Toto

What cloud?

Richard Carrier in his essay Luke and Josephus summarizes the arguments of Steve Mason, a foremost Josephan scholar, that the author of Luke consulted Josephus. But if you are really interested, I would recommend reading Josephus and the New Testament by Steve Mason

Are you saying that you start out believing that the gospels are accurate as history, and manage to fit everything into that paradigm? Why should your views then be relevant to anyone else?

What would you like us to examine about that point of view?

Do you think that skeptics deliberately imagine evidence of inaccuracy where it doesn't exist? How do you explain the vast body of scholarship, mostly by believing Christians, that does not support your point of view?

. . .

Steven Avery

The article is interesting, (I was reading up on this earlier today, but I didn't bookmark the appropriate references discussing how scholarship was moving away from Luke-Josephus connections) and I have long considered one of the items as special for consideration, the three rebels mentioned by both. Beyond that, honestly, I don't see much there, and such an analysis can be crafted for a goal, ignoring all contrary themes. Theme analysis is so dicey that it almost makes internet sytlistic analysis look like a science.

What is truly suprising is the lack of mention of John the Baptist, considering that is far and away the largest story with confluence between Luke and Josephus. Possibly because their handling of the John execution goes so much against the theories of dependencies. Differing, yet complementary, facts, as you would expect from two separate historians.

Yes, I accept the gospels as accurate history, however, I am always happy to step back and look at other pictures. And I don't insist that anybody consider my views as relevant.

My goal here has been simpler, to try to express the paradigmic differences. We get folks like Joe and others claiming they have some new revelation of scripture error to share with believers, and yet upon examination they are building upon their own foundation of invented genealogies, fabricated gospels, 2nd century forgeries, fraudulent first person claims, textual and manuscript manipulation and such. Then they declare how Christians should respond to these new secondary theories built on what to us is sand.

So I just want you to understand why I take the time to rip Joe's textual misunderstandings about the ending of Mark, or Volks/Klassen misunderstandings of "betrayed" to shreds. They are misrepresenting the NT text for their own purposes, and it bears correction. Maybe a few folks will wonder about what is going on.

Often, yes, I've seen a lot of that in one week. Things like "the eleven" and "right hand of God" in Mark being given as some sort of special problems, or the "inaccuracy" of a Mark ending that doesn't have the resurrection, when in fact the historic Bible has the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus. We haven't done a lot of history discussion though.
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

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

Clivedurdle

I am an ex christian, have converted people, filled with the Holy spirit, can still speak in tongues.

This spiritual discernment you quote is a mind set you and anyone can put themselves into from which they can then create a complete weltenshaung that is complete and self referencing.

The problem arises when you ask why did this God give us brains and the ability to think? There are no railway tracks along which we must think, where the rails are made of this "Word of God".

I am fascinated by your repeated use of the term historical. People 2000 years ago did not have modern definitions of the term historical. They thought differently. Study anthropology, you will find people around the planet still think very differently about life - that is why we have different cultures, traditions, religions and languages.

We are discussing in English - this group of languages - American, British, Australian etc versions did not exist 2000 years ago. Modern concepts of science and history did not exist.

A more interesting question is why are you so much into this messiahism, it does feel like you are putting forward a particular version of Tomb Raider as the way everyone should live! Why do you want to impose this dichotomy of spiritual and natural on everyone?

