doubtingt

I don't think it is safe to assume that anyone has ever honestly and thoughtfully evaluated the OT or the NT and concluded it is more likely true than fiction.
This applies to both literal truth or even spriritual truth in the sense that the stories are metaphors, but written or inspired by God to convey his will.

This is not to say that many do not sincerely believe in the Bible's truth, but rather that these beliefs are faith that at best seeks to justify itself post-hoc with dishonestly biased and unreasoned selection and interpretation of fact that is consistent with the preferred belief already held.

Believe in both literal and "spiritual" truth as I define it above require an unbelievable level of ignorance about the patently obvious probability that it was written entirely by humans as an artistic, wishful thinking excersice combined with aims at political/social control through its authoritarian worldview.

It seems somewhat implausible that so many adults have such deficient mental abilities and such ignorance of the most basic apsects of self, others, art, storytelling, politics, etc. that they could honestly evaluate such stories and conclude they are anything more than normal human fiction.
Instead, it seems more plausible that their emotional biases to reach a different conclusion prevented them from ever engaging in an honest evaluation in the first place.

muTron the homeless

Warning: irrelevant comment ahead -

OY! Not to be nitpicky but Ghost actually starred Roadhouse's own Patrick Swayze who did actually interact with the physical world through Whoopie Goldberg (YIKES!). I believe you mean The Sixth Sense starring Bruce Willis.

Patcher

That is why I hesitate so often to post! A quick google in my uncertainty and that mistake would not have happened! Thanks!

Patcher

Wow, I'd much rather think of myself in this light! When I look back at my thought processes as a Christian, they were so limited. And I limited them because of my emotional biases. I like that.

Orothar

Who claimed that there were no references to a historically existing Jesus Christ in the epistles of the New Testament? The first chapter of the first epistle of Peter (someone who, according the Gospel accounts, would have known this historical Jesus) contains multiple references to Jesus Christ that imply historical reality (at least in the writer's opinion). There are references to Jesus' blood, there are statements about his suffering, etc etc.

Not to mention that the Pauline epistles refer to things being 'handed down' from Christ to the Apostles...

If the Gospels are dated as most NT scholars date them today (most being the operative word here) they were written while eye-witnesses were still alive. While that doesn't mean they are accurate, it does suggest that the followers of Jesus Christ at the time put some historical weight on them (though not as much as a post-enlightenment audience would). At the very least one can claim that they intended for the general list of occurances (the various miracles, the birth, life, death, resurrection of Christ, etc) to be taken as historical.

Keep in mind that the books of Luke and Acts (likely written by the same author, Luke, as identified in the book of Acts) was written by someone who knew the apostles, and that book testifies to how seriously they took the historical events which they claimed to believe in.

So at the very least one must say that the central figures of the early church, as shown in Gospel, epistle, and extra-biblical writtings written while they were still alive, took this stuff seriously. How did they come to do so? Fill in your own blank there. My guess would be that they actually believed the stuff because they believed that they experienced it. You can decide the significance of that for yourself.

Gawen

Hoo boy...*pullin up a chair and nukin some Redenbacher's popcorn*

Toto

Many scholars have noticed that there are no references to a historically grounded person named Jesus in the authentic letters attributed to Paul. There are minimal references that can be interpreted as referring to a historical person.

First Epistle of Peter is unlikely to have been written by Peter.

Paul refers to transmitting what was handed down to him in a section that might be an interpolation. But even if it isn't, Paul never met the human Jesus, and he insists that he is passing on what he received from a spiritual Christ, not what a human Jesus passed on to other apostles.

Most NT scholars date the Gospels to 70-110 CE. The events happened around 32 CE. Given the average life span in those days, and the War that must have killed many around 70 CE, this is speculative at best.

How does this follow?

But this was several generations later. It shows that a later Christian Church wanted to construct a historical pedigree for itself, at best.

I invite you to read Diogenes the Cynic's thread on Shredding the Gospels, and also Vorkosigan's threads on the literary structure of Mark.

Patcher

If I thanked god, I'd thank him for you at this point! I know what I read, but I certainly wasn't adequately prepared for this popcorn event!

Orothar

The reasoning used to debunk supposed authors of biblical texts (as adaquetly highlighted by the quote you offered in your post) is sketchy at best. The Septuagent (LXX) translation of the OT, being in Koine Greek (the lingua franca of the eastern mediteranian), could easily have been the type of text that Peter was familiar with, especially if he was using it while Bishop in Rome (where there would have been a great many converts that didn't know the Hebrew). Furthermore, writing in the greek it makes sense that he would use the greek translation of his scriptures.

He also could easily have had the assistance of a scribe (a common enough practice at the time). There are some indications in Pauline epistles that epistle writers were using that practice. This could account for the improved rhetoric. Aside from that, though, there is the simple possibility that the man was bilingual. A fisherman in Galilee could easily have been bilingual given the presence of strong greek and aramaic speaking communities at the time. Nothing about being a fisherman suggests that a person is too low or stupid to know two languages. If you don't believe me, travel to just about any 3rd world country in SE Asia...

So without real reason to doubt his writing the epistle (other than a couple of things which make us go "huh" for a second) it seems fine enough to assume that he did - the tradition itself offering the "tipping of the balance" so to speak.

Even so, my point that there was early early early respect for a historically existing Jesus is sufficiently sustained by the Luke-Acts bit. There is textual evidence (self-referential) that pins the author of Acts as Luke (since the author refers to Luke as "I" and groups which Luke is present in are identified as "We"). That being said, the dating of the text has to within the 2nd generation after Christ (including Christ and the Apostles as the first generation). Luke was quite like a younger member OF that generation. To my understanding the dating of Luke rests somewhere in the 70 AD range (since Acts stops with Paul going to Rome, and he was martyred there in the mid 70's). That's within range of the points I was making.

This isn't deductive proof, but rather inductive. I'm saying it makes sense motivationally for these figures to have believed in the existence of Jesus, and that there are textual indications that this was so, and that given that, I have no reason to believe that they didn't take this stuff seriously from a historical perspective. In other words, the onus of proof is on those who want to say that they didn't, not the other way around, and it seems like a difficult case to make.

I mean seriously, if we pressed this hard to "prove" the existence of every major historical figure, we'd have to claim that we "knew" the vast majority of them didn't exist...

Diogenes the Cynic

Please read my section on the author of Luke-Acts in my Shredding the Gospels thread. The author uses Josephus as a source which dates the books to the mid-90's at a bare minimum. The author does not identify himself as a witness of anything or as a companion of Paul or say that his name was Luke. He is dependent on secondary sources and imports their errors into his own book. Luke-Acts contains a number of historical inaccuracies and obvious fictions which rule out any association with any eyewitness. Acts also contradicts the authentic letters of Paul in a number of places.

By the way, 1 Peter can be established as pseudoepigraphical by more than the literary Greek (and it's not just a question of a Palestinian fisherman learning Greek, it's a distnctly formal and educated literary style of Greek which contains Greek philosophical elements and references. It shows that the author had a formal Greek education. Peter was not just Palestinian but illiterate. He couldn't read or write in any language, much less acadaemic Greek).

In addition to the language problems, though, there are also theological and historical details in the work which tag and date it as a late 1st century Pauline document. One of the most significant clues is that the author talks about Christians being persecuted in Asia Minor. Christians were (allegedly) persecuted by Nero in 60's but that was only in Rome. There was a wider persecution of Christians under Domitian in the 90's and that's what the Epistle refers to.

Do you have an argument that 1 Peter was written by the apostle of that name other than the fact that it says so?