Gullwind

Ah. So its a translation error, since my bible says they didn't hear the voice, not that they didn't understand it.

Amaleq13

I think you only apply this naively low standard to claims that support your own religious beliefs. Or do you believe every claim of alien abduction, bigfoot encounter, Loch Ness sea monster sighting, fairie visitations and the religious experiences claimed by competing faiths (e.g. Islam). Your standard is clearly too vulnerable to error because it really is no standard at all. Evidence must be required to believe extravagant claims. The more extravagant, the more evidence.

They may have seen something but the implausibility suggests that a rational individual might suspect their perceptions were mistaken absent supportive evidence.

Evidence. The specific sort would depend on the nature of the claim.

Even credible claimants make mistakes and are vulnerable to the typical perceptual weaknesses of humanity (e.g. we tend to see/remember that which agrees with our preconceived notions).

That depends on the nature of the claim. Otherwise honest individuals can firmly yet mistakenly believe they have seen something.

I know too much about group psychology to make that mistake. A single person can influence the perceptions of a group especially if that individual is a respected leader. The alleged mass sighting of the "dancing sun" is an excellent example. A whole crowed of people claimed to see the sun move erratically in the sky but individual interviews reveal that witnesses who had no contact with each other reported completely different "visions" and folks elsewhere reported no odd movement by the sun at all. The only rational explanation is that this is an example of mass hallucination.

That is a perfect scenario for obtaining objective support for the claim. Unfortunately, I no of no such thing ever happening. It seems that all of these wonderful phenomena become strangely shy when objective and/or skeptical observers are present.

Probably because that would be entirely irrelevant. The notion that Jesus fulfilled prophecies is a faith-based conclusion. The Gospel stories appear to have been written with certain messianic prophecies in mind and the stories told so that Jesus fulfilled them. Absent faith, there is no good reason to believe that Jesus actually fulfilled these prophecies. In fact, the stories sometimes depict him intentionally fulfilling them.

There is only a single, [b/unsubstantiated[/b] and vague claim that "500" people saw the Risen Christ. Only your faith allows you to consider that claim credible.

By that faulty reasoning, you must consider Judaism and Hinduism to have even more substance than Christianity. In actual fact, the longevity of a belief is not logically connected to the truth of the belief any more than the number of people believing it. Long-held beliefs cherished by many people can quite easily be wrong.

I agree that, if we knew more information about Jesus and Christianity, they would both suffer tremendous losses of credibility.

You have completely missed the point of my offering of this link. It was to show the sort of thinking that was common during the time you wish to assume there existed all sorts of critical thinkers eager to debunk nonsense claims. That is clearly incorrect.

Every conversion story I've ever read involved a subjective determination on the part of the one converting. I have never read a conversion story where the individual became convinced solely as the result of a rational consideration of the evidence. I cannot discount their subjective experiences and can only assert that I have not had one so I cannot share their faith.

According to the Gospel stories, it is really only the Jewish leaders who conspire against Christ and they do so apparently because of the threat he poses to their power base. In addition, the Jewish writing against Jesus have already been mentioned but you've ignored them. In some places, they claim Jesus was stoned to death. In others, they ridicule him as the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier. Do you accept their claims without evidence?

Apparenty some did (e.g. Celsus) but their written arguments against Christianity were not preserved. We only know about them because some of the Christian responses were preserved.

By the time Christianity started coming into power, what could any investigation have accomplished? Don't forget that the Jewish War had ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersal of all its citizens. You don't seem to me to have a very realistic understanding of the time period or the people who lived in it.

No and this is incredibly anachronistic.

Like I said before, there is so much information that it literally fills volumes. As I also said before, you would do well to start with the books in the sticky at the top of the forum.

Amaleq13

This makes no sense as a response to my comment. The claims mentioned above were quite some time after the death of Jesus. That Jewish leaders allegedly felt threatened enough by Jesus' popularity to conspire to have him executed by the Romans says absolutely nothing about the truth of falsity of Christian claims.

That is how the story reads but I see no reason to believe it. Extrabiblical documents fail to support the existence of this alleged tradition and depictions of Pilate flatly contradict the idea that he would have done such a thing for the Jews.

