delusional

Make yourself world famous then, by publishing a paper demolishing the accepted results of the last couple of centuries' worth of biblical/historical scholarship.

Of course, I fully realise that you will already have invited numerous scholars to try and refute your position, and they have all failed miserably (haven't they?)

Amaleq13

Yes, I tend to rely on professionals rather than amateurs for just about everything and especially when I do not consider myself proficient in the field. This is not nor ever will be any sort of logical error.

Strike two! Accepting the general consensus of professionals is not a logically fallacious reliance upon the number of people who believe it.

Reliance upon the greater agreement among professionals in any field is simply good sense unless one thinks one knows better. It is not and never will be an error in logic. It can result in accepting a false conclusion but not because the acceptance was logically flawed.

You are O for 2 on spotting logical fallacies. But I like your interest in making improvements. That's the first step on your road to recovery.

If it is "obviously biased", I generally only rely upon what they are still willing to accept despite the bias. You're throwing out the baby with the bath water with "worthless". I know who the authors are when I read them. I know what their opponents have said about them and their arguments. I'm also capable of accessing the online English translations of the texts to which they refer and of rendering my own semi-informed opinion. So please alter your arguments from this straw man interlocutor you are imagining who is blindly accepting Church dogma and redirect them toward me. :thumbs:

Let me save us some time: Early Christian Writings

delusional

Exactly how is that a contradiction? To say the Christos means "anointed one" is simply a statement of fact. It is also a fact that the tag "christian" was a tag applied to the followers of Jesus who was called Christ.

That supposed evidence is a bit like saying that "London is in the northern hemisphere" and "London is in Britain" are "clearly contradictory," and prove that London doesn't exist. After all, it can't be in two places at the same time, and anybody not blinded by prejudice must clearly see that.

rlogan

I was really hoping to get somewhere Amaleq13

I'm disappointed.

Really.


I thought we could do more than these superficial "zinger" responses. I am well enough familiar with Early Christian Writings. The ranges are far to broad with competing schools of thought to establish what your thinking is, and I was really in sincerity trying to understand what your working timeline is.

Take care anyway. I see this is not a conversation we can have for now. Perhaps another time we can be more cooperative,

In the event my posts offended you in some way - I apologize.

aa5874

But, look at it this way. Biblical scholars have not even ever demolished any fundamental doctrine of the Roman Church. The Pope of Rome still believes that Jesus was truly born of virgin without sexual union and eventually floated through the clouds exactly as it was written in the NT and the church writings.

When one or two persons were claiming the earth was round, flat-earthers tried to demolish them, some using information found in the Bible.

I have no intention presently of trying to demolish scholars only to develop an inpenetratable and water-tight case to support my position that Jesus, the disciples, Mark, Luke and Paul are first century fiction.

I only expect people to claim I am wrong but never be able to prove they are right. And so far, my predictions have come true.


It must never be forgotten that Acts of the Apostles was regarded as sacred scriptures, and as such if found to be a work of fiction with respect to Jesus, Peter and Paul then a simple question will suffice.

Who authorised the canonisation of fiction with respect to Jesus, Peter, and Paul?

Historical evidence naturally supports historical events.

Fiction naturally supports fictitious events.

Jesus, Peter and Paul was supported by fiction in Acts.

Petergdi

It's useless because if the only thing you mean by it is that the events are not normal occurrences then you are simply pointing out what is already completely obvious by using a term which means something more than you were intending to say.

The word "supernatural" with regard to miracles suggests that we live in a world which runs on a kind of autopilot most of the time, but gets interfered with by God every now and then - A kind of Deism in which the non-interference directive gets broken from time to time. That's neither what I believe nor what any of the NT authors appear to have thought. God in the NT, and in Theism in general, is always active: everything depends on God and nothing happens without God.

Rubbish. That's the angel of the Lord from heaven. It is neither ghostlike nor is it the risen Christ.

In Matthew 28:9, the disciples grabbed hold of Jesus's feet - not something you do to a ghost.

It isn't the first one unless you think that Luke was written before Matthew. In any case there is something odd about the appearances, but that doesn't make them ghostlike especially since Luke also has Jesus saying that he isn't a ghost and proving it by eating boiled fish.


Matthew sure does. Mark (if you end it at verse 8) doesn't have a resurrection appearance at all - just the promise of one. Mark can hardly be expected to show the solidity of an appearance if he doesn't actually describe the appearance at all. I think that there probably was an ending to Mark that got lost, but it is impossible to know what it would have said.


It isn't clearly anything of the sort. I suggest you read Matthew 28 more carefully. Luke and John are plausibly responding to ideas about some sort of incoproreality to the resurrection appearences and wish to refute them. This doesn't seem as likely for Matthew. I don't believe that Mark would have had incorporeal appearences in his lost ending if there was one - it wouldn't fit with the rest of Mark's Gospel. Paul distinguishes between soulish bodies now and spirtual bodies in the resurrection: spiritual bodies may be different but they are still called bodies. There's nothing in the NT suggesting that an incorporeal existence would be desirable even if it were possible.


There's nothing wrong with using the word "supernatural" about God if it is used as a term for the distinction between creature and creator. Using the word "supernatural" about miracles can create a misconception about what Christians believe about miracles. Miracles are entirely natural events in any orthodox Christian theology or else everything is supernatural in origin - take your pick - they amount to the same thing.

If all you mean is that there is something odd, special or unusual about these events, you do not have to use the word "supernatural" to convey this. Most of the time there is no need to say it at all.

Peter.

aa5874

It is complete utter non-sense to suggest that nothing in the NT suggests an incorporeal existence of Jesus when the NT was used to counter and contradict Marcion's phantom Jesus Christ.

Just look at Tertullian's Against Macion, the author used Matthew, Mark, Luke John, Acts of the Apostles, and the letters of "Paul" to show that Jesus was resurrected bodily.

Tertullian wrote a work called "On the the Flesh of Christ" and these words are found in the introduction.

Tertullian's "On the flesh of Christ"

delusional

So Tertullian used the NT in his arguments against docetism. The only thing that tells me is that Tertullian thought the NT documents supported his position.

aa5874

Exactly. [b] Virtually everything about Jesus in the NT suggests Jesus was god and man, and that he was bodily raised from the dead.

The books of the NT should NOT be examined in isolation. The NT is a package of supposedly sacred scriptures of which Acts of the Apostles, considered to be fiction, is an integral part.

If Jesus, Peter and Paul were actual 1st century characters then there would have been no need for a book of fiction purporting to be history called Acts and canonised as sacred scripture.

delusional

"Considered to be fiction." Who by? You? Like the rest of the NT, Acts was written for theological reasons, but there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that Peter, Paul et al were not historical figures. In fact, given that you can find nobody in the first two centuries of Christianity who did not regard them as historical figures, your position is pretty well impossible to defend. People living within a few decades of Paul's lifetime would have been in a far better position than you to know, but since you have already made up your mind what you want to believe, and, so far as evidence is concerned, you are prepared to twist some, and ignore other, their testimony counts for nothing with you.