Steven Avery

So each synoptic gospel was by various members of an "emergent cult" mostly in a far-away land. Yet the "emergent cult" was centered on a fictitious man of recent times that really did not exist, (although his supposed forerunner, John the Baptist, did exist, and his brother James did, at the cost of his life, at least according to Josephus) and each author took turns writing about the non-existent man from different angles, one of whom was fortuitiously quite well versed in the Tanach, an olde time Yeshiva bucher. Then one of them went back and tacked on a docu-history of what could have happenned after the death of this non-existent man, with specific names of various disciples, authors and apostles. Then some more members of this 'writer's cult' group wrote letters in the names of those various men who were mentioned in the early books, and circulated them as if they had been written fifty years earlier, and they were heartily accepted. And we have no record of anybody even remotely exposing the shenanigans of the writer's cult, not even the Jewish writers whose spiritual authority was directly threatened, pointing out that this whole set of books were a cult's manufactured docu-drama, writen for Leninist mind-control purposes. And that all the writings about serving one another, and speaking the truth in love, were really part of the cabal's illuminati-leninist plan to create pliant servant zombies, as the clique of the writer cult authors took positions in the new movement.

Ok, now I got it.

You know, Vosk, I am a big fan of conspiracy theories. I am a friend of Barry Chamish, who blew the whistle on the Rabin assasination being an inside job, and I don't see for certain how we went to the moon in the 60's many times and seem to be struggling with the possibility of going today, with far advanced technology, and also that passport that came down from the Towers and landed pristine in the street has a suspicious smell to me (perhaps it should have landed on the Brooklyn Bridge so you the readers could have bought the bridge, too).

So I have no problem considering conspiracy theories.

Recently I was discussing the switchover from the supposed 'lunar sabbath' conspiracy theories, and after pointing out all the difficulties, another fellow called it the 'mother of all conspiracy theories'.

However, I think it has now been trumped.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Vorkosigan

Incorrect, for we have numerous complaints of forgery, interpolation, and so on, in the first several centuries, and many discussions of which documents were later forgeries. Are you not aware of this aspect of history?

That's great, but it has nothing to do with the topic under discussion as I am not advocating a "conspiracy theory." There's a clear evolution of cult, narrative, and story. It appears you are not ready to face that, so you hide behind facetious, shallow, misunderstandings. Like this, for example:

But as I specifically pointed out, they were NOT written for Leninist mind control purposes; "The spread of Christianity was due to many factors, but had nothing at all to due with the content or quality of its narratives.' I don't mind talking to you, but no one is going to take you seriously as a poster if you insist on such twisted interpretations of simple language.

Vorkosigan

Steven Avery

Interpolations is a whole nother discussion, and extremely minor in context. Authorship/forgery questions and possibilities were generally just flown vis a vis a few of the letters, (the later part of the forgeries) not the Gospels and Acts.

Beyond that we are spinning around. I guess to you the documents were themselves innocent 'emergent cult' forgeries, that later were turned to Leninist cult purposes by the evil church hierarchy that supplanted the purer motives of the original cult forgers, who sincerely believed their fabrications.

My apologies if I didn't have the scorecard right, and the cabal of forgery authors really had good motivations.

Beyond that, my explanation below looks like a good summary of your conspiracy theory views, and this adds yet another level of perplexity, the innocent cabal of forgerers with nothing to gain.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Johnny Skeptic

I never said that the NT writings were 90 AD and later. I only discussed the the book of Acts. If you have any credible evidence that states that the book of Acts was not written decades after the facts, then please post it.

What first-person proclamations of authorship and dating are you talking about, and why do you trust the claims?

Acts 9:7 says "And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man," but Acts 22:9 says "And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me." How do you explain the discrepancy?