The most you can assert, with regard to Nero, is that he "cared enough" to blame the fire on them. If that story can be believed, and some scholars think otherwise, he felt free to do so simply because the Christian were generally despised. That hardly supports your goal of establishing that their beliefs could not be denied.

That sounds like a large load of horse manure to me. A "gate" is not a "road" and there were different words for each.

A gate requires a wall. I'm not interested in playing silly games with you.

You have already been informed that this individual's information is outdated.

No, I'm saying there is no reliable methodology for identifying any oral traditions underlying existing written texts. I assume that an oral tradition preceded the extant written texts but there is no good reason to assume the extant written texts are directly connected to that oral tradition.

Feel free to share but that doesn't appear to be true based on the conclusions of most scholars. Even the Catholic Study Bible recognizes that such claims are highly problematic. The editors acknowledge that, given that Matthew's author appears to depend largely on Mark's story, is sufficient to cast serious doubt on apostolic authorship. With regard to John, they state:

"Critical analysis makes it difficult to accept the idea that the gospel as it now stands was written by one person...Other difficulties for any theory of eyewitness authorship of the gospel in its present form are presented by its highly developed theology and by certain elements of its literary style."p146

When scholars that I assume would certainly prefer to support traditional beliefs feel compelled by the evidence to reach such conclusions, I tend to doubt folks like yourself who claim otherwise. But I don't hold my conclusions based on faith so they are always subject to change given sufficient argument or evidence.

DramaQ

How nice that we agree. And since we’re in agreement, it should now be obvious how equally absurd both concepts are.

(Incidentally, according to my non-disputed book, the Purple Duck never supernaturally impregnated a young Hebrew girl. He did, however, cross a crocodile with an abalone.)

Let’s see, what do “prophesies� prove? Apart from the fact that appeals to the supernatural are still part of your argument, it proves very little.
People of every generation since Nostradamus have read contemporary meaning into his “prophesies�. Beyond that, the very fact that the character in the gospel stories fulfilled prophesy points to a fiction that was BASED on those prophesies. To put it in you inimitable style: “<yawn>�

As opposed to the alleged eyewitnesses you cite? The ones you find in, and only in, the very book you seek to verify. Never mind. Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt. You show people who claim to me eye witnesses. Well! If that’s all it takes to make your story believable then we must live in a world full of ghosts, space aliens in UFO’s and spontaneously combusting people. (Despite the lack on one shred of evidence to support any of that.)

In other words, you have what you believe in because of – and ONLY because of – your FAITH.

Fine. Dandy. Have your faith, and if it makes you comfortable, enjoy it.

But call it what it is: faith, not fact.

Is having followers all it takes to make it true? Well! Then I assume YOU give equal credence to followers of Buddha. Or Wiccans. Or Satanists for that matter. These are all “followers�. Believers.

Do you suppose the earth really WAS flat as long as people believed in it? Ya know… some still do… (speaking of which, the Earth doesn’t really have “ends�. I’m afraid your source is a mite out of date.)

Observation: All elephants are gray.
DramaQ’s conclusion: If it’s an elephant it must be gray.
Bfniii’s Reverse-Must-Be-True Principal: If it’s gray, it must be an elephant.

Yes, of course. After all, people then were no different than people today. Something so dead-on “true� would have just FORCED people to not write about it. Not question it. Not make the slightest comment against it. Such a fundamental, obvious, indisputable thing would have had every literate person who’d heard of it scratch his head and say, “I can’t think of a single thing against this. Guess I’ll just not write anything.�

I’ve read this over three times and still can’t figure out your point. I think it’s supposed to be answering the charge that the people in power have the ability to destroy the records of their enemies and often do so. But I don’t see how it addresses that in any way.

Yes…. I might even be inclined to WRITE about my difficulty believing. Much like I’m doing now. Much like I might have done then.

According to the Bible.

The Bible is true because it says it is. You keep using that argument. I keep not buying it.

Sure. Then after that, they had over a millennium and a half to “clean up�. It doesn’t matter how lacking in power they were before then.

