Steven Avery

Diogenes :-) you don't have to be a rocket scientist to correlate executions with persecutions and expulsion. It is a rather intuitively obvious connection.

And in the very passages referenced above, John relates that being put out of the synagogue, for belief in Jesus as Messiah, was happenning as early as when Jesus lived.

John 9:22
These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.

Joh 12:42
Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue:

So John wasn't just broaching the idea as a concept, he says it was a historical fact in the early Gospel timeframe.

We have little other first century documentation outside the NT about the exact timing of such actions, however the execution of James would fit very well with the idea that these types of actions were not simply a post-80 AD phenomenon. Extremely well.

Similarly the history of Acts, written by Luke, not John, strongly supports such actions, essentially eliminating the major argument that this was a 'Johannine thing'. Paul even being directly involved in such persecutions, and the stoning of Stephen, after his incredible history of Yisrael, being a salient moment, and also the persecutions against Paul were of the same manner, as in Acts 13.

And also we have a lot of information that such excommunication would have been formalized under Jewish religious synagogue structure.

John Gill goes into in in some depth in the commentary to John 9:22
http://eword.gospelcom.net/comments/john/gill/john9.htm

Bob Deffinbaugh gives some similar discussion, including an Alfred Edersheim reference, at..
http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=595#P1250_361603

So against this I was asking for the hard, or whatever is the best, evidence that such expulsion would not have taken place till after 80 AD, since that is the principle base you used to simply declare John as dated post-80 AD.

If the underlying assumptions are unsupportable, the conclusion becomes quite tenuous.

Although I appreciate the scholarship reference, in the full picture, it really gives more support against your position than against, due to how it is being presented historically by John, in synch with Luke.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Diogenes the Cynic

No it isn't. The Josephus passage does not connect the execution of James with Christianity in any way. Moreover, it is a known fact that the expulsion of Christians from synagogues did not occur until after the diaspora. Dude...PAUL taught in synagogues. How can you explain that if Christians had been expelled?
Which is exactly how we know the author could not have been a contemporary of Jesus. It's an anachronism. It's a mistake. The author had his facts wrong. A real apostle could not have made such a mistake.
And he's wrong.
We knw when the expulsion happened. It happened at the Council of Jamnia sometime after 85 CE. There is no mystery about this.
We know for a fact that the expulsion WAS a post 85 CE phenomenon. Really more like 90's in practical terms. The Josephus passage will not help you. It makes no connection between Christians and the execution of James.
Acts also says that Paul preached in synagogues.
In your very characteristic fashion, you are trying to reverse the burden of proof. It is up to YOU to prove that Christians were expelled from synagogues BEFORE the historically known expulsion in the 80's and 90's.
We need an irony smiley.
I'm trying to parse this and I can't figure it out. Luke contradicts you by saying that Christians were still going to synagogues during Paul's ministry (not that Luke is any sort of legitimate historian) and trying to cite GJohn in support of itself is completely circular. If you read a story which is set during the Crimean War but which mentions cell phones, you know it cannot have been written before the invention of cell phones. The fact that the story claims that cell phones existed during the Crimean war is not evidence in support of that claim, it just shows that there is an anachronism in the story.

jdeverse

Hello all, I would like to comment on the earlier posts in this thread concerning miracles and what constitutes proof. The Bahai view is that miracles are no proof of the manifestation as they can only be verified by the witnesses, who may doubt the reality of what they saw anyway. Using a miracle to exalt or prove the power of a manifestation of God is demeaning to their station, much like asking a supreme martial artist to prove his skill by tying his shoe. As the sun is manifest and needs no proof of its existence, so is the light of the manifestation of God. The proof is in their own reality.

The real miracle is not in restoring a man's physical sight which must then be lost again, or restoring his hearing, or curing him of leprosy, but restoring his spiritual vision and hearing and healing him of spiritual disease. This is what gives eternal life and constitutes the true miracle. What is the finite in comparison to the infinite?

John A. Broussard

It's nice to know that Christian theists aren't alone in being incomprehensible.

