Merged Topic - Historical Reliability of the Gospels

[widdershins]

Overwhelmed by the evidence as well as the quotations from credentialed scholars I have presented and with nothing more to offer in rebuttal, this is your reply.

I'm underwhelmed.

People aren't overwhelmed by your "evidence".  They are overwhelmed by your large number of massive posts stating the same things over and over, dismissing any argument against it and then pretending there were no arguments against it.

You aren't here for us.  You're here for you.  You are here to argue and argue and argue and deny that anyone has ever made a single valid point until you get banned or people just stop responding to you so that you can declare victory.  You are here because your beliefs are so fragile, you are so close to rejecting them that you must CONSTANTLY prove, not to others, but to yourself that you are right.  You are here because you need someone to fight with; someone to, in your own mind, "beat" so that you can keep your waning grasp on your belief system.  Because subconsciously you know that if left to your own devices, your own thoughts, you would lose your faith and that terrifies you.  So you need to constantly confirm to yourself how right you are by "proving" how wrong anyone who disagrees with you is.  And you've fooled yourself into believing that if you just post the same shit over and over and over and deny that anyone has refuted a single point you've made, they'll eventually give up and you have "won" the debate because there just isn't enough reason NOT to believe for ANYONE to EVER be able to argue against you.

You are not a stupid person, but you act like one.  You MUST hold onto this faith AT ALL COST because the alternative is to lose paradise forever.  The thing is, though, you never had paradise to begin with because it's simply not real.

[Randy Carson]

As I keep telling you, history is not a court.  They don't follow the same rules.

And the term "eyewitness account" applies ONLY to an event which "happened".  You can have an eyewitness account of an accident, for instance, but without the account you STILL KNOW than an accident happened.  What you are doing here is asserting that the incidents happened, now we must determine whether the people writing about it personally witnessed it.  We dispute that the incident ever happened.  You are starting this argument with the premise that the events in the Bible CANNOT BE pure fiction.  You have to back up a step.  FIRST you have to establish that an event ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  Only THEN can you move on to "Was the account of what happened the whole truth?  Are these eyewitnesses to these events?"

Essentially the argument you are making is like me asking if J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books were "eyewitness accounts" of the things that happened at Hogwarts.  The term "eyewitness account" does not apply to fiction, so you must FIRST lay out your argument that the events are not purely, 100% fiction; that there may be at least some truth to the stories.  It is only AFTER we have determined that "something" actually happened which inspired these stories that we can move on to determining whether or not the accounts are "accurate".  Are J.K. Rowling's accounts of Hogwarts "accurate" accounts of what happened?  Was she, herself an eyewitness or did she at least have access to eyewitnesses?  How the hell do you answer that?

You are a bit like an impetuous child.  You have all the patience in the world to stay here week after week and argue your case, but when it comes to giving an argument you have no patience at all.  You want to skip right to the end without doing any groundwork to actually build an argument.  Your every argument starts in the middle, at best.  Some of them start at the end.  I have yet to see you give a SINGLE argument which starts anywhere near the beginning.

I have demonstrated the following sequence:

1. The texts of the gospels we have today are extremely accurate reconstructions of the original, inspired autograph manuscripts. We know what the authors wrote.
2. The gospels were written early enough to have been authored by actual eyewitnesses. We know that the authors were present at the scene.
3. The gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We know that the authors were authoritative eyewitnesses.
4. The gospels were corroborated by non-biblical sources. We know that Jewish and Roman historians provide enemy attestation of key points from the gospels.

Now, you can choose to ignore this argument, prove it wrong or concede that I'm right thus far. That's up to you.

Still to come:

Are the gospel writers trustworthy? Can we believe what they wrote?

[Randy Carson]

Because everyone but you can see that he made a really good point, and you're just unwilling to admit it.

I quoted Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 5 which contain the two lists of the Ten Commandments.

"Honor thy father and mother" is in both lists.

[Gerard]

I do agree with you!  But is that not odd in that Paul taught about Christ, but not what Christ taught????  And Jesus said that the OT was not changed--not one dot for the 'i' or cross for the 't'.  You are right, the only scripture he knew was the Septuagint; he could not have read any of the NT, except that which he wrote.

We don't know that all of the stuff in the Gospels is what Christ actually taught. Paul may or may not have known about the passage you're quoting above, but even if he did, he could very well have argued that, as these laws were only supposed to be for the Jewish people anyway and Jesus also knew that very well, his point was therefore valid when it came to gentile followers of Christ! All of that without actually contradicting his Master.

Gerard

[Randy Carson]

Jesus and the writer of Matthew never met. Matthew would have said so if they did.

Gerard

Who was the writer of Matthew? Do you have an authoritative source suggesting an alternative?

Papias wrote:

Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.

Papias was a student of the Apostle John. How much more authoritative does it get than that, Gerard?

[Hakurei Reimu]

If you ever bother to read the Book of Acts (and I doubt you have thus far), you would know that the Jews were actively trying to crush the Early Church. Peter, James and John were arrested, beaten, etc. James was eventually martyred. Stephen was stoned to death. A great persecution broke out against the early believers.

