Steven Avery

I'm splitting this because I think it deserves more discussion and because the topic has veered away from the topic of the original thread.

DtC, Moderator, BC&H


Answer precisely what?

I'll spell out my basic view more simply, within a limited context, without going into all my views of the Bible.

1) Luke/Acts directly claims to be based on eyewitnesses and contemporary to eyewitnesses, ergo 50 AD or so.

2) As a historical work Luke has proven itself as extremely accurate and detailed, leading strong credence to the eyewitness claim.

3) There is a strong and consistent inter-linkage, various complementary directions, between Luke/Acts and Paul and Peter, with numerous realistic and appropriate first-person assertions.

4) The first person assertions make all the books of Paul and Peter and Luke/Acts either blatant forgeries and frauds, or they are books written around A.D. 40-70.

I have seen no arguments of substance against the stated claims within the NT, and the more specific issues I research, the more collaboration I get, such as when I reviewed all the arguments against the Pastorals and 2 Peter, or the recent brouhaha about the ending of Mark. (right now I am checking up more references, including the Talmud, that support the view that Luke's genealogy is reliable).

Now I realize that there are a dozen other views, that all basically fall under the "fraud/forgery/plagiarism" perspective, often building on aspects of each others theories, and yet often strangely contradictory to each other.

And that one purpose of a forum like this is to compare the dozen other forgery views to each other, and then develop a few dozen more.

Yet ultimately, there really are only two views. Either Luke, Paul, Peter (and by extension the NT and the Tanach) are accurate, we have and inspired and preserved Word of God, or they are forgeries and/or frauds.

I fully accept the first, perceiving accuracy and truth, and don't really care much about comparing the dozens of competing potential theories of the second, since they all start from a dubious base. Once somebody starts from the presumption (or gets to their conclusion) of forgery and fraud, the rest really does not matter one whit, imho, and is simply intellectual convolutions.

And that is the question I have been raising, why folks would spend so much time on such theoretical arcanery, if they TRULY felt that so much of the NT was just a fabrication.

And my answer, for your consideration, is that they really are not so sure, (about the forgery/fraud views), it is largely hubris, and the critics are looking to put together some sort of consistent alternative thesis to the basic affirmation of the supporters of Messiah, the veracity of the NT. Ergo all the convolutions. Tis a real struggle.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

PS.
And since I have a fundamentally different perspective, I don't see any difficult in providing evidence. The inter-linking and complementary assertions within the NT are the base, and external evidences, early church writer references, Talmud, Jospehus, archaelogy and history, all offer various corraborations. And the oft-criticized Christian-style Messianic prophecy midrash is shown in the Targum and even in Josephus and even in later Rabbinics. Overall, a key issue is the tude with which we approach the scriptures :-) I see the burden of proof on those who claim error, and from I see here, they have a very real struggle coming up with any consistent theory. So they hide the struggle with a lot of unsupported assertions and accusations, although overall this forum does seem to do a better job than most.

S.C.Carlson

It is impossible for Acts to be dated "50 AD or so."

gregor

Three things

First, many here have reviewed all the arguments for early authorship of L/A and find the fundamentalist inerrancy and early dating extremely suspect.

Second, the topic is far too broad for the broad brush you apply. You need to stick to limited issues like - did the author of L/A rely upon Josephus or what other stories was the author referring to in the intro to Luke or how could it be a first-person account when the intro specifically states it is not, and etc.

Third, your logical fallacy of the false dilmena is not persuasive (i.e. either the NT is inerrant and written in 50 CE or a complete forgery and fraud).

Amaleq13

Seeing that many did take in hand to set in order a narration of the matters that have been fully assured among us, as they did deliver to us, who from the beginning became eye-witnesses, and officers of the Word, -- it seemed good also to me, having followed from the first after all things exactly, to write to thee in order, most noble Theophilus, that thou mayest know the certainty of the things wherein thou wast instructed. (Luke 1:1-4, YLT)

Does taking what was delivered by those who became eyewitnesses and officers of the Word really mean "people who were present during the events described are the basis for what follows"? Or does it simply refer to those who first witnesses to the risen Christ and the first to believe?

It does not "directly claim" to be contemporary to "eyewitnesses" but appears to be at least one step removed from them.

Diogenes the Cynic

Actually, no they don't. Neither Luke nor Acts makes any claim to being an eyewitness account
False. Both Luke and Acts contain glaring historical inaccuracies and virtually no narrative detail in either book has ever been confirmed as historical. I suspect you're going to bring up William Ramsay. Go ahead. You will soon find that Ramsay does not provide you with the ammunition that all those Christian apologist websites would lead you to believe.
I'm trying to sort out what all of this means. Luke-Acts knows about Paul, true enough but so what? Those books were written a half-century later. They also contradict Paul in more than one instance. 1 and 2 Peter are 2nd century pseudonymous letters. I don't really get what you think they prove.
Some of Paul's letters are widely accepted as being authentic and as being written before 70 CE. Others are pseudonymous. The author of Luke-Acts makes no claims to being a witness of anything. The Petrine Epistles are pseudoepigraphical. Luke-Acts and the Petrine Epistles were all written long after 70 CE and their authors are unknown. The traditional character of "Luke" as a physician and a travelling companion of Paul is a complete fable with no evidentiary foundation and which can be directly refuted by both the late dating of those books (90's at a minimum), by the contraditions with Paul, by the abject reliance on previous Gospels (meaning Luke had no access to witnesses) and by the author's historical mistakes in both GLuke and Acts.
You've seen some very substantial arguments already and you've addressed tem with either hand waving ("I can't convince you skeptics") or by reversing the burden of proof ("you can't prove it's NOT true").

