Zadok001

Yeah, FoC, they got me eventually. Just kinda never went back. I think it was the Evolution/Creation forum that put me over the "Ban Me!" cliff.

Thanks for answering, as usual, promptly. Obviously, I disagree on a subjective level, but I think I'll let the "real" experts here argue away. I'll watch, and interject with occassional snide comments.

It's bizzarely nice to see you again.

Gawen

You may ask. Ok, I won't be flip. To answer your question, we know Jesus didn't write this stuff down. I simply cannot stress the importance to Xtians that come here to visit the BC&H forum. Of course, dyed-in-the-wool xtian theists can't handle having their world so closely scrutinised in such a way. Leads to too many questions.

Follower of Christ

Ask away.
I asked who was writing down every detail during every war thoughout history so that nothing would be missed.

Do you think that was the case?
Or that someone sat down AFTER the fact and gathered up the details from eyewitnesses?

Come on now, be realistic.

Jesus didnt write the stuff down, and neither did lots of men in those wars.
Some other man listened to thier stories most likely and jotted them done for the history books.

Am I supposed to ignore half of the recorded history of the world simply becuase it wasnt written by someone with a first hand account OR it was written down years later?

Chris Weimer

James 2:26 "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."

OK, here we start getting ugly. No eyewitnesses wrote it down, write? Unless of course you count the noncanonical works. And even then its shaky. OK, so no one who actually talked to the son of God wrote it down. Now we have Paul. Paul killed Christians. Then Paul became a Christian. Now we listen to Paul because he had some good organization skills? Please. Paul was just man too, wasn't he? Or do you claim that he was divine? How can you claim that his words are divine if he is only a man.

Avatar

The details of our modern wars, and many of the wars of history, come from reading the material of the people who were there fighting it. Chat with a historian.

That is also the case...interviewing witnesses, gathering physical evidence, looking over war records.

I should ask the same of you.

And other men wrote diaries, kept copies of orders, took photos, and other such things.

Not merely a year or three later. The Bible was written down dacades, even centuries after the fact. In a culture that relied heavily on the oral tradition, do you really believe that someone writing a story down a hundred years after the actual events could have possibly gotten it right--at all?

Jesus's story would be a lot more convincing if there were more than just the Bible to refer to his existence. Guess what? There aren't any such things. There are no extra-biblical sources that confirm any of the stories of the Bible.

Follower of Christ

Good verse.
Backs up precisely what I said.
Works are required to maintain the relationship.


Paul was a man who had revelations from Jesus Christ.
He did his best to relate those things he saw and heard and to give us instruction from our Lord.

Kaiser_Soze

<funny>down to your "waste"? you mean your butt?!? </funny>
Against nature? But aren't we the only species that trims their hair? How would cutting it be against nature? And why is Christ always portrayed with err... oh yeah, long hair???

Vorkosigan

You mean.. that confirm any of the New Testament accounts of Jesus. And even those, there are, though they are probably forgeries.

FoC, the problem is not only that the accounts weren't written down until decades later, it is that they appear to be constructed out of the Old Testament. For example, Jesus career in Mark parallels the Elijah-Elisha cycle, and many of the individual events appear to come from 1 & 2 Kings. For example, the healing of the withered arm in Mark 3 parallels a similar healing in 1 Kings 13. The Temple Cleansing parallels Jehu's cleansing of the Temple of Ba'al. The individual lines in that sequence are taken from various places in the OT. Similarly, the Garden of Gethsemane scene is taken from 2 Sam 15-16 and probably 2 Sam 20 as well, with individual verses drawing from OT sources. The Passion Narrative appears to use Dan 6 as its frame, and is built out of several sources, but most importantly, Psalm 22.

This problem of determining historicity in this case is thus very difficult. Since everything can be accounted for either by Markan style or by the Old Testament, there doesn't seem to be a good reason to imagine that any of it is actual history. Perhaps you can provide some.

Vorkosigan