Jack the Bodiless

I won't dispute Archer's talent for forgetting or overlooking things. This was the apologist who went looking for Tyre, failed to find it (quite an achievement in itself), and claimed that the island was now underwater (which would be startling news to its present inhabitants).

Apparently he picked the wrong island.

Alf

I would assume that for greek writing and reading christians it was the Septuagint (greek translation of the hebrew bible) rather than the hebrew bible itself.

Indeed for non-jewish christians in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century "scripture" was septuagint and what other writings was available to them that circled around among them. Paul's letters as they became available, the source we today know as "Q" and the gospels as they were written and came known.

Most of these people did not understand hebrew and so did not have access to the hebrew bible.

Alf

Alf

Assuming Matthew were an eyewitness. Then he must presumably have stayed for a while in Judea. Right?

How could he then make so many mistakes about Judean Geography, Judean customs etc etc?

Again, assuming John were an eyewitness. Why did he write the gospel so much later than the others?

Assuming Matthew and Luke are both correct. When exactly was Jesus born?

What was the name of Joseph's father?

Alf

Alf

I hope you are aware that Eusebius is perhaps considered the biggest fraud among the early christians. He was a firm believer in Pious Fraud. "It is ok to lie if you lie for christ". I.e. not telling lies to christ but telling lies so as to promote christianity.

I am generally very sceptical to ANYTHING that Eusebius claims. I want to prefer to see it proven or at least supported by other writers before I accept his claims. Healthy septicism is valuable in general but with Eusebius it is an absolute must.

Alf

Alf

For once I guess I will come the theist to the rescue here. I am not sure of the details here since this is very much a greek cultural influence in the early days (early christian writings were in greek) but in roman culture they included both ends when counting. Thus, when they used the phrase "3 days before X" the day after would be "day before X" and then the day after would be "X". Thus, in roman tradition friday IS 3 days before sunday (friday, saturday and sunday - 3 days when both end points are included).

For example in the roman calendar "4 days before Nones" would be what we would think of as 3 days before Nones. The romans simply included both end points.

I don't know if greek counted the same way but wouldn't surprise me if they did.

However, it still would make only 3 days and 2 nights and not 3 days and 3 nights though.

Alf

Alf

Maybe, but he was also unfortunately someone with an agenda and someone who wasn't afraid of forgery and other cheats in order to promote that agenda.

This is very sad since it is correct what you say, that he was one of the few who had access to such a big library. It is really sad for christians today that there wasn't a person with more integrity that had access to that same library. One would think that an all powerful god would have arranged things better this way for the christians. It appears that this god if he had any finger into what happened has tried his best to discredit the bible as he could.

Alf

andrewcriddle

Could you give examples of where you think Eusebius says things that he knew to be false.

Eusebius is certainly sometimes wrong and IMO sometimes distorts by deliberate omission.

However it is harder to find clear examples of him making positive statements he knew to be false.

Andrew Criddle

Julian

Lie might be a bit strong but I suspect that Alf is referring to Eusebius's famous statement, "How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived."

More on this here: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/eusebius/pe_data.htm

It should, at least, make us read Eusebius with quite a grain of salt as you allude to as well.

Julian

aChristian

As John states, if all the things were written that Jesus did, the whole world wouldn't have room for the books. As I read the gospels, I get a different viewpoint from each one. They cover some of the same material as I would expect could (but doesn't have to) happen in any set of biographies. You can also read biographies about certain parts of George Washington's life that don't contain other well known stories I'm sure. (I'm no expert on George Washington.) The point still stands that the people back then who knew the facts accepted them as history. Just because you expect something different to be recorded in that history doesn't change the fact that the people of the time who knew much more about it than you do considered it history. I would guess (and again this is only a guess why, if it is wrong it still doesn't affect the fact that it was accepted as history) that one reason John's gospel is different is because the other gospels had been in circulation and were well known to the church when John wrote. For this reason he didn't include some of the well known material. In addition, John was writing as an old man who had time to reflect and meditate in communion with God on much of what had happened. God may have revealed new significance to events that John always knew, but didn't realize the significance of them until later in life.
On another note, Mark and Luke may have used Matthew (I know, you think Mark was written first, but I haven't seen any evidence to convince me of that) as they wrote their gospels. There may have even been a logia, although I doubt it. Even if these theories were true, they don't mean that Mark and Luke were not in contact with eyewitness to the events. Mark may have heard the accounts from Peter and used Matthew as he wrote his gospel. (Moses probably used records passed down from Adam when he wrote the Pentateuch.) This doesn't prevent them from writing accurate history. Mark may have been the boy who fled naked from the garden and been an eyewitness himself to much of the story. This doesn't prevent him from using another eyewitness' document when recording the story that he remembered and lived through. Luke using Matthew doesn't contradict his introduction where he said that he checked everything out carefully with eyewitnesses. The point is, the people who were alive at the time said that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all wrote accurate histories of Jesus. That's the history. Attempts to disprove this without any evidence from the people who were alive then and knew what went on are unconvincing to say the least. One last item that you are leaving out is that the early church considered them not just history, but history inspired by God without error. God would have no problem giving the story to four different people in exactly the same words.

seebs

How many days are there in a long weekend, when you get Friday off? Three. What's the third day of that weekend? Sunday.

I guess this doesn't seem like that big a deal. People are lazy about conflating "third day" with "three days later", but at least in the creed, it's "on the third day..."