bfniii

you mentioned that christians were dismissed. in some cases i agree with you. the point of this idea was that whether christians were dismissed or not, it would not have been difficult to refute their false claims. i'm not talking about people outside of judea. i'm talking about people in judea or even jerusalem who either were or knew eyewitnesses. when droves of people came in to jerusalem at pentecost, it is highly likely that they were all rubbing elbows. the Bible describes peter telling a group of people they were all witnesses to what had happened. this sort of thing probably went on every year. there is no need to dismiss someone when you've got the relative of an eyewitness standing right next to you who can refute the miraculous claims of christians. if the christian claims were false, there were groups of people who could have put a stop to it right there with no effort.

how are we to trust the extra-biblical accounts of pilate? even so, as you have stated in regards to the Bible, are they 100% correct in every way? it should be plain to see that skeptics all throughout this thread have been picking and choosing whichever historical account or shading suits their purpose.

that their beliefs were denied was not the point here. that they were dismissed was. in some cases they were, in some cases they weren't.

the gate wasn't the road. the gate was the area of town where the road went through.

and what words would those be?

the arc de triumph doesn't require a wall. that's an extreme example, but no, a gate does not require a wall. i'm not the group of archaeologists who excavated nain and discovered this. you're not playing games with me. i got the idea from a reference.

is there some archaeologist who has come along since who refutes this information? i can break out some other, more recent quotes if you like.

what would it take to be convincing that a written text preceeded by an oral tradition is trustworthy?

even if john weren't written by one author (i assume this refers to the end of john), that doesn't mean that the majority of if wasn't written by the apostle john. secondly, there are reasons to believe that one author is the case despite what a few catholics say.

Vorkosigan

There are no reasons to believe that it was written by one author, other than conservative Christianity's demand for inerrancy. Evidence suggests at least three different hands, one of which added John 21, and another who interpolated material heavily into the gospel, and screwed up the chapter orders of 4-7 and 13-17. They cannot now be successfully unscrambled. Any good intro text on either John or the gospels will discuss the textual and stylistic reasons mainstream scholars believe John had at least three authors.

Amaleq13

The point you keep missing is that people who dismiss the claims of others generally don't feel compelled to conduct a formal investigation and record a formal refutation of the claims. They just call the claimants gullible, superstitious fools and go have a drink. You are appealing to absent records where there is no good reason to suspect anyone would have felt it necessary to create them.

Less effort than dismissing them out-of-hand without knowing very much about them at all? That makes no sense.

This isn't so much about trusting the extrabiblical accounts as it is denying your assertion that no such documents contradict biblical claims. That said, we have two independent documents that agree in their depiction of Pilate and one that puts forth a depiction that clearly serves theological goals. Even Christian scholars like Crossan recognize that the Gospel depiction of Pilate is a theological fiction.

You have yet to provide an example where their beliefs were not dismissed. The execution of Jesus, even according to your own Bible, had less to do with specific beliefs than the growing popularity of Jesus. The beliefs of Christians that were dismissed were subsequent to that execution.

Please provide evidence to support this claim.

Consult a Greek dictionary.

It is a monument not a city gate.

Please provide evidence to support this silly claim. Gates are intended to block an entrance so the absence of a surrounding wall kinda makes the gate a big joke.

You can start with the book linked above.

Like I said, there is no known reliable methodology for identifying the oral tradition upon which written text is allegedly based. Crossan did his best in The Birth of Christianity by considering still extant oral traditions in Irish funeral poems but he could find no similar pattern in the Gospels.

Your "if" and unspecified reasons are less than compelling. I've read the arguments and evidence that lead to the conclusion favored by the majority of scholars. I've also read the most popular arguments offered by the minority view. I find the former much more credible. If you think you have something new to add, don't be shy. Frankly, I suspect you haven't read very much that differs with or challenges your current beliefs but your posts might be misleading.

DiamondH

We all know how anxious the Romans were to help the Jews. When the Jews wanted a new temple, who tore the old one down for them? The Romans. They even helped them with a little urban restoration and placed a security force in Jerusalem to protect them.

bfniii

i agree that each case must be taken on it's own merits. is there a case where a group of people saw the loch ness monster, touched it and can all describe the same creature? has it happened for several years? obviously not. we could apply the same critique to alien abductions, etc. the differences from biblical claims is so obvious, it doesn't seem that the standard is so vulnerable after all.

wouldn't that same evidence be required to definitively say the event absolutely did not happen?

yet you don't believe the claims of the bible even though evidence exists. so now i ask what type of evidence do you require?

