EthnAlln

Yes, I would think it very easy to show that at least the first creation story in Genesis is poetry. The constant repetition of the formula "and the evening was and the morning was..." is characteristic of poetry. And surely only a fool expects poetry to be the literal truth. When a poet writes "every minutes dies a man, every minute one is born," we don't think he is giving us the demographic statistics of the earth. He is talking about the continuous cycle of generations. (I don't remember what poet wrote these words, but there is a story that a pedantic mathematician wrote to him to point out that the actual numbers were about 1.3 births per death, which he said was "sufficient for the purposes of poetry," as if the original verse wasn't.)

TomboyMom

[sic] Because they were written decades after the facts by people who did not witness them, and who had a strong vested interest in presenting a particular view.

And no, a person making an assertion retains the burden of proof, and does not shift it just cuz they say so. If you want to assert that the gospels are true, then you should present some EVIDENCE in support of that assertion. Hint: 100 year old preaching is not evidence. In fact, no preaching is evidence. Evidence is made up of facts. Are there any facts that corrobate the gospel accounts, such as historical documents or artifacts?

Why should we doubt the Koran, btw? It is you that have the burden of proof.

Richbee

Within one generation - around 60 A.D. and while many witnesses were alive to contest any errors.

You need a new hobby!

"To sum up, we may quote the verdict of the late Sir Frederic Kenyon, a scholar whose authority to make pronouncements on ancient MSS was second to none:

'The interval then between the data of original composition and the earliest extant evidence become so small to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scripture have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established' "

Link: The Bible and Archaeology, New York and London: Harper, 1940).

Kosh

Yeah. In that year, many scholars still thought the speed of sound to be unbreakable...

Richbee

They did? Tell me, when did the speed of Light break the sound barrier?

And, what does this have to do the Bible? (Unless you want to discuss the Big Bang in Genesis 1:1)

Have modern "scholars" improved on the Bible?

Richbee

The Gospels represent Four, count 'em FOUR independant accounts, and so when were you going to refute History?

People have attacked the New Testament for the last 2,000 Years!

All have failed!

The Christian faith was not born in a vacuum, or appear out of thin air, but rather rests on a strong foundation, and tradition of truth - Judaism with it's tradition of scribes, prophets and prophesy. Not to mention truth telling.

Recall, that Saul/Paul, a Pharisee of all Pharisees, a Hebrew of Hebrews, must verify the basic facts, and confirm the revelation he received on the road to Damascus, and in the tradition, must cross examine first hand, eyewitness accounts.

Read Paul's testimony, in:

[verse=Galatians 1:11 - 18] "..the gospel I preach is not something man made up.." "..I persecuted the Church and tried to destroy it...I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews, and extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers...verse 18: "Then after three years I stayed with Peter, James, etc, in Jerusalem.
( ~ 33 or 35 A.D.) [/verse]

Again Paul writes:

[verse]1 Corinthians 15:3-8 "Christ died for our sins, And that He was buried, and that He has been raised on the third day, And that He appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve; Then He appeared to over five hundred brothers at one time. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; And last of all He appeared to me also,.." [/verse]

History is full of ......Attacks on the veracity of the Gospels

Over the last two hundred years, the historical veracity of the Bible has been under attack from both within and without the faith. The attacks range from questioning whether Jesus ever existed (He did), to postulating bizarre theories regarding Jesus that have far less empirical evidence to back them than do the Gospels themselves. The chart below lists some of the primary skeptics since the 18th century:

Follow along....

Curmudgeon - Date - False Premise

H.S. Reimarus: 1778 - Claimed disciples stole the body of Jesus, and made up the resurrection story

David Friedrich Strauss: 1835- - In Life of Jesus, doubted historical accuracy of gospels

Bruno Bauer: 1882 - Denied that Jesus actually lived

William Wrede: 1901 -- In Messianic Secret, claimed that the evangelists had put words in the mouth of Jesus to make theological points

Albert Schweitzer: 1906 - In The Quest of the Historical Jesus, denies that Jesus was the Messiah

Religions-geschichtliche Schule: c. 1900 -- Drew parallels between Christianity and other religious sects in the Mideast

K.L. Schmidt: 1919 - Claims details of time and place in the Gospels are fabricated

Elizabeth Clare Prophet: 1984 -- In Lost Years of Jesus, pictures Jesus as a mystic traveling in India for 17 years.



A Theosophist!

Michael Bagent, Henry Lincoln: 1982 - In Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Jesus as the husband of Mary Magdalene

G.A. Wells: 1971, 1975, 1982 -- In three different books, questions whether Jesus ever existed

John Dominic Crossan - Jesus Seminar: 1993 - Panel members voted on which words of Jesus are "accurate"; The Five Gospels claim that only 18% of the words attributed to Jesus are verifiable

Gardner, Laurence: 1996 - - In Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Jesus as 1) husband of Mary Magdalene 2) an Essene teacher 3) brother of Joseph of Arimathea

Interestingly enough, though, modern archaeology, and ancient history do verify much of the historical panoply of the Gospels.

Why study the historical Jesus? - A Lesson for the so called "skeptics". - Click HERE

Kosh

Richbee,

why are you cut-and-paste reposting what you have already posted? And what has already been refuted? Argumentum ad Nauseum?

Time for you to go ~elsewhere~

Kosh

I guess that was a rhetorical question

Gamera

Let's stipulate that Hannity can't get anything right except demagoguery

EthnAlln

Textual evidence is certainly against the idea of independence. There is just too much overlap in the Gospels.

There is a similar, very consistent, body of writings, by a number of verifiably different authors, concerning the activities of a man named Sherlock Holmes, who lived during the late Victorian and early Edwardian era. These writings pose exactly the same problems of small inconsistencies among them that the Gospels do.

Of course, there are skeptics who claim that these writings are all legends embroidered around one real man, a Scottish physician named Bell, who actually did not do most of the things attributed to "Holmes" and that the earliest writings, by an author named Doyle, were used as a pattern by later editors adding to the legend. The "Holmes" stories do contain some questionable "miraculous" episodes, debunked by a man named Asimov. But generally the faithful have been able to dismiss such claims and maintain their belief in spite of such quibbling. After all, the fact that later writers have been able to produce absurd theories about Holmes proves that the original stories must have been correct, doesn't it.