I'd like you to answer some of the questions I posed to you in the previous thread. As a reminder, here they are again.

1. How did Mark know about the destruction of the Temple ~20 years before it happened?

2. How did Luke know Josephus' Jewish Antiquities ~40 years before it was written?

3. How did the author of GJohn know about the expulsion of the Jesus cult from Jewish synagogues ~35 years before it happened (and why did he incorrectly place that expulsion within the lifetime of Jesus)?
You're misstating the arguments. Neither "fraud" nor "plagarism" are alleged as such in critical scholarship.

What are these "contradictions" to which you allude?
There is no "extension." each book stands or falls on it's own. NT scholars don't think of the Biblical Canons as being holistically "true or false."
Hugely false dichotemy. There are any number of other options.
Even when the inaccuracies and untruths are pointed out to you in abundance.
What "dubious base" is that?
You're missating the assumptions again. The asumotion is that these books were written by humans, each for a different reason, very few of them with any intention of malicious "fraud" or forgery. The Gospels, in particular, are anonymous, so they CAN'T be "forged. The pseudonymous works are rooted in an ancient tradtion of placing a more famous name than one's own upon a religious work, not from an attempt to defraud but because it was believed to be a humble thing to do. It was a way of giving credit to someone who had inspired you. It also gave the works more authority than they might otherwise have and helped to "brand" them as to a particular line of thought or school of thinking.
Why not?

I do it out of simple curiosity. I am curious as to the origins of Christianity and the Bible purely as a historical phenomenon. What's wrong with that?
Nope. We're sure. Sorry to disappoint you.
The oblivious irony of apologism never ceases to amaze me.
Patristic tradition is not evidence but folklore.
There is nothing in the Talmud which corroborates anything in the NT. Josephus proves what, exactly? The TF is either partially or entirely a forgery. This is quite proveable. There is a reference to James which is likewise disputed. Even if they were to be accepted (with the most obvious nonsense removed from the TF) they would corroborate that Josephus believed a guy named Jesus had existed and been crucified. So what? Many - actually most - NT scholars believe that. A belief that Jesus existed is not the same as a belief that Jesus was magic or that he came back from the dead.
What archeology?
What history?,
You havn't provided a single example of genuine corroboration.
"Christian stye?" How so
Let me guess. You're going to trot out that old bit of (post Christian) Rabbinic speculation about Isaiah.
No, not in Josephus.
Nope. Not in later rabbinics.
Which shows a lack of understanding of logic and reason on your part. (can you prove there is error in the Illiad?) Nevertheless, the burden to show error in the Bible is ridiculously easy to meet. You can start with page one.
You keep spouting this like it's meaningful. It is not necessary to be able to prove what did happen in order to prove something else did not happen.
There's that oblivious irony again.

aChristian

It is clear from the passage that they were eyewitnesses of the events described in the document. It is not only clear from the passage, but it is the consistent testimony of the people who lived back then and knew the events and the people involved.

aChristian

Yeah, they do. Read the first four verses of Luke and he clearly states that he used eyewitness testimony in writing the history.

Yes, Ramsay provides pretty good evidence. He finds things that Luke describes and we have found some things about which the critics used to say that Luke was mistaken. It turns out that they were mistaken because they didn't know the times that Luke lived in as well as Luke. Archaeologists found artifacts that illuminated our knowledge of the times and confirmed Luke's history.

Peter died sometime between 64 and 68 AD. His letters are genuine and are dated in this period. All of Paul's letters are accepted as authentic and dated from 50-68 AD, except by liberal critics.
Act was definitely written before 68 AD and probably in 63 AD since he ends when Paul is in prison the first time in Rome. This puts Luke, the first book sometime before this, 59 AD has been suggested as a likely date while Paul was imprisoned in Antioch. Your dates are way off. As for the questions you posed, these were prophecies so of course they occurred before the events took place. Your presupposition that prophecy and miracles are impossible is really naive. I have offered before to supply evidence and did supply some, but you didn't want to hear it. You can blindly believe that miracles and prophecy are impossible, but the evidence does not bear out your faith.

The gospels don't have to have a signature at the bottom. (Although John does identify himself internally. Attempts to explain this away that I have read on this site are feeble.) The early church knew who wrote them and the authors are named on some (most?, I don't know) of the manuscripts. Eusebius, who had access to a good library and is known as the father of chuch history, quotes early church fathers who knew the apostles and knew who wrote the gospels. Your attempt to put a "humble" motive on lying is absurd.

