Sven

Since the Roman government was at that time in sum one man (emperor Constantine), I have no idea what is supposed to be extraordinary about this.

TomboyMom

Patriot7: Maybe you missed this one. I'm just trying to clarify what we agree/disagree about:

TomboyMom

Well, whatever Paul witnessed, we can all agree it was not Jesus before he died. After that, we can agree that he said he had a certain experience, which he believed was Jesus resurrected. However, most of us common sense people are fairly skeptical of other people's claims to have seen a dead person. Why would we treat Paul any differently?

Fortuna

I'm not sure about this particular gospel, but in other gospel's, not only this, but the narrator repeats for us Jesus's very words.

But again, his followers had fallen asleep ! And by the way, have you ever seen anyone sweat blood ? Do you know of any such medical condition ?

My thoughts are really simple. Rather than trying to think up excuses and apologetics and explanations for things like this (I mean, come now, your explanation is pretty weak, think it through) , Is not the more parsimonous explanation that this is a story, a literary creation by a writer of fiction, historical fiction, set in a particular time and place. And that Jesus's syliloque(spelling?) is an element of the writer's craft ?

Allow me to add some of the stuff that happens at the end of the gospel of Mark (see above). We know that it is likely that the original Mark ended at 16:8. At that ending, after seeing the young man in white , the narrator tells us that in fact the women told no-one (even though the man in white told the women to tell Peter and co). If this story is some sort of historic re-telling, obviously they did, and Mark must have the story wrong. But, Mark specifically says, "neither said they any thing to any [man]; for they were afraid.". So, what do you think this is ? A piece of history or the writer's craft ? Which does it look like ?



Patriot7, Let me ask you this. Have you ever read any of the ancient histories.
Flavius Josephus, Tacitus Annals, or Suetonius. I invite you to read through these.

Next, read the Illiad, read the story of Cupid and Psyche, or any number of the old Greco-Roman stories.

Notice how there are notable differences in presentation style from the histories to the stories. Do the gospels look at all like this ? One thing that I notice is that the histories (like Josephus, Tacitus) tend to omit small details that the fiction writers tend to include. But, all of them seem to use speeches as a means of getting their stories across. Josephus is some times the exception, he tends to be very matter-of-fact. But, for me, it was the ommision of small details by the history writers and the inclusion of them by the fictionalists that really opened my eyes that the NT gospels were in fact, fictional tales by litereary craftsmen.

I noticed that the NT gospels look more like the stories, like Cupid and Psyche, or Illiad.

Get yourself, or for free you can check out of your local library, some of the books from the Loeb Classical library. (avoid the philosophical stuff though).
Read some of Josephus's Antiquities and Jewish war (those are available online, http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/home.htm and other sites).

Read this stuff and compare it to what you see in the gospels. Read with an open mind, and make your own decision.

Patriot7, all of us have been through this. (that is, those of us who also had religious upbringings). And we went through stages of disbelief and denial.
It is a journey, but it does lead to the truth.

As for me, I think that I am better now for finally learning the truth.

Patriot7

emphasis mine.

I think a healthy dose of skepticsm is warranted in all claims of the supernatural. The burden of proof would clearly be on you to prove your claim. And as extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I would expect something more then just your statment.

Now, because you may not be able to produce some extraordinary evidence, like film footage, or third party accounts to the appearance doesn't necessarliy mean it didn't happen. Just that I'm under no rational obligation to believe you - given that I don't know you.

And I think the same maxim applies in our interaction here. An extraordinary claim is what caused me to jump into the discussion. And since that time, I've defined what I consider extraordinary evidence of that claim and have encountered nothing but opposition. Skepticism is evidentally only allowed in one direction. Which is really a skepticism by name only.

As the truth has a dogged way of persisting, I welcome and encourage your skepticism of the Bible. I fail to see any rational reason for not turning that same perceptive inquiry on your own theorys. If they are the truth, they will persist as well. I find it curiously ironic, how dogmatic and entrenched in the "mainstream consensus" a group of self-professed free-thinkers can be on a discussion board specifically designed to promote skepticism!

