Roger Pearse

Hello,

This doesn't respond to my query, but just reiterates the general claim that, for some reason, evidence outside the gospels 'must' be preserved if it happened.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Solo

The Mount is symbolically Mount Horeb, the Mountain of God which was in Judaic belief taboo to all except those chosen by God.


JS

gstafleu

Yes it does, because...
... I'm not saying the evidence must be presrved for some unspecified reason. I'm quite explicitly saying that in this case it would be unthinkable that all evidence for such a unique and shocking event would have gone missing. I'm quite willing to accept that evidence of mundane matters has gone missing. The idea, though, that all evidence of this dead-men-walking event could have gone missing is like saying that, for example, all evidence could have gone missing of the fact that Julius Caesar sprouted wings in public and flew three times around the forum romanum at or near the ides of March.

gstafleu

Just in case my previous post wasn't clear enough, let me put it more generally. The problem with many events the gospels claim happened is that they are so unusual and so noticable that it defies belief that all extra-gospel evidence would have gone missing.

The gospels do for example not just claim that Jesus was crucified. Evidence of that could, given the multitude of crucifictions, easily have gone missing. Rather, the gosples also claim that his death was accompanied by very unique and noticible events like the walking saints and the spontaneous rending of the temple veil. Not only that, they claim that he arose from the dead afterwards, something that nobody had managed before. Furthermore, that event was widely witnessed. Finally, he then ascended to heaven on a cloud, also a first in human history, also witnessed by other people. And you claim that it is credible to think that all evidence outside the gospels of these totally unique, shocking and well-witnessed (according to the gosples) events can have gone totally missing?

It is, in other words, very reasonable that evidence of all kinds of events can have gone missing, provided the events are not completely unique and shocking. The gosples however hoist themselves by their own petards by laying claim to such fantastic productions. If the gospels had limited themselves to more every-day claims about Jesus, the lack of extra-gospel evidence would have been credible. Given the general magnificence of their claims, though, that lack is not credible.

FatherMithras

I think gstafleu pretty much nailed the point that's been made before in this thread. The odds of the most shocking and unusual events ever to befall mankind not being written about in mass quantities would be highly unusual. Never in history have the dead gotten up from the grave, miracles occured etc. with any kind of reliable witnesses, yet the ONE time it does, with tousands of witnesses, along with historians and people in high office bearing witness to the event, not one of them wrote about it?

the major problem here is that we HAVE sources that SHOULD mention these things. Yet they are absent in the sources specifically covering similar topics, periods, and movements. This is a very clear sign of their falsity. It's not simply an absence of evidence, it's the absence of evidence WHERE WE SHOULD find it.

Solo

I agree. It was a public relations fiasco. Jesus had absolutely no media skills. Inexcusable !

Jiri

Malachi151

Yes and no, I wouldn't say that the lack of evidence is evidence, but it certianly opens the door for closer examination. Here is what I have for my presentation (this will be one slide out of 60 BTW)

1) We know that Christian were looking for other sources that corroborated their beliefs and they quoted those sources any chance that they got. It is highly likely that if any such writings did exist that they would have been quoted in Christian works if not preserved outright. Yes we "lost" a lot of classical writing, the works that were destroyed BY THE CHRISTIANS, but these accounts would have been treasured.

2) THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT IMO, its not just that history doesn't corroborate the Christian story, its also that we can better explain these events as allegory and literary allusion. We can clearly see that these events make references to Jewish and Greek texts and prophecies. They advance the story and make points about Jesus surpassing Moses, fulfilling prophesies, etc. So, its not just that no one else recorded a given event, its also that the inclusion of the event in a gospel makes a point in the story and advances a position or belief that would have been seen as important by the existing religious community at the time.

Roger Pearse

To which sources do you refer?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Keith&Co.

We're not arguing that such literature did NOT exist because it does not exist now.

But when one asks for corroboration for an impossible event, and there is none, then one has to ask why we would believe the impossible event really happened.

If there were one account that corroborated the event, it would be evidence towards supporting the event. Not necessarily PROOF of it, one would have to consider the source of the account, when and why it was written. But it's at least a point of evidence towards the conclusion that it was real.
The phrase 'the absence of evidence is evidence of absence' doesn't mean a lack of evidence is conclusive proof that it never happened, but it is at least a point of evidence towards the conclusion.

jjramsey

Let be get this straight. You accept that there is archaeological evidence in what we now call Nazareth pointing to settlement from before the first century to the present, but object on the grounds that this settlement may have not been called Nazareth until later.

The problem I see with this is that it suggests one of two things:

• Jews had renamed a town to have the same name as a place described in the Gospels. The dating of the Caesarea Maritima tablets would have pushed the renaming of this place before the fourth century when Constantine had influence, so Christians would be in no position to do the renaming.
  
• Christians somehow heard of Nazareth in spite of its obscurity, and anachronistically placed Jesus there. But why would anyone but the Palestinian locals have heard of such a small village, and why would Christians choose this place over the more "biblically correct" Bethlehem? Note, too, that this conflicts with Nazareth being a made-up town backformed from "Nazarene."

One of the big flaws in your analogy with the town named Dish is that it presumes that there were no records that a town was named Dish in 1700. By contrast, we do have records of a town being called "Nazareth" in the first century--but only in the New Testament. Another catch is that "Dish" is a common enough noun that multiple cities could have independant been named "Dish," which is not true of the name "Nazareth."

Quite simply, the simplest explanation is that the town was called Nazareth at least from the first century onward.