological evidence? We're not really dealing with many religions, when it comes right down to it. Judaism and Islam both stem from the same source material. So Christianity, Judaism and Islam seem to be three religions with equal archaeological evidence, as if that's important. Great, there was a Muhammad and a Jesus. The paper work also seems to support the notion that there was once an L. Ron Hubbard. So refresh me as to what this is proof of? Does the truth of L. Ron's existence give support to the existence of Xenu?
Religion and faith aren't in the documentation. They're in the miracles. Man came back from the dead, died for our sins. Moses talked to god and god gave him the holy land. Muhammad is the last prophet and the Koran is the most perfect book on the planet.
However, if you wish to claim there is archaeological evidence that Jesus came back from the dead or any of his miracles, well, I'd really really really love to see it.
As far as I can tell, the miracles and divine origins are a matter of faith. Why you need to try and claim your faith has a necessary logical backing and the weight of historical fact behind it is beyond me. |
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rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 1:35 am Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
As far as I can tell, the miracles and divine origins are a matter of faith. Why you need to try and claim your faith has a necessary logical backing and the weight of historical fact behind it is beyond me. |
We're trying to show you that far from being a blind faith, a throwing of ones brains out the window, believing the bible is a far more logical step than you think it is.
You mentioned archaeoological evidence. So far, archaeology has only confirmed the bible at every turn. Nothing has been found to disprove the historical accuracy of biblical events, places or people. Every significant person and place mentioned in the Bible since the time of the inhabitation of the Holy Land by the Israelites (following the exodus from Egypt and the desert wandering) has now been verified.
Check it out:
http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/gn/gn004/gn004f05.htm
"As the 20th century has progressed, several archaeological finds verifying the biblical record have come to light. In the early 1900s, German excavators under Robert Koldewey mapped the ancient capital of Babylon and found that it closely corresponded to the biblical description. Egyptian history and culture generally matched the biblical accounts.
The archaeologist's spade has uncovered evidence of other ancient peoples mentioned in Scripture. One such example is the Hittite kingdom, mentioned only in the Bible, which had been dismissed by many critics as mythological. As Gleason Archer mentions: "The references (in the Bible) to the Hittites were treated with incredulity and condemned as mere fiction on the part of late authors of the Torah" (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, 1974, p. 165). Yet, excavations in Syria and Turkey revealed many Hittite monuments and documents. These discoveries proved the Hittites to have been a mighty nation, with an empire extending from Asia Minor to parts of Israel.
Also important was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, written in ancient Hebrew script. The scrolls were found in caves near the Dead Sea in 1947. Some of them are books of the Old Testament written more than 100 years before Christ's time."
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i2/jericho.asp
"An in-depth analysis of the evidence reveals that the destruction of Jericho took place around 1400 B.C. (end of the Late Bronze I period), exactly when the Bible says the conquest occurred."
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/els/index.htm
"At Masada, the desert mountain top fortress of King Herod, archaeologists cleared an ancient garbage dump. In the debris they found pieces of a discarded ancient storage jar. Written in ink on the jar's shoulder was the Latin phrase "Herod king of the Jews." This is the first ancient inscription ever discovered with both the name and title of the infamous Jewish king who killed the babies in Bethlehem.
At the northern Galilee site of Tel Hazor, four ancient clay tablets were found. Two were dated to the period of Joshua. All inscribed in cuneiform script, one mentioned the site's ancient Biblical name - "Hazor."
http://www.biblestudysite.com/arch.htm
The evidence is overwhelming... |
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out of context
Joined: 08 Jan 2006
Location: Daejeon
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:44 am Post subject: |
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| The evidence is overwhelming... |
If you're inclined to believe it already, sure. Picture this information as coming to someone who's never heard of the Bible and knows only what is perceived through the senses; is it really all that persuasive? People are contorting and parsing with all this energy to confirm what they already believe, but if it were really as logical as you say it is, then it should be strong enough to sway the rationally inclined. And yet somehow it's not.
There may indeed be people who contend that all of the Bible--the historical components as well as the parts that directly contravene the laws of the material world--is nonsense, but I would venture to say that that's a fairly extreme position and not representative of the average rationalist. One can accept the Bible as a historical document without swallowing the mystical and supernatural components, just as one can and often should accept any document as simultaneously a fairly accurate account of a particular time and place as well as a tendentious reflection of the author's personal values. The burden of proof is not on proving that the Bible is not entirely fake, as if showing that some part of it is true inevitably means that all of it is true, but on proving that most difficult-to-believe propositions should be accepted as fact. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:40 am Post subject: |
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| rapier wrote: |
You mentioned archaeoological evidence. So far, archaeology has only confirmed the bible at every turn. Nothing has been found to disprove the historical accuracy of biblical events, places or people.