In turn, here is what I'm skeptical about with regards to the Bible and my own beliefs. Do we know that Christ's follower's were even concerned about recording history? Reading the NT, a recurring theme I find in Christ's interaction with the apostles is how He had to constantly correct their misunderstandings! They were dogged in their notion that the Kingdom of God that Christ talked about was going to happen in their lifetime. They expected an earthly Kingdom that would overthrow the Roman government and they would be ushered into power. Why would they even be concerned about recording these events if Christ was coming back? To me this question is more pivotal then whether Luke spoke to eyewitnesses, or second hand accounts. Because regardless of how far away we get from the eyewitness accounts, how can we know that these eyewitnesses were even concerned about recording history?

Your thoughts?

post tenebras lux

Hi Patriot7, do you mean that you think these 'eyewitnesses' might have been telling tall tales and being economical with the truth?

Or do you think they were saying what they thought Jesus would have wanted them to say (once he returned and found out)?

RED DAVE

From Patriot7:
Okay.

From Patriot7:
Did JC contradict them?

From Patriot7:
They weren't.

From Patriot7:
Why? There's no point here. The question of whether Luke spoke to eyewitnesses is absolutely crucial. You are muddying the water, which is typical.

From Patriot7:
Irrelevant and dumb. The point is that Luke was intent on setting down some kind of story, and the question is: where did he get his facts.

You also have never addressed the fact that none of the gospeleers wrote either in Hebrew or Aramaic, which interposes and addition level of obscurity.

By the way, when are you going to apologize for your antisemitic assertion that the Jews murdered Christ. Later on in that post, you blamed the Romans, so I guess that stuff about the Jews kind of slipped out.

RED DAVE

Jedi Mind Trick

But we are not talking about the consistency of conversations regarding burgers and fries, are we? No, we are talking about the only infallible, ‘without error,’ book that was ever written. This is a book that we are supposed to take literally and believe without question and then to stake our lives on it and to defend and uphold it, failure of which holds eternal consequence.

Patriot7

No that's not my question at all. My question is why would they have even been concerned about recording history if they thought Christ was coming back in their time? Who do they need to tell? This was also what prompted Paul to write 2 Theselonians, as the church at Thesolanica was under the impression Christ was coming back in their lifetime, they stopped working, etc.

Diogenes the Cynic

So far, so good.
This is true only if the claim contains some level of physical plausibility. When it comes to claims of events which would be patently impossible, the claim disproves itself.
And we are under no obligation to believe anonymous, 2000 year-old, contradictory, second-hand (minimally) claims for impossible events happening thousands of years ago.
What claim was that? Our quite ordinary and uncontroversial claims about contemporary NT scholarship? What's extraordinary about them?
You have been linked and further referred to easily accessible confirmation of our very unremarkable claims multiple times. You have met no opposition to that at all.
What "theories?" Nothing we've said regardng either the scholarship in this area or the reasoning behind it is "theoretical."
I can't speak for every single person here but I believe that the vast majority of us have not come to our positions because we think we're supposed to blindly follow mainstream consensus. Most of us have actually taken the time to study the arguments, evaluate the evidence and follow the methodology and chains of logic for that consensus. The reason the consensus is so strong is because the evidence is so strong. Many (if not most) people here are former believers of one kind or another. Most have probably had some kind of religious upbringing. More than a few have once been hardcore fundamentalists. For a lot of people, their loss of faith was a slow, painful process of honest reflection and critical examination. I doubt that a single one of us has snapped to our current position simply because we heard about scholarly consensus.

I can also tell you that a lot of the "skeptics" here are completely capable of disagreeing (sometimes quite vehemently) with scholarly consenus. The most prominent example in this forum would be the overwhelming, lockstep consensus that Jesus was a historical person. There are very few NT scholars of any stripe who are willing to publicly espouse a Mythicist position even though the evidence for historicity is nowhere near as strong as the "mainstream consensus" would have you believe.
It appears that they were not. If they did record anything, no one seems to have thought it important enough to preserve.
Why shouldn't they have thought that? Jesus told them exactly that.
They weren't and they didn't. What is your point?
Again, Jesus' direct followers (if there was a Jesus and if he had followers) did not leave any record of what Jesus taught or what they believed about him. We don't know anything about the original movement and the NT is not a reliable source for finding out about it since it was not composed by anyone who was ever a part of that original movement and (with the possible exception of Paul) never met anyone else who was part of that original movement.