EthnAlln

I'll waive the grammar and punctuation. I'm not a pedant. Full marks for content!

Well, maybe one more point, already alluded to in this thread. If you are inventing a Gospel and you want to show that Jesus fulfilled prophecies, all you have to do is comb the scriptures for anything that can be wrenched out of context and called a prophecy. Then you invent an incident in the "biography" you are writing to have that prophecy fulfilled. Simple technique, but apparently effective with some naive readers.

Carin Nel

That is your opinion and the statement is falsifiable!!! I have dealt with this unfair, unojective, unscientific and non- neutral "judgement" of the NT in another thread, but will repeat myself here again due to the repeated claims by almost all of you that the NT (or rather the whole Bible) is a myth that was "invented" by lowly, uninformed illiterate and naive people and now believed by "naive readers" to use your words.That is the reason why Jesus's divinity is also refuted. After reading some of the testimonies on this Discussion Board, I've come to the conclusion that this is the most common intellectual reason why they lost their faith. For each one who thinks that the problem of evil or the progress of science has refuted religion, there are ten (many) who think that textual scholarship ( the "historical-critical method" ) and "higher criticism" have done so by reducing the New Testament texts to myth. Not atheistic philosophers or sceptical scientists, but biblical theologians have performed the miracle of changing wine to water, faith to myth.
Just the data itself makes the myth hypothesis impossible. Why do I say that?
If the same neutral, objective, scientific approach is used on the NT texts as is used on all other ancient documents, then the texts prove remarkable reliable. No book in history has been so attacked, cut up, reconstituted and stood o its head as the NT. Yet it still lives. The state of the manuscrips is very good compared to other ancient documents. We have 500 different copies earlier than 500 AD.Time span is critical when determining if the manuscript is close to the original. The longer the time span, the more of a chance of error. The first New Testament manuscript has only a 25 year span .

The next most reliable text we have is the "Iliad", for which we have ony 50 copies that date from 500 years or less after its origin.
Yet many people would read "Iliad" as the gospel before the Bible.

I should also mention that of the 24,000 New Testament manuscripts they are 15 different languages and they all are accurate in their translation.

Let's look at one more point regarding the accuracy of manuscripts. It is the concept of textual variations and textual corruption. When we compare the Iliad with the New Testament. the Iliad has about 15,600 textual line variations compared to the New Testament which has about 20,000 textual line variations. Not bad considering there are over 23,000 more manuscripts of the New Testament than the Iliad.
The Iliad has 764 lines of textual corruption whereas the New Testament only has 40 lines of textual corruption. So, which is the more accurate document?

We have only one very late manuscript of Tacitus's Annals no one is reluctant to treat that as authentic history.

My point is if the books of the NT did not contain accounts of miracles or make radical, uncomfortable claims on our lives, they would be accepted by every scholar in the world. In other words, it is not objective, neutral science but subjective prejudice that fuels sceptical Scripture scholarship.

As long it this remains the case, we will never be able to fairly debate on this Discussion Board.

Data obtained from: "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell 1979. There is a newer edition of this book which probably has even more powerful proof of the validity of scripture.

Regards:
Carin Nel

Julian

"refuted religion...?" We have religon, that is a fact. You probably meant to say "refuted the bible." Elsewhere you mentioned evidence for the exodus and use material (remnants of pharoah's army found) from Ron Wyatt. Ron Wyatt was a fraud. The exodus didn't happen. Check out some factual sources from real scientists, like The Bible Unearthed (or via: amazon.co.uk). I am not saying that you are lying or malicious or anything like that, you are simply incredibly misinformed, nothing you cannot rectify.

We have to reject miracles until such time as such events can be verified as actually possible, everything else is special pleading, a logical fallacy.
Because, people like you are not aware of the results of serious scientific scrutiny.
The number of manuscripts available have nothing to do with the veracity of the contents. This is another logical fallacy. Lee Strobel uses the same argument, it is just silly. So if I write a fictional account and print it out, it is fiction. If I print a million copies, it becomes more true? What about two million?
Absolutely wrong. Where do you get this information from? We do indeed have thousands of NT manuscripts but no two are alike. The number of variations in the NT have been estimated in the hundreds of thousands. We don't know what the original autographs said although we can probably come reasonably close.
Rejecting miracles is good science. You should also familiarize yourself with the field of textual criticism before you attack it.
Josh McDowell is an apologist, fraud, liar and a crackpot who has been refuted numerous times. If that is where you are getting your knowledge from then you ignorance of certain facts is easily explained. Have a look at Evidence that demands a refund, for example.

The field of apologetics and its writers are a joke and I suggest that you stop reading lying propaganda and actually start reading real scholarship, most of which is written by christians, by the way.