so how many claimants are required to verify a claim? it seems that for you one is not enough.

i see. so what are the categories of claim natures that are believable and non-believable?

in this case, it seems the difference with biblical claims is not that people saw someone who might have been Jesus, but that they saw him interact with people (talking, eating, teaching, healing, on trial, etc).

i'm afraid that's not entirely true. there are miracles today that cause people to become christians even though before they were skeptical. miracles do happen today, they're just different than the ones prior to the resurrection.

yet many of the prophecies were not able to be "self-fulfilled" such as place of birth, etc.

and there are other claims that groups of people saw Him multiple times. the one you mention is not the only one.

there are reasons other than longevity to reject hinuism.

archaeological discoveries that continually verify biblical claims would obviate this statement. but i have a question for you. how much more and what type of information about Jesus and christianity do you require?

i think we're talking about two different kinds of skeptics. i'm talking about someone who knew someone present during the events that christians were traveling around talking about. no effort is required to say, when a christian approaches during pentecost for example, "i know someone who was there (or i was there) and you are lying".

i was referring to people in biblical times. i don't know if that was clear.

the Bible uses the word "multitude" more than once. it wasn't just the sanhedrin. isn't is possible that they were afraid of His threat to their power because He was the real deal?

i haven't ignored them. i have been instructed during this thread that the writings of josephus, et al, are not trustworthy.

how convenient. how did the pitiful, despised christians get away with something like that?

i understand that thousands of people came back to jerusalem for pentecost and lived in judea during the time when eyewitnesses or relatives of eyewitnesses lived. if the christians claims were false, the religion would have never made it out of the first century.

yet i can point you to other volumes of works by scientists and academicians that verify christian claims.

Amaleq13

I'm glad you've changed your mind about generalizing support for individual claims to the entire text.

Nope but this isn't actually analogous to your biblical claims. In the Bible, we have a variety of claims made about the experiences of others. Even if we had a group of people making the claims you describe, evidence supporting their claims, given their extraordinary nature, would still be necessary to give them credibility.

I'm sorry but the difference is not obvious to me. Both are extraordinary claims that lack credible supporting evidence.

I think we've covered this already. Establishing that something "absolutely did not happen" is logically problematic and only more so for extraordinary events. The only reasonable approach is to place the burden on affirming the event.

I do accept biblical claims when reliable evidence supports them. So far, you've offered nothing except the claims, themselves.

Credible, reliable, objective evidence would be optimal. Repeated yet inconsistent claims from the text you are trying to support meets none of those. Seriously, though, the nature of the evidence depends on the nature of the claim. The more extraordinary and unusual the claim, the more evidence would be necessary to make the claim credible.

The number of claimants is not logically connected to the truth of the claim. A billion believers in a claim does not make the claim any more likely true. Anecdotal evidence is notoriously unreliable.

I'm not sure I understand your question. Mundane vs extraordinary? If you claim you ate Fruit Loops this morning, I see no reason to doubt you. If, on the other hand, you claim to have been levitating three feet off the floor while you ate, I'm going to be somewhat suspicious.

It seems an insignificant difference to me. Lacking your faith, I must rely on the work of scholars and my understanding of their efforts. Thus, I have a single story (Mk) that two other authors rewrote (Mt/Lk) and a fourth version constructed from more than one author that differs significantly from the others. None of the authors is known nor are their sources specifically identified. The earliest was written, at best, around four decades after the events depicted. Why should I assume these stories are true?

I agree that former skeptics have come to believe that a miracle has taken place but that is insufficient to establish that the event was truly miraculous. The specific examples I've read about seem to me to rely more upon the subjective interpretation of the experiencer than any objective reality. The rare specific examples, of which I am aware, that lend themselves to rigorous investigation, have failed to be supported by more objective consideration.

True but those were "fulfilled" by the imaginations of the authors of Matthew and Luke. This is apparent since the stories are mutually incompatible and individually suspect. The former appears to have based his story largely on the birth of Moses story from the HB while the latter seems to have been more interested in connecting the birth of Jesus to the rebellion of 6CE. In addition, the fourth version of the story tacitly acknowledges that a Bethlehem birthplace is legendary by leaving the question "Out of Nazareth is any good thing able to be?" uncorrected.

I would think, by now, you would have learned to avoid making such unsubstantiated, general claims. Please specify a single archaeological discovery that has verified an extraordinary biblical claim.

More? You've offered nothing so far but vague assertions about archaeological discoveries and repeated reference to the text in question.

Given that Christians were dismissed as gullible, superstitious fools, how do you know the above scene did not take place?