Steven Avery

Agreed. The A.D.50 or so is for Luke, and add 10 years for Acts. I dunno exactly what the terminus a quo is for Acts dates, a bit post-60 if I recall.

Steven Avery

Which is not at all surprising on an "internet infidels" forum :-)
That was my view on the previous thread, that I was being asked to give broad brush answers, kitchen-sink reviews, etc.
Here we disagree some. Some of those are atomisitc or obviousistic. With my view of the NT authors as pre-70, none of them relied on Josephus. If someone wants to put out the evidence for Luke relying on Josephus, I will look at it, but the whole theory is 'under a cloud' these days anyway. I rarely notice their main point of confluence, the John the Baptist stories, mentioned much, perhaps because they have exactly what you would expect from independent accounts, very different, yet complementary, recitations of events. Your "first-person" complaint sounds like a semantic quibble from outside the NT, but if you want to put it into a post, I will listen. I noted another thread where such quibbling was going on because of "eyewitness or contemporary to eyewitness" so I deliberately used similar phraseology :-) Anyway, "first person" of course does apply to Luke being with Paul, Peter with Jesus, Paul in Jerusalem or on the road to Damascus, etc.

As to the general question, I see no reason why a forum like this can't look at their whole general paradigms of
1) fraud, forgery, and fabrication ... versus..
2) historically accurate text (with the extra add-on of inspiration)

It seems to me that the unexamined assumptions in these threads by the skeptics is something that is deliberately left muddled. Especially when secondary and thirdendary theories of fabrication and forgery are built upon the substratum of (1) above. They should at least be aware that real NT believers are disagreeing from the very foundation... ie. we believe that Luke wrote Luke/Acts, Paul wrote his epistles, Peter wrote 2 Peter, and they were savvy and accurate and historical accounts. And that we won't go into the muck and mire of thirdendary fabrication theories, and we will note that you are deliberately not examining and understanding the basic differentiation of our views. And I truly think skeptics should be willing to examine their own motivations in such thirdendary theories.

A good example was Joe's attempt to foist erroneous Mark, without an ending, on us, and then use that for a base of subsequent theories. Let everybody be aware that his views then become irrelevant to true believers in the NT text, and he is only playing to a skeptic audience. GIGO. Please don't expect us to respond to the secondary theories when they simply do not apply to how we view the scripture text.

Well first. to be fair, my view is that if the authors are not who they say they are, then the NT is forgery and fraud. Most skeptics understand that better than supposed Christians, some quite loudly and beligerantly, and they have a point. That is not a false dilemma.

However, proper citation authorship does allow for later than A.D. 50 but it is unlikely to do a jump over the events of A.D. 70. for most or all of the NT. Even for Revelation the pre-A.D. 70 arguments are very strong.

Granted, within the confines of the early dating paradigm that I espouse, one can have a few theories that are not inerrancy. (e.g. "everything was written before A.D.70, Luke, Peter and Paul were real people writing about events they experienced, but they simply made a lot of mistakes, or misunderstood Jesus". One might even try to contend that they waited to right after AD.70 to publish the prophecies, to see if the Temple remained standing.) All such early but not inerrancy theories are quite unwieldy and I simply do not consider them consistent, nor very relevant to our dialog on this forum. However, those "third way" theories could allow for a trilemma, if you will.

And moderator.. is putting ones name along with one's views in the thread title proper netiquette, especially by a third party ? Perhaps I will consider it an honor, but marginally so. I know I often point out that emails should not have poster's names in the subject line.

Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Steven Avery

Tis late, and I am taking the liberty of working with what I consider the salient points here.
The prophetic words of Jesus.
He didn't.
You would have to show the exact verses in John, and your evidence that it did not happen say around A.D. 60. Then I would be interested in your correlating this with the execution of James, the brother of Jesus, called the Christ, by the Sanhedrin, in A.D. 62.
Absolutely no such tradition in scripture, either Jewish Tanach, or Christian NT. For someone to say that were Peter at the Mount of Transfiguration would be blatant fraud, and we have plenty of indication that the early believers viewed fraudulent and forged works in the same way that folks of integrity do today. Start with the excellent Glenn Miller articles, and I might be able to add some additional good references, if you are really studying this out. There was a quite excellent thread on this recently on one of the scholar forums, as well.
Are you at all familiar with the fullness of Messianic exegesis in the Targum ? Goes far beyond Isaiah, although it definitely includes Isaiah 53. And do you really consider the Targum, such as Targum Yonathon as "post-Christian", when historical Judaism considers them as ancient translations and understandings ? Seriously, is it your idea that the Jews changed the Targumim to match NT ideas ???
Have you done any real study on these questions? For early times, the Samson Levey book on the Targum, then for rabbinics the Driver-Neubauer book on Isaiah 53 interpretations and the Risto Santala book on rabbinical views on Messiah, or the Pinchas Lapide book ? If you haven't, then I will have to deal with you on square one on Jewish Messianic expectations.
My views are not complicated, and I do the best I can to express them. If you don't consider them "meaningful", then feel free to dialog in other realms.

Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/