Yes, yes, they were persecuted, therefore they were right. Yawn.

Now, if the Jews were eager to snuff out Christianity, all they had to do was to open the tomb and parade Jesus' body through the streets. But they didn't because they couldn't.

The Jews weren't Mulsims, you ninny. Touching a dead body is unclean. They would have never have done this, even to discredit their enemy. It's also desecrating a body. Once interred, a body is not to be moved, and especially not to display it in the street like an animal carcass. The populace would have been incensed, not silenced, in their flagrant act against the Torah.

Consequently, they claimed that the disciples had stolen the body inadvertently giving enemy attestation to the fact that the tomb was empty.

If your ordering of the Book of Acts with the gospels is to be believed, this account was written more than 40 years after the fact (after Mark). I've already touched upon why eyewitness testimony is inaccurate, much less secondhand accounts, especially when repeatedly recalled.

Luke recorded it after interviewing the eyewitnesses:

More secondhand accounts of eyewitness testimony. Yawn.

Are you not familiar with what the scriptures actually say in this matter? Here is a brief passage from gJohn in which the author reveals his identity:

<snip>

So what if "This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down."

So, John the apostle, an eyewitness, says that he is the author of the gospel bearing his name. He also recorded that Jesus cooked breakfast for the apostles on the shore of the lake. He also recorded:

<snip>

Jesus rose from the dead physically.

Yawn, more "eyewitness accounts"

Did any other family members believe those things?

Your aunt suffered, but she did so alone.

She was not alone. The memory was jinned up by her wack-a-loon hypnotherapist who "recovered" the memory during that fucking "recovered memories" movement a while back, and the fucking hypnotherapist and his scumbag family. Neither of them set out to do this, but it happened anyway. My aunt was neither alone nor unique. This happened hundreds of times across the country, a wave of ultimately phony abuse and sacrifice charges induced by false memories.

The apostles did not share a hallucination or a delusion because the tricks of the mind do not affect others around us.

And thus, YOUR silly argument is dismissed.

It wasn't a mass hallucination or a shared delusion. What happens is that, as the events are recalled and recounted, they are changed and start to align, even at points that were ultimately entirely fabrications.

I know that this sounds like it shouldn't happen, but it does. We've done the experiments. It happens.

https://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversky.htm

   In another part of the Tversky-Marsh study, participants were asked to play prosecutors presenting a summation to the jury.8 Participants first read a murder story, where two men were suspects. Participants were then asked either to prepare a neutral recounting of all they remembered about one suspect, or to prepare a summation to the jury about one suspect. Later, participants were asked to recall the original story. Participants who wrote summations recalled more incriminating details and wrongly attributed details among suspects more often than participants who originally wrote a neutral recounting.

My argument is NOT dismissed in the slightest. It is dependent on the flaky nature of humanity, which has not changed since ancient times. Like a big fish story, the story of Jesus grew in the retellings, becoming this miracle filled tale only fit for the fiction section.

[Randy Carson]

Well, remember that Paul probably never got around to reading the gospels as we know them now. And he never met Jesus, although he apparently did meet some of his followers at the time. Also Paul, who was a Jew, argued that laws that were particularly meant for the Jewish people didn't apply to Gentiles who became followers of Jesus and he got in somewhat of a fix about that with Peter and James. But his reading became the Christian orthodoxy.

Gerard

Paul was a student of Gamaliel, and he was in Jerusalem during the time that Jesus came and went from the city. He may have never met Jesus personally, but it's probably reasonable to say that Paul heard Jesus preach even if it was from a distance (to maintain appearances).

And yes, Paul did meet several of the apostles.

Good points about circumcision and other points of the Law and the Gentiles!

[Randy Carson]

Wait, what? First you said 1 Cor was dated 3-5 years after the crucifixion/resurrection, now it's 20-25 years? So you have no proof that 1 Cor was actually written 3-5 years after the resurrection.

Sheesh.

What I said is that the passage in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 contains a proto-creed that Paul learned in Jerusalem within 3-5 years of Jesus' resurrection.

So, Paul memorized the creed ca. AD 33-35.
Paul preached the creed in Corinth in person prior to AD 50.
Paul wrote 1 Corinthians ca. AD 50-55.

[Randy Carson]

So he's been repeating this same story for years, huh? Interesting, because that's one of the conditions it takes for a story to change drastically through embellishments, according to the latest in psychology. For all we know, Paul's "eyewitness testimony" started out as secondhand accounts that grew more intimate in the retellings until it became his own eyewitness testimony.

If you had ever read the NT, you would know that Paul also challenges the Corinthians to ask the living witnesses whether what he's telling them is true or not. He wrote:

1 Corinthians 15:3-8
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

500 people saw him. Ask them if I'm telling the truth or not.

[Randy Carson]

There's no reason to believe that the books of the bible were written in the order they appear in. Furthermore, since the book of acts is just that, a book of acts, it could be seen at the initial fleshings out of the Jesus myth.

Acts begins this way:

Acts 1
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.

Acts was Luke's second book. gLuke was his first book.