The Bible uses the word "multitude" most often to describe the crowds of people following and listening to Jesus. Matthew explicitly claims that the "multitude" was convinced by the "chief priests and elders" to choose Barabbas. The biblical depiction of the "multitudes" is quite inconsistent unless we assume them to be paragons of capriciousness. Was Jesus beloved or despised by the "multitude"? Which biblical claim do you wish to defend? Also, we can't forget that there are extrabiblical documents suggesting that we doubt the historicity of the whole Barabbas scene.

That it might be possible doesn't increase the likelihood of it being true. Unfortunately for your claim, it isn't necessary for Jesus to have been "the real deal" in order for the threat to be perceived. You'll need something more to establish the claim.

The above claims do not come from Josephus. They are contained in Jewish religious texts. I believe it has been posted twice in this thread as coming from the Babylonian Talmud.

They gained favor with the rich and powerful then, subsequently, gained control of the reproduction of texts. Extend this over a few centuries and, quite conveniently, texts opposing Christian beliefs are few and far between.

If the Christian claim of a Risen Christ were easily falsifiable, you might have a point. As it stands, this claim is entirely specious.

Why not provide a specific example of an extraordinary Christian claim that has been verified?

bfniii

Is the book about the purple duck intended to be fictional? Was the intent of the author to provide a confluence of historical and religious events?

There are prophecies that have nothing to do with supernatural events. by prophecy I meant a document or history, as in the OT, that predicted such a thing would happen, and then apparently it did. Obviously this can’t be said for robin hood, a character which from the beginning was meant to be fictional even if elements of his existence were drawn from real people.

Furthermore, what legacy did robin hood leave? Are there scores of archaeologists combing british ruins in search of this person? What about paul bunyan?

I must say I’m not sure how you leap to this conclusion. Saying that the NT is fiction because it claims Jesus fulfilled OT prophecy doesn’t seem supportable. would you expound on this?

Can you prove conclusively and irrefutably that ghosts don’t exist? I may not personally believe that people combust, but I can’t prove it. This is exactly what people in this thread claim is the case with the Bible. That it is false for that very reason. In regards to these phenomena, maybe it’s the case that something happens that isn’t yet understood. Maybe it’s a bunk. But until a proof comes along one way or the other, how can anyone say for sure? no one can.

I was speaking to those specific religions mentioned previously, not the ones you mention. In regards to the ones you mention, there are other reasons for rejecting them aside from the subject of this thread.

I’m afraid that is a misrepresentation of the position I have supported in this thread. I noticed that you didn’t answer the question posed.

There were writings about Christians and christianity, correct? I’m asking for contemporaneous writings that refute a particular biblical event.

Biblical events were able to be verified or vilified by many peoples of those times and afterwards. People who were jewish from Judah or gentile from elsewhere. To use Hitler as an analogy to being able to control media is inaccurate. If what Hitler said were irrefutably true, the rest of the world wouldn’t have been able to disagree. However, in hindsight, we know this isn’t the case. Is it not possible that the events recorded in the bible were verified by many people (although not accepted by all) which became part of the reason for the growth of christianity?

This is what I find interesting. I have seen over and over that when I bring this up, other critics of Christianity say that Christianity wasn’t worth noting. It wasn’t worth taking the time to write about. I sure wish I could get a concise picture of which point it is skeptics favor. My take is that people DID write about these events. Conveniently, skeptics don’t like WHO did the writings.

Another misrepresentation of my position. I don’t recall making that argument one time. If I have indirectly, I apologize for the confusion. Let me clarify. Christian critics claim the bible is untrue because it isn’t verifiable by extra-biblical writings or that the miraculous claims require extraordinary evidence (I hope that’s an accurate representation). However, I fail to see why the bible is guilty until proven innocent (even though the bible has been shown to be reliable) and why skeptics pick and choose what to believe and what not to. For example, when it is noted that jospehus mentioned Christ, critics say that the writings of josephus are unreliable and have been doctored. However, the same critics hold that his failure to mention biblical events is stone cold fact that the bible is untrue conveniently omitting that josephus has been labeled unreliable. There seems to be a double standard at work.

Ah but it does matter. If they weren’t in power, they wouldn’t have had the leverage to make their changes stick. They wouldn’t have been in a position to influence the influential, so to speak. If they were unimportant, who would listen? Who would care? Concordantly, their feeble claims would have been so easy to squash by the people who were in power. I understand that a response to this claim is that they were so insignificant, they were ignored and treated as a rural nuisance. However, there were many Christians who came to Jerusalem year after year for Pentecost. There would be no need for someone to “seek out� the Christians because they would be standing right there. No effort would have been necessary to make a mockery out of them.