Julian

Julian

Forgot to comment on this. How do you know this? You read ancient Greek? You have compared the ancient Greek to a variety of other languages? Because I have and you are wrong. Besides, which bible are you talking about? The Textus Receptus? Majority/Byzantine? UBS? Something else?

Julian

Diogenes the Cynic

I'll take the ten assertions of "fulfilled prophecy."
I hardly know where to start with this. First, the verse says there will be "62 weeks," not 483 years between the return from exile and the "cutting off" of the last "annointed one" (which refers to the high priest, Onias III, not "THE Messiah, but simply "AN annointed). 62 "weeks" of years is 434 years -- roughly the time between the end of the Baylonian exile (under another "anointed," the Persian king, Cyrus who captured Babylon and ended the exile) and the beginning of the Seleucid persecution.

I know that this stuff can be hard to follow if you don't know the historical context of the book of Daniel but to put it as simply as possible, Christian translators and interpreters typically distort Daniel 9 through a combination of mistranslation (like adding a definite article "the" to the Hebrew word mashiyach, effectively turning a descriptor into a title), conflation of multiple "anointeds," "leaders" and "princes" into one and a completely bogus reckoning of years based on a fabricated assertion that a Jewish year is 360 years.

And how do you know what year Jesus was crucified, by the way? How do you know what year he was born?
Psalms 22 is not about the Messiah and it doesn't say "pierced." That's a mistranslation of a scribal error. A Hebrew word meaning 'like a lion" was first mistakenly copied as a very similar Hebrew word meaning "dig." That error in turn was mistranslated into English as "pierced." The subject in context is not the Messiah. This particular "prophecy" has been beaten to death around here. Do a forum search for Psalms 22 and you'll find all the refutation you could ask for.
Genesis 49:10 makes no such prediction and says nothing about the Messiah.
The "anointed one" in Daniel 9:26 was the high priest Onias III. This was not a prediction, incidentally, it was written after the fact.
The "suffering servant" in Isaiah is not the Messiah but is a poetic personification of Israel. The book says so explicitly. These passages have nothing to do with the Messiah. There are no prophecies in the OT that the Messiah would suffer or die for anyone's sins.
Genesis 3:25 makes no mention whatsoever of a Messiah. It just says there will be enmity between Eve's "seed" and the serpent's "seed." The prediction that the Messiah will be born of a woman is hardly very staggering anyway. I was born of a woman. Am I the Messiah?
Jesus wasn't born in Bethlehem. This is a case of the myth being written to fit expectations. The Nativity stories of Luke and Matthew are both relatively late additions in the development of Christian myth, both are clearly fiction and they are hopelessly contradictory and irreconcilable with each other.
I don't know why you keep quoting Genesis. It doesn't contain a single word about the Messiah. This is what Genesis 22:14 actually says:

and Abraham calleth the name of that place `Jehovah-Jireh,' because it is said this day in the mount, `Jehovah doth provide.'(YLT)

How do you get anything about a Messiah out of that? What is your evidence that Jesus was sacrificed on the same mountain? What is your evidence that Abraham and Isaac ever existed at all?
You already listed this one. This verse refers to the murder of the high priest, Onias III. Don't get too excited by the word "Messiah." The Hebrew Bible commonly uses the word for "anointed" for kings and high priests.

Where did you get this stuff, from a Ron Wyatt video? Wyatt was a scam artist, Carin. The truth is that the REAL archaeological evidence (not the faked stuff that you can find on DVDs in Christian bookstores) shows that the Israelites were never enslaved in Egypt at all, never escaped, never camped or wandered in the Sinai desert and never conquered Canaan. They arose from indigenous Canaanite tribes (and originally had the same pantheon of gods) in the southern highlands. They never left and they never "came back."
The Exodus story is probably based on memories of the Hyksos expulsion.

Sven

And then you would be simply wrong: The vast majority of Christians is from Western nations. And I might add that not only scholars from different cultures agree on the facts that I mentioned, also scholars from different religions, including most denominations of Christianity. It's only a few fundamentalist ones which stubbornly refuse to look at the evidence.

Please look up reductio ad absurbdum.

:banghead:
Obviously it does not say this. Otherwise, we would not have > 20000 different denominations disagreeing on how to obtain salvation.
Please look beyond your own nose sometimes.

No, not at all. I only said what an onmipotent being could do. I have no idea why you think I claimed that you said this. The question now becomes: We did your god not do this?

[snip irrelevancy based on lacking reading comprehension]

:rolling: As if no one could make a fire there for himself.

Then please show me where this evidence was published. If it's for real and not simply placed there by someone who wants to get money out of tourists, real archeologists should have commented on it somewhere.

I see that you still don't care about non-falsifiable claims. And that you still ignore that this isn't only about skeptics, it's even about Christian scholars.

