Minimalist

Human imagination would seem to do the trick.

Huon

Irenaeus, born between 115 and 142, died about 200.
Tertullian, born about 160, died “very old”, published Adversus Marcionem in 207, or about 207.

Toto

I think that it is clear that the gospels contain contradictions (which disprove inerrancy but nothing else); the writers, compilers, and editors of the various parts of the NT were aware of those contradictions; therefore the writers, compilers, and editors did not think of the gospels as inerrant historical descriptions of events. They knew that they were dealing with theological works, which modern people would label "fiction," because they are not based on "reality."

PS - we strongly discourage copying and pasting large blocks of text that are available elsewhere.

GenesisNemesis

Where's the OP poster?

andrewcriddle

FWIW Luke 22:43-44 (the Agony in the Garden) is textually dubious; a number of ancient manuscripts omit it.

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi Ninjay,

Alfred Hitchcock made "The Lodger" in 1926, loosely based on the Whitechapel Killings. It was remade as a less successful sound film in 1932 by Maurice Elvey and in 1944 by John Brahm. A new version directed by David Ondaatje is now being filmed.

The real life actor, Ivor Novello, who starred in the 1926 and 1932 versions of the Lodger, is a character in Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001) which is set in 1933. He is the only historical character in that film. The other 40 or so characters are fictional. Although, another character claims to be producing a film called "Charlie Chan in London," his name (Morris Weissman) is different from the actual producer (John Stone) of the 1934 film Charlie Chan in London.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay
(An old Night Stalker fan)

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Anti-anti-theist: First of all, it is not incumbent upon skeptics to reasonably prove that the Bible contains contradictions. Second of all, if the Bible had been written much more clearly, far fewer skeptics would mention apparent contradictions. Third of all, inspiring and preserving texts indicates that whoever inspired and preserved the them wants people to have access to them. Since hundreds of millions of people died without hearing the Gospel message, it is obvious that no God wanted people to have access to it. If the universe is naturalistic (since I am an agnostic, I am not saying that it is), it is to be expected that the Gospel message would be spread entirely according to the existing means of communication, transportation, printing, and translation of a given time period, and that the people who would have had the most opportunity to hear it would be people who lived closer to Palestine. It appears that that scenario is what happened. It is not logical for anyone to assume that if the God of the Bible exists, he would refuse to personally and verbally tell anyone about the Gospel message.

The fact that the Bible does not say a lot more than it says about slavery is good evidence that a loving God did not inspire the writing of the Bible.

There is good evidence that a person's belief system depends completely dependent upon chance and circumstance. It is my position that a loving God would not allow a person's belief system to depend completely upon, or even largely upon, chance and circumstance.

Kosmin and Lachman wrote a book that is titled "One Nation Under God." The authors provide a lot of documented research that shows that in the U.S., the chief factors that determine religious beliefs are family, geography, race, ethnicity, gender, and age. I would like to add time period to that list, meaning which century a person is born in. In the U.S., a much higher percentage of women become Christians than men. That means that God discriminates against men. A much smaller percentage of elderly skeptics become Christians than younger people. That means that God discriminates against elderly skeptics. The Microsoft Encarta Deluxe Edition 2004 says that "The overwhelming majority of the Syrian population is Sunni Muslim." Obviously, God discriminates against children who are raised by Muslim parents. Regarding the spread of the Gospel message in the first century, God discriminated against people who lived far away from Palestine by refusing to tell them about the Gospel message. Of course, it should be obvious to everyone that none of that is true. No loving God would act like that because acting like that could not possibly be necessary towards the achievement of worthy, fair, and just goals.

James says that if a man refuses to give food to a hungry person, he is vain, and his faith is dead. Why do you suppose that God inspired James to write that? Consider the following post that I made recently at the GRD Forum:

What of value to humanity do you believe God would not be able to accomplish without killing people and innocent animals with hurricanes?

If you would prefer to discuss these issues at the GRD Forum, or at the Philosophy Forum, that would be fine. It is my position that the philosophical evidence against the Bible far outweighs the apologetic evidence for the Bible. The lack of known, reasonable, and justifiable motives on God's part is good evidence that while a God might exist, the God of the Bible does not exist. If a moral God wants to have fellowship with humans, he certainly does not need to seriously injure and/or kill them in order to do that.

James Holding usually or always avoids debating philosophy, and with good reason. He would not be able to come up with any good answers regarding why God does what he does. If you wish, you can send him this post for his comments. He knows who I am since I used to debate him a lot at the Theology Web. I once tried to have a serious debate with Holding about a ridiculous article that he wrote about the Tyre prophecy. Since he knew that he was in trouble, for the most part he made uncorroborated claims, and often made ad homimen attacks against me. One of his absurd claims was that there is historical evidence that the Tyre prophecy predated the events. There is of course no such evidence, and Holding knew it. When I asked him for corroboration, he refused to provide it. Holding is a liar. I debated Holding for many months about the size of first century Christian church. I mentioned that in "The Rise of Christianity," Rodney Stark estimates that there were 7,530 Christians in the world in 100 A.D. This is in "stark" contrast to the "World Christian Trends" estimate of 800,000 Christians in 100 A.D. If the Gospels are fraudulent, a figure anywhere near 7,530 makes sense because the vast majority of people would not have believed events that never happened. Well anyway, Holding strongly protested all of Stark's evidence, including archaeological and papyrological evidence, only to finally basically say many months later "So what if I [now] agree with Stark's estimate? I was only trying to make a 100% case into a 150% case." Now really, no rational, honest person would say something like that.

Timetospend

Ignoring the part on contradictions in the gospels, I would be interested in support for the assertion that "the writers, compilers, and editors of the various parts of the NT were aware of those contradictions." I am not interested in the speculation that often goes for support on this site but actual tangible data that can be verified. Scholarly opinion by itself is not verifiable, but needs additional support for it to be more than opinions or editorials.

Understand that this is your blissful opinion, but do you have any proof for it? Don't mean to be difficult, but this is a rather strong statement.

Thanks,

Sven

Did it ever occur to you that if the bible was really inspired, it would not need any defending? Someone blundered badly here - either the one who did the inspiring, or the ones who were inspired (or alternatively: There's no inspiration at all).

Because modern scholars have studied ancient texts extensively and know about all what you whine about here. See, it's simple - scholars are not that dumb as you think you are. You certainly did not do this intentionally - but by comments like the above you deeply insult scholars. They've done much hard work, over many years, and have invested even more years to study the topic in depth. Yet you seem to think that they are too dumb to think about things which you - an amateur - thought up.

Think about this.

And read up on this before you make assumptions about what scholars assume.

-Jay-

All fictionalizations of a true story. The OP appeared to assert that multiple fictionalizations of a story had to occur at the same time. The assertion didn't depend on the core story being true or not (although I surmise the OP's assumption is that the core Gospel story is true.)

regards,

NinJay