I put as my UserName "EarlD", but they also asked for a "signature," and I put in the entire name "Earl Doherty". Not sure what the distinction is, but if I sign each post with my full name, I assume that is what will appear.

(I warned Ethan I was a rube at these things.)

I am just experimenting here, to get a feel for it. I will also test adding to Brian's existing thread and using quotes. Since I don't want the debate thread to have the permanent word "Test" in it, I guess I should start another one when I'm ready to post the opening message (in a couple of days, I think).

(This little box strikes me as a bit claustrophic for detailed posts. Is that all we get?)

Earl Doherty

[QUOTE]Originally posted by EarlD:
[B]I put as my UserName "EarlD", but they also asked for a "signature," and I put in the entire name "Earl Doherty". Not sure what the distinction is, but if I sign each post with my full name, I assume that is what will appear.

All right, I see that I should have put the entire name so that it would appear in full on the left. I tried reregistering and putting in the full name, but it refused since, of course, it already had my e-mail under the EarlD. (I had the idea the UserName was for internal use only.)

Anyone have suggestions for how I can get the full name to show? Maybe I have to cancel and start over? In view of the fuss I made about anonymity, I don't want it to be incomplete.

Let's hope I can conduct the debate itself a little more efficiently!

Earl Doherty

If you are open to unsolicited opinions, your username of EarlD works just fine, since your signature has your full name in it anyway. None of the users on the board will question who you are!

Oh, and welcome aboard! I for one am looking forward to the debate (I guess now is not a time to admit that I haven't read your book). If you have any questions for how this board or UBB code works, don't hesitate to ask any of us.

[This message has been edited by sentinel00 (edited May 03, 2001).]

[quote]<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by EarlD:
[b]Hi Earl,

Welcome to our forum!

Most questions can be answered at http://www.infidels.org/electronic/forum/faq.html If you need any further help, please, let us know.

rodahi



[This message has been edited by rodahi (edited May 03, 2001).]

THIS IS NOT MY OPENING POST. It is simply a random piece of material from a Word document (The first paragraphs of my Introduction to my Sound of Silence feature on the site) to see how it reproduces. I have to be able to compose posts offline and simply paste them in, since this SW system doesn't seem to work like the discussion groups I'm used to.

I am still going to try to change my UserName to show the full name, if someone will tell me how to do it.

Do the New Testament epistles tells us anything about the Jesus of the Gospels? Are the epistle writers aware of such a man, and do they have any knowledge of the Gospel story?
New Testament commentators have long remarked, frequently with some perplexity, on the dearth of references in the early Christian correspondence to details of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. "The early church lost all interest in the earthly career of the man they turned into God." This has been the standard method of explaining the extensive silence on the human Jesus to be found in the canonical epistles. I have questioned the feasibility of such an eventuality taking place, the likelihood that the elevation of a man to Godhead would—or could—entail the complete dismissal of his earthly incarnation as unimportant or of no interest to the first two generations of Christian believers. Other rationalizations put forward to explain the silence have included the claim that, since every epistle writer knew that the details of Jesus’ life and ministry were familiar to their readers (which would be a very questionable assumption in itself), no one bothered to make even a passing reference to any of those details, even in places where they would naturally come to mind. J. P. Holding, in his rebuttal to my views—see Reader Feedback—has put it that "there was no need" to mention all these elements of the Gospel account.
I have already attacked the rationality of such arguments in several places on the site. What I am concerned with here is to provide a comprehensive picture of this pervasive silence on the Gospel Jesus contained in the New Testament epistles. While many aspects and examples of it have been touched on throughout my articles, the full extent of it, the nitty-gritty of it, may come as a surprise to many readers. In the present feature, "The Sound of Silence," I will point out and comment on virtually all the identifiable places in the Pauline corpus (Paul and pseudo-Paul), in Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1 & 2 John and Jude, where a reference to some Gospel element, some mention of the historical Jesus, would seem natural, or even called for. One would, of course, not expect to find such a reference in every single instance. But to find it missing in so many instances, covering all aspects of the life and death portrayed in the Gospels, is an astonishing phenomenon which cannot be blithely dismissed or explained away. This is a silence which cuts across every early document, through several authors and a multiplicity of situations, and it creates a very powerful and compelling "argument from silence."

Well, I can see I'm going to need some advice, and I will ask Ethan privately so I'm not posting a lot of unnecessary stuff here. Pasting in didn't give me paragraph indentations, and I suspect it won't do other things as well.

Earl Doherty

Earl,

I am attempting to get a definitive answer for you on how to change your UserName. You will be notified ASAP (I hope!).

rodahi

"Note: The Signature feature is currently not enabled by this bulletin board's administrator." [On the user profile form.]

Don

Ask: Bill Schultz &lt;pope@agnostic.org&gt;

If there is an answer, he would know what it is.

Don

That's all we get. I work around the little box limitation by clicking on the reply icon, then cutting and pasting the whole thing into a text editor, I work on my response there, then paste it back into the little box, then click on submit. That way, I can take my time to format it as I like and I also have the use of a spell-checker.

Don