You make a great point which indirectly supports the Christian case. Christianity is the logical conclusion to the incomplete religion of Judaism. A Christian participates in Judaism through the study of how it was the basis for Christianity. They aren’t two separate religions. One is based on the conclusion of another. I hate to be repetitive or evasive but there are other reasons for rejecting eastern religions other than the subject of this thread.

spin

Though sadly Tacitus didn't write it. It first appears for xians in the work of Sulpicius Severus despite two centuries of opportunities to quote it, and despite the text makes the blunder of calling Pilate a procurator, when Tacitus indicates elsewhere that he knew that 1) Judea was under Syrian administration, hence, no procurator in Judea, and 2) Claudius was responsible for making Judea a province controlled by a procurator.

And despite the fact that not only the crowd but also Nero's men knew about, and how to recognize, xians in 62 CE. And despite the fact that Tacitus normally doesn't get so meaty in his narrative. The text reads as a narrative made up by someone interested in martyrdoms. And it's not so anti-xian as some try to believe. One is supposed to feel sympathy for these nasty people.

Tertullian who knew Tacitus and who wrote Ad Nationes using pagan sources had a fine opportunity to extract the kerygma in this passsage if it were there at the time, but Tertullian remains silent.

If scripture was routinely corrupted, as Bart Ehrman writes, is there any reason not to believe that pagan texts maintained by xians should be corrupted as well? Why stop at Josephus?


spin

bfniii

So the absence of mention by first century authors of biblical events isn’t a good reason to doubt the bible. I agree.

Likewise, equal but opposite faith is required to attempt to definitively say the claim is false. Furthermore, such a supposition flies in the face of a reliable document.

Addressed above.

There is physical evidence of biblical cities and people.

Evidence in the middle of a desert from several thousand years ago? That doesn’t seem too likely. However, since you brought it up:
http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm

I disagree. It is a standard that is held in almost every facet of our society. People and things (including historical documents) are generally innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, the bible is held to the opposite standard, guilty until proven innocent over and over again in every little thing it says no matter how reliable it is in other places.

A book by a controversial archaeologist and a journalist that has received some attention (mostly negative among noted archaeologists) and doesn’t consider various explanations in a scholarly milieu should hardly be called “considerable� in controversy. I agree it has gotten some attention from archaeology and that it has some interesting theories. However, finkelstein’s views are labeled extreme and minimalist at best. And those are the nice names he has been called. Even his colleague at the meggido dig, halpern, frowns upon his methods, such as seriation. Also, stating that there wasn’t an exodus is premature. Archaeology isn’t a completed science.

if the Bible is inerrant, it’s not because of archaeology, it’s because of divine inspiration. This illuminates another double standard. Although archaeology hasn’t provided one shred of evidence for macroevolution, the theory is mistakenly called fact. Despite the fact that archaeology provides an incomplete picture of OT history, the Bible is considered not factual. Throughout history, it seems that when the Bible is in error, it’s usually our own comprehension that needs correction. Fortunately, archaeology will go on despite finkelstein and our understanding will improve. The Bible has withstood centuries of misinterpretation so it’s doubtful that this one will break the Bible.

The “remaining� part intrigues me. Why is it that bible critics claim it must be false?

once again, they don't share 100% of their material. besides, if they both got their information from the same event, they indeed should have information in common. it's interesting that this brings up yet another double standard. where the gospels share a commonality, they are accused of not being unique and are therefore guilty of subterfuge. if they differ, well then they're in disagreement about what happened and not reliable.

phrygia in AD 130 holds that matthew "compiled the oracles (sayings of Jesus)". compiled as in, he was there and heard them everyday. there's your reason to think so. there are more if you need them.

i'm afraid i'm not following this idea.

bfniii

these may be curious elements of the book, but not proof that there was more than one author. let's look at the reasons for single, apostolic authorship.

1. peculiar greek style leads to the assumption that the Jewish author had trouble translating his native hebrew thought into written greek.
2. familiarity with OT and jewish lifestyle
3. acquaitance with 1st century religious and political scene
4. minute detail of Christological events
5. apostolic, insider knowledge of Christological events
6. identified as a disciple

your discrepancies can easily explained by an author who was not the most eloquent author due to his lifestyle as a fisherman. it's likely he went through various stages of literary self-education which could easily have caused these stylistic differences. i apologize for john not living up to your high shakespearean literary standards.