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Errr. No. Missed my obvious point by a mile. I said:
| mindmetoo wrote: |
However, if you wish to claim there is archaeological evidence that Jesus came back from the dead or any of his miracles, well, I'd really really really love to see it. |
Your urls don't address my question at all. Do you even understand what I'm saying?
| rapier wrote: |
Every significant person and place mentioned in the Bible since the time of the inhabitation of the Holy Land by the Israelites (following the exodus from Egypt and the desert wandering) has now been verified.
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Assuming that's true, so what? If I'm a historical revisionist and I write a book exculpating Hitler, I'm not going to make up people and places. Lots of non-Christian religious texts are excellent sources of information on kings, battles, etc. While I might be inclined to believe Homer that such and such king lived in Asia Minor, I don't then also believe he got it right regarding the existence of cyclops and Zeus.
| Quote: |
| a blind faith, a throwing of ones brains out the window, believing the bible is a far more logical step than you think it is. |
I would not call true faith a throwing of your brains out the window. It's too bad you, Mr. Instant Christian, seems to believe that. I see no problem with a person who reads the Bible, understands parts are accurate, parts should be taken as metaphor or symbolic, and other parts are to be taken in their historical context. (ie, Why no women apostles? Does this mean there should never be women priests? No, it's just no one took women seriously back then.) I have no problem with Christians who believe their narrow band interpretation of their religion is right for them, works for them, but accepts faith and salvation can be found in the other world's great religions. It's a little troubling to me that hill people in Pakistan who lived all their lives before the Internet and never heard of Jesus are going to be cast into a lake of fire because they didn't become born again Christians.
However, when religious people seem to think their narrow band interpretation is the only truth, is 100% logical and internally consistent, and unique compared to all other religions, should be secular law, well, then I have a problem with that. I, frankly, think they're vastly stupid. |
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Xian
Joined: 08 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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With God and the Bible, many just want to believe the parts that are comfortable to themselves and doesn't compromise their comfort in life in some form.
Some people are always going to reject the Bible, regardless of how good the evidence. In Jesus' day thousands saw His miracles and heard His teachings, yet even by the time of the resurrection, there were only a small number of people with Him. Where were the people who were healed and those thousands of people who were fed?
As confirmed by Rapier, this is currently a discussion about real proofs toward supporting the internal aspects of the Bible, something that other religions / cults cannot provide in apologetical discussions.
It wasn't the idea of Christians to make only one way to God. It is exclusive, yes, but that is God's way (I am glad for that and all Christians should be because they should have an understanding of the results of following another way). People may take what ever path they want, but I am fascinated by the fact that people can believe and follow such different paths / gods, yet still think that they are equally correct. Many God's didn't create the universe, one God did. Many God's didn't create humanity, one God did.
I can see why it seems arrogant to say that Christianity is the only way. Take that one up with God. Some people will accept the Gospel, to others it will be an offense (which is obvious), but it was an offense to myself (in some ways and I would expect to other Christains on this board at sometime also) at one point also.
John 14:6 - Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Xian wrote: |
As confirmed by Rapier, this is currently a discussion about real proofs toward supporting the internal aspects of the Bible, something that other religions / cults cannot provide in apologetical discussions. |
And I guess all those Islamic scholars are just sitting around with their thumbs up their asses going "gosh none of this stuff in the Koran actually checks out..."?
I mean, gosh, look... space exploration was predicted 1,400 years ago in the Koran!
http://www.islam101.com/science/space.html
The Koran, unlike the bible, got the whole Earth, Sun, Moon thing correct!
http://www.islam101.com/science/Celest.html
How could an uneducated guy living in a desert know all this, create one of the world's biggest religions, yaddie yaddie if he didn't have a direct line to Allah? Applying your arguments, I'm then also compelled to believe in the Koran and Islam. It just seems to me the (cough) arguments you use to shore up your faith are used by believers in Allah.
It's a bit like the magician who shows you he can do a Uri Geller spoon bending trick. The magician says he's not using psychic powers, he's using slight of hand. His trick looks exactly like Uri Geller's psychic spoon bending trick. Is the magician saying this is proof Geller is a fraud. Not in so many words. He's just stating if he can do the trick without psychic powers, one might be skeptical about inventing mysterious psychic powers when there also exists two more prosaic explanations: a) Uri Geller is a bald faced liar passing off magic tricks as psychic ability b) he is rather self deluded thinking magic tricks are examples of real psychic ability.
You may believe the truth of that statement but it's not particularly compelling for the unconverted or from a logical, rational perspective. The ol' CS Lewis "trilemma" proposition is easily countered with "well, maybe the gospel writers were mistaken or spun the story a bit." Now you and rapier are on this mad dash to prove the inerrancy of the biblical dates/facts. Even if it were true, it doesn't mean jack when it comes to supporting claims of the supernatural. By example, Homer gets the names of kings and battles spot on but that doesn't mean he's right about cyclopes. |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2006 8:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Xian wrote: |
| Many God's didn't create the universe, one God did. Many God's didn't create humanity, one God did. |
Genesis 1:26 ��Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image..." |
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