[Randy Carson]

So you admit you can't use the lack of mention for the destruction of the temple as a way to date the gospels. Concession accepted

You argue like a girl. Or a very young person. Which is it?

You claimed that the NT was a history of the REGION. That was YOUR word, not mine.

I disagreed then and now. And again, I point out that we are talking about the Book of Acts...not the gospels.

You're making yourself look ignorant.

[Randy Carson]

Not mentioning an event does not prove that the event did not happen at the time of the writing of a manuscript. Drop this line of argument. It will you avail you nothing.

Given that Luke DOES mention the deaths of minor players, his silence regarding major figures is deafening.

And you know this, but you can't admit this kind of thing without having to consider becoming a Christian yourself.

[Randy Carson]

Oh, and Bart Ehrman, while he makes some interesting obersvations, consistently fails to weigh them against the fact that all of the bible manuscripts have been copied through the ages, where any two-bit monk with a holy agenda can do some creative correction.

Already covered in the thread on the Accuracy of the NT.

This is not a good use of my time. Let's chat when you have gotten up to speed on the arguments I presented elsewhere.

[Mike Cl]

We don't know that all of the stuff in the Gospels is what Christ actually taught. Paul may or may not have known about the passage you're quoting above, but even if he did, he could very well have argued that, as these laws were only supposed to be for the Jewish people anyway and Jesus also knew that very well, his point was therefore valid when it came to gentile followers of Christ! All of that without actually contradicting his Master.

Gerard

The NT has Jesus saying this:

“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” â€" Matthew 5:18-19

“It is easier for Heaven and Earth to pass away than for the smallest part of the letter of the law to become invalid.” (Luke 16:17)

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” (Matthew 5:17)

It seems to me if Paul knew Jesus said the above (supposedly) he would pass it along a what Jesus taught.  But you are correct in that we don't know that the NT is accurate to what Jesus taught--or even if the man existed.

[Hakurei Reimu]

What are you tring to do, Randy? Increase your post count? Split your response only to get them to come below the posting limit. Fucksake.

I've really run out of patience with you. You are making the case of believing that the bible is a book that may be relied on when it tells you (amongst other things) that the resurrection is a thing. That's the lynchpin of your entire faith, isn't it? The claim that a man came back from the dead two thousand years ago after three days being dead. To you, it seems more likely that a man came back from the dead after being stone cold for three days, than the stack of manuscripts that tells such a tale is just wrong.

There is nothing in science that supports the resurrection. We know too much about biochemistry, about the process of death, for this claim to be credible in any context. Even if we were to find a way to resurrect a body after three days of being dead, it would take whizz-bang technology unavailable to ancient Judea. Even in philosophy, where we can propose bizzare scenarios that break our normal sensibilities, resurrection is pretty dicey (is the risen Jesus a philosophical zombie?). As such, the claim of the resurrection is a textbook example of an extraordinary claim, and while not the most extreme case, it's pretty up there.

It would take a detailed and in-depth scientific investigation and a revolution in medicine and biology to establish even the possibility that a resurrection may have happened, with careful observation, experimentation, and replication of the phenomenon before the possibility is even on the table. Your book, the bible, that you admit is mostly second-hand, is insufficient to support the claim that any resurrection took place. Out of everyone who has lived in the past, every one of them has died once and stayed dead, or will die and stay dead. Each and every animal and plant on the Earth has died once and stayed dead. Everything that lives has and will have one chance at life, and when it dies it stays dead.

Except, so claim Christians, this single person in ancient Judea. This one sole exception that violates all natural law and precedent and future prospects and to them is more credible than the possibility that their entire religion simply bullshit.

And you have the gall to wonder why athiests think you're fucking insane.

I would sooner believe the Swoon Theory than believe that a man could come back from the dead. I would sooner believe that the Council of Nicea concocted the entire NT out of whole cloth, forging the corroborations by Josephus and Tacitus, forging and burying the dead sea scrolls, and planting the various pieces of evidence throughout the world and acedemia than believe a man could come back from the dead. I would sooner believe that all of the diciples were tripping balls and sharing a single hallucination synchronized through psychic waves than believe a man could come back from the dead. I would sooner believe that the entire christian church was a big prank that gotten out of hand two thousand years ago before I would believe a man could come back from the dead. I would sooner believe that the diciples encountered Jesus's doppelganger and imposter than believe that a man rose from the dead.

I would sooner believe grand conspiracy theories, pychic powers, mistaken identity, and Judean candid camera before I would believe a man could come back from the dead, because those things have some semblance of being possible.

The claim of the resurrection is a deal-breaker for the veracity of the bible, and it doesn't matter how many "renouned scholars" tell us to the contrary. It is more parsimonious to assume that this one anomaly of the resurrection simply didn't happen and that every biblical scholar and believer who thinks otherwise is simply wrong, than to accept that this one exception in death exists. No matter how unlikely it seems to you that all of those people can be wrong in their belief, once you have eliminated the impossible (the resurrection) whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.

Until you demonstrate that the resurrection is even a possibility, it's off the table, along with any claims that the bible demonstrates the proof of the resurrection. The bible is not accurate here, because it contains a claim that is literally as impossible as they come.