rlogan

I was wanting to study that a bit before commenting. Vivisector made a brief summary of the state of scholarship on 2 peter and I have looked at the material at Peter Kirby's site:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/2peter.html

The material at earlychristianwritings is very interesting, and demonstrates why this specific "witness", unknown to Irenaeus and Polycarp, would be important in countering Gnostics.


For the moment though I wanted to avoid the discussion of dating and first zero in on which passages of canon even purport specific "eyewitness" testimony.

What does this passage purport witness to? It is actually claiming "earwitness":


We cannot use this 2 peter passage beyond its own claim. It goes no further than God saying on the Holy Mount that Jesus is his son. In other words, it is not backing for resurrection claims or what have you.

So I want to leave it at that for the moment. Here we have someone alleging a collective witness of God talking. (heh- evidence of mushroom use)


I've addressed this already. Not just the vague generality, but the impossibility of witnessing "The Word" from "The Beginning".


Well, I want to evaluate these on a case by case basis and put the exact citations in front of us. To see what they actually claim as opposed to what I am seeing as assertions of "eyewitness" testimony from the virgin birth all the way through to the resurrection.

So far we have one exceedingly vague and technically impossible "collective" witness - which is not what I have asked for. The other is an alleged collective witness to God speaking once on the Holy Mount.



Bring on the rest. If you would be so kind.

Sven

This is simply bullshit, as shown by the linked post in my later post.

I assume you are talking about A Survey of Old Testament Introduction.
If I understand it correctly, Archer is a theologian (that is, he has an axe to grind), not an historian (who would have no axe to grind). So I a priori see no reason to take anything of his book seriously. Maybe you could present some of his arguments so that we can see they have merit?

DiamondH

Everyone on the counsil had to be inspired for the Inerrant Bible to be true.

The everloving, always rewarding IPU is much more credible than believing that a gathering of humans can find the truth.

Jehanne

"Sources of Catholic Dogma" sometime. The Christian (Catholic) Church could not figure out "who Jesus was" for nearly 1,000 years! And yes, there was disagreement among the Church fathers as to which Biblical writings were "inspired" and which were not. Some churches refused to accept 2 Peter for centuries after Nicea.

Amaleq13

I thought you said earlier that they only appeared to certain people and deliberately avoided others. This claim makes no sense. Who would be around to dispute a story that doesn't appear to have been told until the last two decades of the 1st century? How would they dispute such a claim given your allegation of selective appearances? Are you suggesting that, if someone had written down that they heard this claim but denied any dead people came into town, you would consider it untrue?

According to Acts, the claim Christ had risen was not made for over a month after the crucifixion. How would dragging around a severely decomposed and, therefore, unidentifiable body prove anything?

Where is your evidence that anyone was persecuted for the story of Jesus in the Gospels? The evidence from Pliny indicates early Christians were persecuted for failing to worship the Emperor and/or to curse Christ.

I hope my questions in this post haven't been lost in the subsequent flood of responses. I am very interested in your answers.

aChristian

I suggest you get the book and read it. It appears to me he knows what he is talking about, clearly contradicts what you are claiming, and answers a lot of the wild claims I read on this website.

aChristian

I just answered this and then I lost the connection. I need to go to bed now, but I'll try to answer it soon. Good night.

Vorkosigan

Archer? He's a hack apologist who couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag if you spotted him the conclusion and two premises. If you want a serious work on the OT, go get one off of Peter Kirby's website, or PM Celsus, our resident OT expert. as for answering any claims at Infidels, Archer is incapable of doing that. It might be fun to show how wrong he is, though. Why don't you put up a few of his "refutations" and we'll take a moment to dissect them. It's always fun to rip up people who are desperately trying to control the way others think about the text.

Vorkosigan

Sven

Let's just discuss the claim about the Hittites. What exactly does he say about this? Especially, how does he answer Sauron's objection I linked to?

See, I see no reason to read a book with an obvious bias as long as it is at least demonstrated by an example that it's worth reading.

Oh, I see that Vork' just made a comment along the same line.

Toto

If you click on the Amazon link, the book can be searched on line. Type in Hittites and there are 18 hits. After a casual glance, I don't see that he deals with any objections, but the ideological bias is breathtaking.