Steven Carr

I deny that I have an agenda of disbelieving the Bible.

I am a very open-minded, almost gullible, person.

If somebody talks to me about black holes, superstrings, tachyonic particles, time travel, etc , I listen to them, see what evidence they have and then give them the benefit of the doubt.

I was taught to fight for the truth, especially if the truth goes against your personal gut feelings.

I am interested in Christian apologetics, because I was challenged to look at the evidence. I did, and I was appalled at what I found out, and I feel it my duty to challenge people who produce biased interpretations of the facts.

I would do the same with people who said that cold fusion was factual, but there are others who will fight on my behalf. With Christian apologetics, there are few sceptics prepared to slay the Hydra that reappear. So I must speak out....

Has Jim apologised for what he wrote about sceptics?

Vorkosigan

Do critics unjustifiably deny the existence of William Tell just because there is no archaeological evidence or extant historical documentation?

Steven Carr

Even those who believe William Tell existed might wonder if he was described as living to 930 years of age.

Steven Carr

LARMORE
'...Liberal "critics" not conservative ones place the dating of Daniel as late as 1st century B.C. which ones are accurate??'

CARR
Which liberal crictis place the dating of Daniel as late as 1st century BC?

Do they mean that the final selection of which parts of Daniel were authentic (ie the removal of Bel and the Dragon) was done in that time (or possibly even later)?

Does Jim accept that bits of Daniel in some versions were late additions to the text of Daniel?

Jim Larmore

Steven,
I don't have the references you are asking for readily at hand. The research I am doing on this is off campus. I will try to remember to bring them in the next day or so.

The question of Daniel being a split book i.e. early and late is another area of contention. Like I said conservative scholars don't say much about an early and late Daniel on the other hand liberal critics don't even like to admit that there even was a Daniel .They say the name of Daniel was used as a heroic symbol for that time era etc. and he may not have even existed.

I remember one of the conservative scholars saying the explaination for the different languages used in the book was to address the people Daniel lived amoung. The aramaic language which is almost identical to the Chaldean language was used in those portions which pertained to areas of interest for Babylonians. The prophetic parts were all hebrew and would be primarily targeted to the captive Isrealis in Babylon. Different languages don't necessarily mean different time periods for writing the book. It would be like you or I writing a book that would stay in east L.A. . We could write the parts of our book that would pertain to the latino population in spanish and the parts which would pertain to the anglo population in English. I'm still researching this because I would like to make an intelligent rebuttal to Bernards accusation that Daniel is a fake prophectic book, that it was written after the fact.

Casper

I can only access so much from here, but I seem to remember something from Wheless about Pilate not fitting in correctly, as if that portion of the passion is made up; due to the way Wheless writes (and the way I read) it could be construed as doubt of Pilate's historicity. But I believe the emphasis was on the sketchy historicity of Pilate being the most concrete of all the major players, and his point had something to do with the vagueries of other persona, like Caiaphas. In other words, the best you can do is Pilate, and it gets worse from there.

But I never got much from Wheless and I could be mistaken. :huh:

Toto

It is generally admitted that the portrayal of Pilate in the Gospels does not match his portrayal in Josephus and Philo. But that is a far cry from saying that he never existed.

Malachi151

No, but it's a good indication that the author of Mark was pro-Roman, err, one of about 100 things....