Chili

Not to derail but Hume is kind of wrong here. What he suggests is like saying that it is much easier to have a baby once you are pregnant than not to have one. The mircale is not in having a baby but in creating and conceiving one. That ever so simple miracle is more miraculous than not being able to create and conceive one and the evidence here is that fertility clinics today are competing for business with an illicit baby market .

Carrying on in this train of thought with 'dying' and 'staying dead' (good choice of words), the same can be said for staying happy. That is, if I can make you happy there must be two of you, you (impersonal), and the identity that is 'sad' so it can be made happy. If that is true there must be an identity in you that knows happiness as the norm from which you (always impersonal) are alienated and therefore can be made happy. If this 'estranged' identity can be made happy it must also be possible that it can die, and stay dead (lol) . . . after which time I can no longer make you happy. See the point?It's very simple if we look around today for the simple reason that whatever is born is doomed to die and each and every 'being' that is created will have to deal with their own second image that they added to their own true identity.

The Gosples deal with the crucifixion and susequent resurrection of this second identity so it may come back alive and we, each in our own turn, will enjoy our prior nature as God to which we now have placed our second human nature in subservience (they call that heaven on earth).

aChristian

I became a Christian before I knew the evidence I know now. Whether or not God has to help you be honest or not before you believe it is irrelevant to whether an honest evaluation leads you to it. The evidence is still there. I just wanted you to know that I wasn't putting you down. However, because I believe the evidence is there, I don't believe that you can honestly deny it if you examine it.

Vorkosigan

aChristian, that's extremely unfair, not only to him, but to everyone. There are atheists here who have exhaustively studied the material, who read the Greek, and who are familiar with not only the texts you depend on, but also on an enormous corpus of literature on it. Not only are many of us educated and involved layman, we also have New Testament scholars who occasionally show up to comment on the proceedings. It's OK to say we're wrong, but it is unfair to accuse us of not having studied the matter, or of having studied it dishonestly.

Vorkosigan

aChristian

I am aware some (most?) conservative scholars say the writers used a Q document, and although that is possible, I tend not to believe it. It's really not too tough for God to give three people the same words.

I don't know of any dependence on Josephus.
Not assuming prophecy is a possible explanation is only a good methodology if prophecy does not exist. If it does exist, then you will get bad answers using that presupposition.

I agree, with the small exception that I believe all statements are faith statements, some are blind faith statements and some are reasonable faith statements.

I have already named a serious scholar (Harrison) who accepts this position, or at least he did when he wrote the book. And by the way Archer and Unger are good serious scholars, whether you agree with them or not.


Your list of parallels does not prove that God did not miraculously (it wasn't magic) provide for his people more than once. You argument is weak in my opinion. Something does not cease to be a historical fact because something similar has happened in the past. What makes it historical fact, in both the OT and the NT is the eyewitness testimony.

Concerning evidence for the resurrection.
There are good historians who say the NT is solid history.

John Warwick Montgomery said, "What, then, does a historian know about Jesus Christ? He knows, first and foremost, that the New Testament documents can be relied upon to give and accurate portrait of Him. And he knows that this portrait cannot be rationalized away by wishful thinking, philosophical presuppositionalism, or literary maneuvering."

Sir William Ramsey. considered one of the greatest archaeologist of all time, started out a believer in the Tubingen school, but the evidence convinced him that what he was taught was wrong. He stated, "...I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with a fixed idea that the work was essentially a second century composition, and never relying on its evidence as trustworthy for first century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations." He also said, "Luke is a historian of the first rank: ...".

The church fathers who knew the apostles believed in the NT teachings, including the resurrection. You find it throughout their writings.

Ignatius, who knew the apostles, wrote letters to the churches on the way to his martyrdom. In them, he asserts the factuality of the resurrection.

Polycarp, a martyr who may have been John's disciple certainly knew who wrote the gospels and his disciple Irenaeus lists who wrote them. Again both of these men believed the NT teachings, including the resurrection. They were reporting the gospel they heard from their teachers.