JPD

This doesn't work as a representation - the sun exists, God does not. No meaningful comparison can be drawn. In fact, nothing at all can be said about God since it is impossible to prove or disprove God as a reality (whatever that might mean). It is fairly easy to point out the inadequacy of specific religious concepts of God.


There is a large question mark over whether such "miracles" actually take place.
There is no reason to assume that eternal life is a viable suggestion. From where do you draw your assertion that this happens?

jdeverse

That is a pretty quick judgment; could you explain what part you find incomprehensible?

Johnny Skeptic

Your arguments are not valid. In the NIV, John 10:37-38 say "Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." The verses cite "tangible" evidence of Jesus' power.

More "tangible" evidence comes from Acts 14:3 and Matthew 14:14. Acts 14:3 says "So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders." In the NIV, Matthew 14:14 says "When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick." We need compassion in tangible ways today just as much as people did back then. Where is tangible evidence of God's power and compassion in tangible ways today? Possibly Hurricane Rita, which God created and caused to go to New Orleans?

It is important to note that the texts say that "both sides" were aware that Jesus had supernatural powers. Matthew 12:24 says "But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, 'It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.'" Today, both sides "are not" aware of God's supernatural power. Therefore, we don't have nearly the "evidence" today that people with "varying" world views supposedly had back then.

Regarding miracle healings, today, millions of Christians disagree as to what constitutes a miracle healing. There are not any good reasons at all for anyone to believe that it was any different back then.

Regarding the feeding of the 5,000, which is mentioned in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Christians have some problems. Consider the following:

1 - The texts claim that the disciples were aware of the miracle, but no mention is made that the crowd was aware of the miracle.

2 - The anonymous Gospel writers did not claim that they personally witnessed the miracle.

3 - The Gospel writers did not reveal their source(s), which might very well have been third hand or fourth hand.

4 - There is no evidence when the claim was first made.

5 - There is no evidence that the claim was widely accepted.

Some Christians claim that skeptics are predisposed against miracles, but I don't know of any skeptic who would object to anyone, a claimed God or an alien, being available to help us with our many burdens.

You citied you own spiritual/emotional experiences, but the followers of many religions cite similar evidence. How is your evidence any different than theirs? Are you a liberal Christian or a fundamentalist Christian? Few fundamentalist Christians would attempt to defend the Bible without mentioning tangible miracles, and even a sizeable percentage of liberal Christians believe that Jesus performed tangible miracles. We need God's tangible help too, not just his spiritual/emotional world. Most Christians ask God to help them in spiritual AND tangible ways. Don't you?

Noggin

Okay. So then shelf the miracle for a second. Rhutchin, we then have to confront John's authority to tell us that we will be judged by the unproven god.

First question John's authority then deal with the supposed recorded jesus miracles vs Tacitus' miracles. Where does his authority come from that gives him the grounds to threaten or warn or hold the looming yet forthcoming judgement over any human head?

Which leads us back to the axe grinding of your having to prove their is a god in the first place that will be doing any judging.

It is a hopeless cycle. It is as if the atheist is the only one who can point it out.

Noggin

jdeverse

Hello JPD, I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.
It is true that to the sensible realities the Sun needs no proof of its existence for it is plainly seen. The eyes by which one may see the signs of the Sun of Reality (God) are not physical, but spiritual. This is what Christ meant when he said "let him who hath an ear hear" and "let him who hath an eye see". This is a faculty that may take an entire lifetime to acquire. Baha'u'llah in the "Seven Valleys" describes the journey the wayfarer must take to get closer to the "friend". Only after traversing the valley of search, love and knowledge is the wayfarer able to see the signs of God in everything and become aware of the mysteries of divine creation.

As for the question concerning the meaning of miracles I admit that I am not just drawing these conclusions from the Bible, but from the entire known history of Progressive revelation which constitutes the dispensations of Adam, Krishna, Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, and Baha'u'llah - whom Bahais follow. The purpose of these divine perfect educators has been to quicken mankind and exalt the spiritual over the basal nature. The writings of Baha'u'llah offer a metaphorical or spiritual interpretation of making the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead to arise.

Hope this helps.
Ready for more discussion as work permits.

TomboyMom

How exactly does that make it any more likely to be true?