Then by your logic, Judaism is even MORE “right�. They claim 5,000 years of history, success, failure, persecution, slavery, disasters. And ultimately survival. If that’s all it takes, you might want to reconsider Christianity in favor of Judaism. Or better still, some of the older eastern religions.

Have a nice week. Off to work…..

dq

DramaQ

Amaleq13

I see I wound up rehashing ground you covered. Sorry. That's what I get for composing offline and downloading on a Monday.

Cheers,
dq

Amaleq13

No problem. I don't expect Believers to change their beliefs. I would be happy enough with improved arguments via reduced reasoning errors. If saying the same thing in a different way gets the job done, I'm just as pleased.

bfniii

yet there are many skeptics who claim that because mr. x doesn't support a particular claim, the claim should not be believed. it has been said several times. does that not require faith?

lazy? i wouldn't call archaeology lazy. it has continually supported the Bible over the centuries.

hopefully you won't stop short by just stating your opinion and you will actually show how it is flawed.

even if matthew did use other source material (which can't be proven inconclusively), does necessarily mean that matthew wasn't an eyewitness? matthew contains at least some original material. where did that come from? maybe his book, regardless of the source of the text, is an attestation of his being there.

if john was penned the book while in ephesus, it would have been written late in the first century, given that the rylands fragment supports the book was already in circulation early in the second century.

bfniii

is there something unique that shows them to be different than the frauds who went before them?

DramaQ

On does expect their frauds to be unique.

Amaleq13

As I have already said, it is just as much of an example of flawed reasoning as your desire to generalize support for a single claim to the entire text. An argument from silence is only rarely a secure foundation for a conclusion. An absence of supportive evidence simply means there is no basis to assert the claim except faith. The silence of Mr. X becomes more compelling with the greater expectation of him supporting the claim. Likewise, the absence of physical evidence becomes more compelling with greater expectations of finding some. Many scholars apparently feel this is true of the Exodus since we would expect a fairly substantial amount of physical evidence that seems nonexistent.

First, you need to read my posts more carefully. I was referring to your desire to generalize a single supported claim to the entire text as a lazy approach (in addition to being logically flawed). Second, there is considerable controversy about your assertion. You might want to check out Bible Unearthed.

It is not just my opinion that your "hasty generalization" is an example of flawed reasoning. Also, I have not just stated this fact but have tried to explain it to you. Remember my question about a 100% correct biography? I am trying to appeal to your common sense to recognize that establishing the truth of even 90% of a text does not logically require that the remaining 10% must also be true. A formal proof of this would require more mathematics than I care to apply since it usually causes me a headache.

The bottom line is "we" are no more impressed by your attempt to generalize specifically supported claims to the entire text than you are with attempts to generalize specifically unsupported claims to the entire text.

IIRC, Matthew and Mark share 90% of their text. There is no reasonable doubt that there exists a literary connection between the two. If, as the majority of scholars conclude, Mark was written first, then it makes no sense to suggest that an eyewitness would feel it necessary to copy another author's story. As I mentioned before, when even the Catholic Study Bible feels compelled to acknowledge this, I tend to become disinterested in claims to the contrary which lack specific and compelling evidence.

You'll have to be specific in order to obtain a specific response. The author of Matthew is considered by many scholars to have had at least one other source besides Mark (i.e. Q). The author of Luke is supposed to have independently used this same source. That there exists material unique to the author of Matthew doesn't require that the author was an eyewitness.

Maybe but I don't see any good reason to think so. The author does not identify himself as an eyewitness and the story is not obviously written from the perspective of any eyewitness. Your "maybe" also has difficulty explaining why there is no trace of a belief in an eyewitness author in the earliest quotes from the text.

"If" does not constitute evidence. I tend to agree that the book, in its current form, was completed at the end of the 1st century. However, I also acknowledge the substantial evidence that extant text is the product of multiple hands. It is possible that the oldest portion(s) were written by an "eyewitness" but I don't know of any compelling evidence to support that possibility. Typically, an appeal is made to specific story details (e.g. the pool steps, IIRC) that could only be known by a pre-70CE source but that doesn't require an eyewitness author just an early authorship.