These last two quotes show that the resurrection was proclaimed by the apostles and that is what the early church believed. The early church held to this belief when people were alive who were hostile to the gospel and could contradict their story if it wasn't true, but it was true and their story couldn't be denied. They might not have become Christians, but they couldn't find holes in the story. The Jews of the time even tried to explain Jesus' miracles as deceptions or Satanic, but they couldn't deny that they took place. Too many people were around who had seen them. The ideas of the church creating myths just doesn't fly, too many people were alive who could refute myths. As Paul said to Agrippa, "these things were not done in a corner".

The resurrection explains the turn around and boldness of the disciples in the face of those that they cowered before earlier. It explains the explosive growth of the early church. It also explains the miracles that follow the church from its beginnings until the present. Swoon theories and the like not only have no eyewitness accounts to support them, they fail to account for what happened subsequently and sound far fetched to me.

Prophecy is also a strong evidence. Attempts to late date the OT have failed. The translation of the Septuagint before some of the events of Daniel contradicts any attempt to date it later than the events prophesied in it. Attempts to late date it cannot explain how the Jews were fooled into believing it was history.

aChristian

I am not trying to be unfair. I just believe the evidence is there. I can't see all the reasons in your hearts for rejecting it, but since I am convinced that it is true, I am led to the logical conclusion that you either haven't looked at the evidence or haven't been honest when looking at it. It is obvious from reading your comments that you have spent a lot of time looking at the material and peoples' comments on the material. Maybe you just honestly need more time to digest it. I don't know; I can't see your heart. That is why I said in the first comment about this that I don't think that it is because I am smarter or more knowledgable that I believe what is true. I attribute it to God's grace. I think the evidence is plain to see. I don't think God has hid himself from honest seekers. I think all that any of us can do is seek to be as honest as we can and we can ask him to help us do that.

NobleSavage

It's the hero adventure story... enjoy it. Do you think Luke Skywalker was a historical person?

Vorkosigan

We're several pages into this thread and none of us have seen this evidence you keep referring to.

What? You mean well-meaning people can't differ in their judgments? Practically everyone at this site does! Try and find two of us who agree on everything. There are many scholars who agree with John Crossan that the Crucifixion scene is a fictional invention of one of the early writers, and yet, those scholars -- Crossan too -- remain Christians. Not only can well-meaning people interpret the evidence differently, but they also can be different kinds of Christians as well. Maybe it is you who need to think about words like "belief" and "Christian" really mean.

Hell yes. I just wrote a verse-by-verse commentary on Mark. Took me six months.

Maybe you just need to honestly confront the fact that people who study this material without the a priori assumptions that you have see the things in it that I am talking about. Like, for example, the fact that the history in the Gospels is overwritten with stories from the OT.

Point it out to us, we're all waiting to hear about it.

Vorkosigan

spin

aChristian seems to throw around the terms "historical fact" and "eyewitness testimony" with gay abandon, but gives no real indication of understanding what they mean or what the implications of such terms are.

"Historical fact" is often an extremely elusive commodity when pressed. It deals with what actually happened in the past, not what is popularly believed to have happened in the past. In our efforts to understand what actually happened in the past we can't assume anything other than what has been shown to have happened.

"Eye-witness testimony" is another difficult critter to catch. Such a critter necessarily reflects the epoch of the matter under discussion, otherwise it cannot be "eye-witness" testimony. But how does one establish the epoch of a witness? A strong indicator is archaeological context: we have evidence of, for example, some destruction which took place at the same archaeological stratum as something in another site; we have some chronicle reporting some event from an archaeological stratum -- this can reflect the stratum or before, but it can't reflect later.

Textual evidence often proves to be the weakest of all evidence for the dating of the earliest form of the text can be nigh on impossible to ascertain. What would the record of Tacitus be worth if we had no archaeological evidence to back up many of the things he writes about? How does one seriously date the information found in the Christian testament? The first church father to show good knowledge of the gospel material is Justin Martyr. Does that mean that the gospels were written not long before Justin? How can one tell? To talk of the gospels as "eye-witness testimony" is to claim of it what cannot be claimed. There is no way to show that it is eye witness testimony.