I don't believe in the concept of "sin". And non-falsifiable claims are simply worthless. You could replace the above with Muslims and Allah or Hindus and Vishnu and the statement would just be as meaningless as it is now. That's the problem with it.

Hint: Living moral lives and following the bible are two different things.

Morals evolved. One can evolve quite similar behavior in other primates, in part even in other mammals.

Yeah, as long as you reinterpret some passages, this is certainly true.
But I guess you missed the fact that anyone can write a story about a most moral man.

And this is patently untrue. Morals have changed greatly over time, and still vary from one culture to another. Just look back to the 16th to 19th century, in which slavery was something perfectly normal.

Lots of.

Hint: I consider something "preaching" which I can get from a member of (nearly) every religion, just with some words replaced. In other words, statements with have no meaning at all as long as you are not a member of this religion and consider all other religions wrong (at least wrong in some parts).

Hint: When you can not provide an explanation which lasts beyond the first simple question, the explanation is probably not worth anything.

So you agree that you have not provided any evidence that your position is actually true?

So your answer is apparently "Yes". They are just too stubborn (apart from the few ones who "saw the light" after 2000 years).
And has it over occured to you that if you want to have unbiased numbers about the conversions from Judaism to Christianity (and back!), 'Messianic Jews' maybe aren't the most reliable source?

Yes. Faith, that what my senses are telling me actually represents reality in some way. Not perfectly, but at least reliable enough.
That's it.
I know of no human who can live without this faith.

Now please go on and make the stupid point that all faiths are equivalent and thus having faith in Christianity is justified.

Sven

OK, I give up. You are simply so full off false claims propagated by apologists that it's no use answering to you any longer - you have to do some reading for yourself.

Just a hint:

McDowell is a joke and a liar.

pharoah

This certainly explains why there are thousands of different denominations - everyone is free to interpret as they please. Yet the Bible claims that the Holy Spirit would guide believers into all truth. :huh:

In a funny way you've probably hit on something here. This fable has probably played a significant role in shaping many societies negative attitide towards women.

The problem with your analogy of believers/Israelites is that the story claims that not a single person who was in Egypt made it to the promised land. You may want to rethink that one.

All mainstream scholars agree that Isaiah has been heavily redacted. All agree that at least 3 "Isaiah's" contibuted to the text. The startling differences between the LXX and the DSS versions are proof of the fluid nature of the text.

This has been thoroughly debunked here before, but one big problem with this one is the Christian invention of a 360-day "prophetic year" to jam the prophecy into the time frame. another big problem is when did the Messiah "come"? At his birth, bar mitzvah, start of ministry, death, resurrection, or some other date? Any date that's picked is completely arbitrary.

This has also been thoroughly debunked here before. The big problem is that Psalms 22 goes on to describe other things that happened to the "messiah" that are completely at odds with the gospel tales. In other words, it's an out-of-context quote.

Genesis 49:10 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.

Am I missing something here? Where do you see anything about capital punishment here? This verse actually works against your claim. Contrary to the text, the sceptre had departed from Judah long before Jesus, "Shiloh" or any other would-be messiah came.

Daniel 9:26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

This is another verse that contradicts your claim. The Romans destroyed the city and the sanctuary, not the "people of the prince". Also, a flood did not end the Roman-Jewish war.

The notion that one man could die for the sins of others is repeatedly contradicted in Ezekiel 18, which says that every man must die for his own sins. It also contradicts the late prophets ban on human sacrifice, which they called an abomination.

The Genesis verse is clearly referring to mankind in general, not a single person. It's simply saying that men will kill/injure snakes by stepping on their heads, and snakes will kill/injure men by biting their feet. Even if you claim that the protagonists here are Jesus and Satan, you still have a problem. Who is Satan's seed? Please don't repeat the gospels offensive claim that the Jews were the children of Satan.

Micah 5:5 And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.

This is the same man that was talked about in verse 2. The Assyrians passed from history long before Jesus was ever born. Context, context.

Geneis 22:14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.

Huh? Genesis 22:14 makes no claim that a future messiah, or anyone else for that matter, would be killed or crucified there. Where exactly is the prophecy? What's your evidence that this place and Calvary are the same locales? Why would the Romans go the trouble of crucifying someone atop a mountain?

Daniel is a late work, and the messiah that it was referring to was the chief priest.

Avatar

You really should stop visiting the sites defending Ron Wyatt. He had been proven to be a delusional fake over and over again.

aa5874

With regards to Isaiah 7:14, it has already been shown that the entire chapter has no reference to Jesus. Isaiah7 deals with a war between Judah and Israel. In any event, there is absolutely no prophesy regarding Jesus in the entire OT.