You claim that accurate geography and accurate accounts of who went where credibly authenticate the supernatural claims in the book of Acts, but such is most assuredly not the case. Geography is a science. Theology is not a science. You are attempting to mix the two, but that cannot cred ibly be done. It does not take any faith at all to conclude that Jerusalem is in the Middle East. In addition, both sides acknowledge the existence of Paul, but whether or not he performed miracles is another matter entirely. Do you have even a vague guess as to how many eyewitnesses verified the supernatural claims in the books of Acts? Well of course you don't. Do you have even a vague guess as to how many people by say 70 A.D. had accepted the claims, and how many had rejected the claims? Well of course you don't. Did the people who accepted these claims accept them by faith, like you do, or did they first consult with people who claimed to be eyewitnesses? If your opinion, how many claimed eyewitnesses does it take to make a good case for supernatural claims? In addition, how can we be reasonably sure the the number of claimed eyewitnesses was the actual number of eyewitnesses? Please be advised there is no logical correlation that can be made between the size of a church and the truthfulness of its claims. The fallacy of "argumentum ad populum" addresses this issue. Islam has over 1 billion adherents, it is growing faster than Christianity is, and Christianity had a 600 year head start. In addition, the future, new religions might displace all current religions.

Today, millions of Christians disagree as to what constitutes a miracle healing. Why do you assume that it was any different back then?

The Bible admits that tampering with the texts is possible. Revelation 22:18-19 say "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." If tampering with the texts were not possible, there would have been no need for the warnings. Futher evidence that tampering with the texts is possible is the fact that in the opinions of Protestants, Roman Catholics have added to the original Sciptures. Martin Luther said that the book of Revelation did not belong in the Bible. So much for Biblical inerrancy.

Is good evidence of miracles past and present necessary for your belief system? Isn't the ministry of the Holy Spirit enough evidence for you?

Amaleq13

Was the author stupid or did he have concerns about his audience's ability to properly understand Mark's story?

Steven Avery

Johnny, I appreciate your zeal, but I am not on this forum to answer a canned scattershot barrage of questions, many barely relevant to our discussion, from folks who are looking only to find whatever hole of confusion and unbelief they can manufacture, to justify their own rejection of the scripture. If I take the time to answer ten, I'm sure you could simply reply with two dozen more such questions. Thanks for the effort to ask a bunch, though.

For first person citations, to start you know there are plenty in Luke, in Peter, in Paul's epistles. They are all scripture, all God-breated and I accept them all simply as they are written.

Why I trust the writings gets into a whole discussion of my testimony, how the Lord Jesus touched me personally, and then how I studied for some years these various objections and came to the conclusion that they are spiritually and not logically based. Tis a spiritual book, and our apporach to the Word of God discerns our heart.

Really ? Looking at Vosk's "emergent cult" theories, Paul was a true personage, but the Jesus he wrote about was false ? This gets pretty corn-fusing.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Steven Avery

Vork's .. :-)

robto

Please explain how 4 = 0.

In other words, any evidence that doesn't agree with your pre-conceived view you simply throw out?
In other words, you concede my point that some writers refer to these books as Scripture?
I have no idea what you're talking about here. I never said anything about the date of Aramaic translations, nor do I see how it's relevant.

judge

Hard to believe considering the atrocious greek in mark. Who would put on a performance like that?

Pretty bold stuff!

Who would put on a performance in English where the whole thing was worded like this.

from here post 29.

Why torture your own audience like that?

Steven Avery

If any of those are a "list", please let us see the full list.

Not at all. You may be new, but I am consistent in my opposition to the alexandrian texts as being extremely corrupt. You can see that on the Wiki smackdown debate.

Sure, I've seen about two or three cases in all of early church writer history, dozens of writers and a couple of hundred years, where Shepherd or another book was apparently considered as scripture. Now that is something I would call "surprisingly little" (from another thread, Isaiah 53 discussion).

That view is implied from your earlier statement, "The Diatessaron was the only gospel for much of Syria for over 200 years"

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

edited to fix quote tags