The Hebrew bible naturally cannot be regarded as eye witness testimony for anything in the Christian foundation tradition as it was written before the epoch of that tradition's development. One can claim that the Hebrew bible was referring to future events, but that generally doesn't seem to be taking the Hebrew bible seriously. One doesn't hope to get useful material out of the mistranslation of Isaiah for tendentious purposes, as in the case of the pregnant young woman who will give birth to a child, as part of a sign to King Ahaz, or the mistranslation of part of Daniel which talks of "one like a son of man", ie the figure had human form, omitting the "one like"...

There is no sign of any eye witness testimony in the Christian testament. We have no idea why or how such text was produced, but it gives little hope of providing a basis on which to mount any historical claims. I would therefore be fascinated to see aChristian support the claim that the Jewish and Christian literature is "eyewitness testimony".


spin

1veedo

If I'm not mistaken, early Christians didn't even believe in a historical Jesus. They were all "new age pagans" of the time trying to combine the religion of Mithra with the Greek logos. Actually, if you read some of the letters sent by Paul he always mentions this savior as living in the firmament. Satan crucified Jesus, on the 5th layer. Paul of course had epilepsy, and was seeing things yet interpreting them as visions from God. The church fathers never new the apostles; they didn't believe the existed. They also didn't believe in the NT; it had yet to be written.

That said, I fail to see your logic, or the evidence pointing toward a real, live Jesus (nor a spiritual Jesus because as a general concensus, Paul had a mental disorder and was not seeing God).

Diogenes the Cynic

This would not be a disciplined, rational or empirical response to the material. Occam's Razor dictates that supernatural explanations cannot be considered until natural explanations are eliminated. If you are a teacher and you receive two term papers which are verbatim the same, what are you going to think is more likely...that somebody did some copying, or that a magic sky fairy telepathically dictated the same material to both students?

Historical method mandates that only natural explanations can be considered. If you want to allege the supernatural, you have to prove it.
The fact that you don't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You have to prove it exists before it can be considered. You don't seem to have much of a an understanding of scientific method. Can you ule out the possibility that the gospels were written by aliens? By time travellers from the future? Your hypothesis of "prophecy" is not imbued with any default status of "possibility" which must be disproved or overcome in order to draw scientific conclusions. Supernatural explanations deserve no credence whatever until you can prove them.

Having siad all that, there is not a single example of "fulfilled prophecy" in either the Hebrew Bible or the the NT.
They're Christian apologist hacks. Let's hear the actual methodology by which they arrived at their conclusions. How do they get around the fact that Judea was not subject to Roman census at any time during the reign of Herod the Great?
No there aren't.
Montgomery is not a historian. He's a law professor and a Christian preacher. His statement in your quote that "The New Testament can be relied upon..." is nothing but an expression of religious faith by a person who doesn't know what he's talking about.
It's Ramsay with an 'a,' and this is pretty standard apologist glurge. Ramsay was always a Christian, just not a Biblical literalist. He discovered some of the geographical sites described in Acts and so deluded himself into thinking that all of Luke-Acts must have been accurate. He discovered nothing of any real significance, only that some place names were real. That doesn't mean that Luke was writing history. Schliemann discovered Troy. That does not prove the Iliad is history.
They didn't know the apostles. Patristic tradition is almost worthless in telling us anything about HJ. It's nothing but legend and folklore.
More folklore. His "letters" are probably spurious.
They didn't know any apostles nor did they know who wrote the Gospels. The patristic traditions aren't going to help you around here.
This is almost too much to parse and respond to. So much ignorance in one paragraph. Suffice it to say that you don't know what you're talking about. You're just witnessing, you're not presenting evidence.
There is no historical evidence of any "turnaround," nor is there any historical evidence that there were even any disciples.
It wasn't that explosive.
What "miracles?" Name one.
There are no eyewitness accounts of the crucifixion whatsoever but I think you'll find that not too many of us around here would buy into the swoon theory. There is no reason to devise a naturalistic explanation for a mythical event. We would mostly either fall into the camp (ala Crossan) that says Jesus died on the cross, that he stayed dead and that the "resurrection" myth developed in the decades after the crucifixion or the camp that Jesus never existed at all, there was no crucifixion and the entire story is myth.
What the hell are you talking about? What "prophecy" do you think exists in Daniel. What do you imagine that you mean about "attempts to late date the OT?"