Diogenes the Cynic

No, he just says that he researched what others wrote down. He does not say that he saw anything himself nor that he ever spoke to a witness.
Typical apologist boilerplate. Ramsay discovered some geographical sites mentioned in Acts. This is no more "confirmation" of the the NT than Shcliemann's discovery of Troy is a confirmation of Homer.
Cite?
No, the petrine letters are pseudonymous and dated from the 2nd century. Only seven of Paul's letters are accepted as authentic even by most conservative scholars.
Acts is 2nd century.
No. You are extermely misinformed as to contemporary scholarship. I don't have the time today to give you a remedial lesson on the dating and authorship of the Gospels but there are many threads on this forum and I would also suggest doing some reading at Peter's ECW site.
Why should an explanation of predictive prophecy be preferred to an explanation the text was written after the event? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you want to allege a supernatural explanation, you have a burden to prove it. The rational default is to assume that the impossible is imposible until proven otherwise.
What evidence have you supplied? Seriously, show us some solid proof.
They also don't claim to be eyewitness accounts and the traditional ascriptions of authorship are from the 2nd century. Not only that but it can be proven from the texts themselves that the authors could not have been eyewitnesses.
No he doesn't.
To explain WHAT away?
No it didn't.
What manuscripts? None of the autographs exist. All of the extant manuscripts are copies from centuries after authorship traditions were contrived.
Eusebius is known to be something of a joke as a historian. He was a propagandist and a fantasist who didn't hesitate to use spurious sources and anecdotes of all kinds.
You are uneducated about ancient tradition in this regard. It's even in the Tanakh. How many "Isaiahs" do you think there were?

Steven Avery

And I simply have a different view.
Faith in Messiah and brains/thinking to me are quite complementary..

2Timothy 1:7
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

While we may have differing underlying paradigms about the scriptures, the creation, Elohim, Messiah and more, we all should seek to avoid 'brain-mush'.

And I think many of the "Christian apologists", Mark McFall and Glenn Miller on the Net, even some of the popularizers like Lee Stroebel or William Lane Craig, or ID folks like William Dembski, all do a reasonably good of engaging brain before speaking :-)

To put it simply I don't think you can claim that a void of faith in God is a prerequisite to use your brains and think. Such a presup is a spiritual decision, not an intellectual one.

Rather a broad conclusion :-) There may be some modern scientific "systematic theologies" that weren't developed in those times, and lots of different emphasis (e.g. in some cultures genealogies are far more important, including 2nd Temple Judaism), but I'm concerned your overall conclusions are far too broad-brushed. In recent times, the religion of evolution was given a scientific veneer, but that only makes it "science falsely so called" (1 Tim 6:20). Once I did a study on how the ancients were puzzled by those pesky marine fossils on the high mountains. Today, "science"' has essentially waved a magic wand -- with an accompanying incantation - "orogeny, tectonics", and despite the obviously humoungous unaddressed difficulties in their bumper-car continents theories, continents whirling around like sufi dancers, by simply stating those words we are now supposed to consider it "science".

I'm really not sure this is an advance over the ancients.

Well, I believe the dichotomy is there, whether one sees it or not. And the true spiritual is embedded in the Messiah of Israel. I'm simply taking the appreciated liberty to express that view. And I believe that every neo-pagan and atheist and wiccan and gnostic and agnostic does their own sort of prosletyzing though their logic and discussions, both as part of personal defense and to convince others of the soundness of their understanding. We are by our very nature this type of being, who seeks to discern truth from falsehood, and also to garner more support to agree that that which we are walking in is truth. However, often "there is a way that seems right to a man.. but the ends thereof ...." . And a lot of that corn-fusion is not recognizing the dichotomy of spiritual and nature, which is why Paul in Romans speaks of this in such a compelling manner.

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

markfiend

Do you want to take this over to the Evolution/Creation board? The roses need some fertiliser.

(Apologies to moderators; feel free to remove the previous sentence if need be.)

Clivedurdle

Seashells on mountain tops. Strange, I thought it was a xian Nicolaus Steno - a Catholic Bishop - who started these evolutionary ideas.

Steven Avery

Maybe another day. I rarely find Evolution/Creation forums engaged in real dialog. Perhaps this one is better than most.

Amaleq13

I would be happy to remove your name though it does accurately describe the source of the opinion opposed in the OP.
-Amaleq13, BC&H mod

DramaQ

And here we have the crux of it. (Pun not intended, but what the hell.)

As long as praxeus relies on supernatural powers to forward his position, no amount of rational discussion will matter.

Seems to me...

dq