mrsonic

robert m price

Second, the claim that Jesus and the disciples would have prevented error from accruing, which is a common evangelical argument, is disproved by the contents of the gospels themselves and contrary to what our expectations would be. In the gospels we're told that Jesus himself couldn't prevent listeners from telling tales he didn't want told. The gospels tell us that false reports concerning Jesus circulated widely and in fact Jesus directed the disciples to not bother correcting them. Making up things was considered pious and acceptable in this culture. Gnostic teaching was accepted widely. Gospel reports indicate erroneous resurrection belief. John the Baptist was thought to be raised but this is a case of mistaken identity. This is proof that this error is easy to make. In the Gospel of John we're told that Jesus did say he'd destroy the temple in 3 days, but John allegorizes the story. Mark and Matthew tell us that Jesus said no such thing and only false witnesses say he did. Luke says that Steven is reported to have said it. Look at every day experience. What preacher hasn't been chagrined to learn what others have thought him to have said? Look at the fact that rabbis can't keep straight who it is that supposedly uttered a statement, attributing the same wise saying to various sages. Why does Mt 10 tell us that Jesus wanted the gospel to go only to the Jews, Mt 28 says he wanted it spread far and wide, and yet at Acts 15 they're debating whether the gospel should go to Gentiles as if they've never heard of the great commission?

http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/201...ost-badly.html

mrsonic
so the jews can make up lies about jesus and have no interest in preserving any records about jesus.how do christians who were governed by the jews preserve truth about jesus? what makes you think they didn't lie to counter lies jews spread about jesus?

Sarpedon

Changing the subject again, are we?

Yes, I think a sizable proportion of characters in the bible exhibited irrational behavior, inappropriate skepticism, lack of knowledge and poor reasoning ability. Idiots, for short.

Case in point: Thomas. Thomas supposedly witnessed all of jesus's miracles. This includes the resurrection of Lazarus. As your version of the story has it, he also would have witnessed the private appearances of various saints, as he was one of the 'believers.' But even without your heretical rewrite of the bible, he would have seen at least one person resurrected.

So why would he have been so skeptical that the man that he saw raise a man from the dead could have been raised from the dead himself? Because, like most bible characters, he was an idiot. The narrative needed someone to doubt and to be shown wrong, so the character of Thomas was transformed into a hyperskeptic. It is common in bad fiction for characters to behave in irrational, out of character ways in order to serve the requirements of the plot. Since the bible is bad fiction, there are many characters who behave thus.

Have you stalled enough to come up with a justification of Thomas' behavior yet?

sotto voce

So:

'I am disqualified from being in the bible because I am not an idiot'

is untrue.

mrsonic

William L. Petersen, in Helmut Koester's "Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development." Trinity Press International, London:
1990, pp425,426.

Sarpedon

I've had enough of you. After repeatedly dodging legitimate questions, you are reduced to hurling insults. Since you obviously have nothing interesting to say, I'm not going to waste any more time on you.

John Kesler

I think it is telling that both Mike Licona and William Lane Craig claim that the resurrected-saints pericope wasn't meant to be taken literally. I don't blame them for wanting to rid themselves of this albatross. Taking the event literally leads to many problems.

Donnmathan

There is a very important word in there that you glossed over - coercion. The main reason Christianity was adopted by Rome was it's potential to allow the emperors to control the masses by either making themselves the mouthpiece of a single, all-powerful god, or by controlling the individual who became the mouthpiece of said deity. As it turned out, the roles of puppet and puppet-master depended largely on how strong the current heads of Rome and the church were, and if you look you'll find it changed hands frequently.

Constantine did NOT become a true believer, he saw a way to consolidate the power of the throne and decided to take a chance on it.

Diogenes the Cynic

This is a whole lot of question-begging. You are making a supposition that the story had any basis in oral tradition. Not only does this supposition lack evidence, it's simply not plausible that the event would not have been written down by others. Even if it had initially only been passed down orally, something so extraordinary would have ended up with some other kind of literary attestation. If you want to argue that Matthew's zombie assault on Jerusalem was a literal, historical event, then you will not be convincing unless you show some genuine empirical support for the claim. Retreating into "you can't prove it DIDN'T happen" is not a convincing argument. You can't prove the disciples weren't Keebler elves.
Irrelevant. They would have certainly have noticed and commented on a horde of re-animated dead bodies shambling into Jerusalem, would have had no motive to keep it a secret and no way of stopping the masses from talking about it.
The Greek says μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν, which can either be taken as "with his raising" or "after his raising," but it's a distinction without a difference since my point was that Matthew (at least Canonical Matthew) says it was part of the resurrection even, not the crucifixion event.
Matthew's Gospel wasn't written until 50 years later. There is no evidence that anybody ever saw or reported anything unusual about Jesus' death. Those stories did not arise until decades later, and arose outside of Palestine, among gentile churches.
I don't know what rabbis you're referring to, but what is your basis for saying that any records existed prior to Matthew's Gospel?
What do you mean by "believers?" Believers in what? Practically everybody was a Jewish believer.

And why would those believers have kept it a secret?

You're retreating into arguments from absence again, by the way. It's easy to play that game, but, once again, "you can't prove zombies DIDN'T come out of their graves" fails to be persuasive that it DID happen.
It's hardly guesswork. The synoptic dependency on Mark is well established. It's also not a red herring. I was correcting a misleading assertion on your part.
It is only independently reported ONCE. It is not independently corroborated. Matthew and Luke copied Mark. You can't claim them as corroboration for Mark. THAT is what is to the point.

sotto voce

It's effective enough.

In the wrong verse.

Diogenes the Cynic

1. the Romans had no interest in destroying "faith in the gospels." They didn't care what Christians believed. When Christians were periodically scapegoated or persecuted, it wasn't because of the content of their beliefs, but because they were seen as anti-Roman. They refused to honor the state shrines (which was not viewed so much as a religious slight as it was a ptriotic one. It was roughly the equivalent of refusing to pledge allegiance or stand up for the national Anthem) or fight in wars. They were seen as dirty, anti-Roman hippies who wouldn't fight for their country. The actual content of their mythology was not something Romans really cared about, and it's unlikely they even knew much of what it was. We have some indications from ancient writings that much of the Roman populace wasn't even clear on the difference between Christians and Jews, and just saw Christians as some kind of Jewish sect. They were completely indifferent to their particular beliefs or myths, and Roman authorities had no reason to try to suppress them or hide them. The Roman empire was full of mythologies, and Rome had always been tolerant of religious freedom as long as everybody honored the state temples, which the Christians wouldn't do.

2. The early churches did not have a canon anyway, so it's kind of meaningless to refer to their "faith in the Gospels." There were lots of gospels, with varying degrees of popularity, and plenty of people had faith in non-canonical gospels as well. You're talking about an era where Christianity itself hadn't coalesced into any kind of unified theology. There were lots of Christianities, and lots of gospels.

3. This who thing is an ad populem argument anyway. The fact that lots of people believe something doesn't make it true.

4. The historical and geographical errors/contradictions definitely exist, but didn't matter to early converts because they generally were in no position to be aware of them or be able to investigate them or even compare different gospels. They also wouldn't have cared. It's easy to make believers aware of the errors and contradictions now, but they still don't care. If demonstrable, factual error was a barrier to belief, we wouldn't have creationists.