Gooch's dad

No, Sven, you're absolutely right. The writers of the gospels are anonymous, and we have no idea how they died. Church legends from hundreds of years later are pretty much irrelevant as evidence in this matter.

Magus55

And what pray tell would convince Him a man challenging the authority hes known for so long, claiming to perform miracles and be God, that He is telling the truth. If the Apostles "believed" Jesus was God, that means they lied about the miracles. If they lied about the miracles, why would they believe Jesus was God?

Mageth

As I think someone else pointed out, the fact that the Gospel accounts were embellished with mythical elements (many from earlier Jewish traditions and scriptures) is not evidence that the writers, and others, did not actually believe that they were onto something, that they believed something incredible happened when Jesus was among them. It does obscure, however, what exactly happened in Jesus' life that gave birth to Christianity.

Magus55

You won't find any evidence until you get over your biased worldview that an ancient book can't be telling the truth, because you didn't see it with your own eyes.

Postcard73

I've merged the two prophecy threads here. Martin- in the future please do not start the same thread twice in two separate fora.

Scott (Postcard73)
BC&H Moderator

Gooch's dad

Magus, it seems clear from early church history that the Ebionites, the earliest Christians of Jerusalem, did NOT think that Jesus was God incarnate. They thought he was a "son of God", a messenger, and they may have believed he performed miracles.

What exactly are you trying to say? That was really unclear.

Mageth

You lack a lot of understanding of the times, the people, and their beliefs and how they developed, embellished, and recorded them, Magus. People back then had no problem believing in miracles, so adding a miracle here or there to Jesus' legend was not problematic to them, nor was it considered "lying" - if he were God, he could well have performed the claimed miracles.

I'd highly recommend you read Spong's book to improve your understanding.

Mageth

And you will continue in your lack of understanding until you get over your biased view that the Biblical scriptures have to be interpreted literally or they are meaningless, and that the accounts were intended as literal accounts in the first place. They were not.

Magus55

And again, why would they believe the ramblings of some man, if He did nothing to actually convince the apostles of what they were supposedly on to? Why would you believe a man claiming to be God, and make up miracles because He couldn't actually do it? The Apostles had no benefit or stake in believing in Christ. They spent their whole lives following Judaism, and could have easily stayed with that. It was common in those days for men to claim to be messiahs. Sure they gained followers for a little while, but when they failed to prove their messiahship, and ultimately died and stayed dead, the followers disbanded and returned to their old religion. There is no logical explanation for why Christianity, Jesus, and the Apostles were different unless it actually happened. You just can't possibily accept that it very well may have.

Magus55

I don't see how you can believe you are watching someone walk on water, or rise from the dead, but have it not actually happened. Those kind of illusions would put David Copperfield out of business.