Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Wayne Delia · 04-28-2004, 08:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

If we rely on the alleged eclipse in Jerusalem, the closest you're going to get (according to NASA/Goddard) is Nov 24, 29CE and that was only a partial eclipse.

If we rely on the Bible, however, the closest we're going to get is plus or minus two weeks from whenever it was that Jesus was pinned to the sticks. It occurred during Passover, at a time when the moon was full - that is, when the earth was between (not necessarily exactly between) the moon and the sun. In order to have a darkening of the earth by way of a solar eclipse, the moon has to be between the earth and the sun, which only happens at a new moon, not a Passover full moon.

WMD

Wayne Delia · 04-28-2004, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chapka

Of course, you still need to provide evidence that the letter was written by Paul, and by the same Paul who is described in Acts. This is a major reason why the Gospels, for example, fail as contemporary documents; the traditional "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John" attributions were added centuries later by the Catholic Church. I don't know how this applies to the New Testament epistles.

Actually, some of the NT epistles of Paul are considered genuine and properly attributed. The problem, of course, is that Paul admits he never met Jesus in person while Jesus was alive or while Jesus was on the earth after His resurrection. Rather, Paul claims a contradictory supernatural experience of a blinding light and an etherial, disembodied voice of Jesus communicating with him along the road to Damascus.

WMD

Gregg · 04-28-2004, 08:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wayne Delia

Actually, some of the NT epistles of Paul are considered genuine and properly attributed. The problem, of course, is that Paul admits he never met Jesus in person while Jesus was alive or while Jesus was on the earth after His resurrection. Rather, Paul claims a contradictory supernatural experience of a blinding light and an etherial, disembodied voice of Jesus communicating with him along the road to Damascus.

WMD

That's from Acts. Paul himself doesn't describe his experience this way at all, nor does he say where it happened. The closest he comes is talking in the third person about a man "caught up in the third heaven" (2 Cor. 12:2). Here's the complete quote:

Quote:

2I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. 3And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—4and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

Amaleq13 · 04-28-2004, 11:22 AM

Wayne Delia,

Good points about the Passover moon. I will be interested to see what specific evidence is used to argue for the year 33CE. I wonder if it will involve selective reading?

Meanwhile, let's get back to the OP:

Quote:

Originally Posted by azuresky

Therefore, this particular text in Daniel [9:24] appears to be asserting that 490 years from a key event the Jewish people will be finished with transgression, will have wickedness atoned for, and will find themselves forgiven and free from sin...<snipped>...So, what is the key event that triggers the 490 year countdown toward the expiation of "sin" and "transgression?" Daniel 9:25 declares "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem..."

The complete passage reads:

"So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress."

According to your previous interpretation strategy, we are being told here that it will take 49 years (seven weeks) and 434 years (sixty-two weeks) between the time of the decree and the time of the Messiah. That gives us 483 years. What happened to the other seven from the previous passage? How do you determine that the author wasn't, in the first passage, rounding off the more specific figure given later?

Quote:

Therefore, the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild initiates the countdown which culminates in the forgiveness of sin. This decree was issued in the seventh year of Artaxerxes I in 458 B.C.

Why do you choose this decree rather than the more obviously appropriate one from Cyrus, the king of Persia, when he ordered the Temple to be rebuilt (538 BCE)?

The actual decree of Artaxerxes is given a couple chapters earlier but it only allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem along with some cash from the treasury. If you interpret Ezra 9:9 to suggest Artaxerxes giving permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, why weren't they actually built until the time of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1:3)?

Magus55 · 04-28-2004, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

azuresky and Magus55,

If you really want to return to the OP, how about you defend the assertion that Jesus was crucified in 33 CE? This was brought up but buried under the subsequent avalanche of somewhat tangential arguments. It has yet to be defended with anything more than an appeal to an alleged majority of scholars. What is the basis for this assertion?

If we rely on the alleged eclipse in Jerusalem, the closest you're going to get (according to NASA/Goddard) is Nov 24, 29CE and that was only a partial eclipse.

Do we give the author of Daniel any "wiggle room" or does a prophecy have to be EXACTLY correct to qualify as "fulfilled"?

Its very common for Biblical authors to round, so I'd say Daniel doesn't have to be an exact date. It can be within a few years of his date. Even coming up with a date plus or minus 10 years of the actual date is impressive for someone who predicted it a 1000 years earlier.

spin · 04-28-2004, 01:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by azuresky

Our physical descriptions of Alexander come from secondhand sources. Alexander's likeness is not depicted on coins contemporary with his life. His portrait is only found on coins minted after his death. We do find Herakles, Zeus, and other gods featured on his coins quite often, however.

You write: "You ignore the fact that there are physical traces that Alexander walked the earth."

What do you mean? Do you mean destruction levels in certain cities? Hey, I'm not denying that a Macedonian army led by a confederation of generals passed through the ancient Near East and conquered an empire. This army left scattered coins everywhere. Here's an interesting fact: On the coins minted by the Macedonian generals and depicting the portraits of various gods, the epigraph "Alexandros" can be found. This motto is translated as "Man-defender" and probably refers to the special way Herakles and Zeus protected their Macedonian soldiers throughout numerous dangerous conquests. Americans also have a motto engraved on their currency, which of course is, "In God We Trust." Now, it is unlikely that the epigraph "Alexandros" refers to a title for a king or ruler, since we would expect numerous contemporary historians to have mentioned this conqueror of such a vast sprawling empire. Since secondary sources are not allowed, we have no reason to identify "Man-defender" as the title of a monarch or leader.

You asked if there was another Jesus Christ with a brother named James that Antiquities 20.9.1 could be referring to instead of the Biblical Jesus Christ and James. The answer is probably "no". The Christian church was well-established in Jerusalem during the A.D. 60's. Josephus would never have confused his readers by mixing up the Christian Jesus Christ and James with a less familiar Jesus Christ and James.

By the way, I'm just having fun with the whole Alexander thing. All I'm attempting to do is to remind people that we have very little history when we constantly mistrust our secondary sources. For some reason, I'm always running into people (on other sites) who demand only primary sources relating to Christ and even insist that Christians provide the original copy of those primary sources!!! Yikes!!!

You failed dismally. Not just destruction levels, but new cities, the end of the Persian empire, conquests beyond the Persians. Now you might say that that doesn't mean that Alexander did it. But I respond that someone did it in a very short time. I'll call that someone Alexander, as his immediate successors did. They named the cities called Alexandria after someone and that naming and those cities are hard evidence to an Alexander. The coins in this context have more meaning than you are prepared to give them. They show the man who also fits the statues and the literary descriptions. Some of them are within 20 years of his death. You may play devil's advocate and deny that life, but who did conquer all that territory at one time and found all those cities (as someone certainly did)? We have his father's tomb.

I personally give people like you a different example, Ramses II. Not only do you have vast contemporary evidence for the man in Egypt, but it's also in the enemy camp in Hatti, copies of treaties in both countries signed between the two countries featuring the two kings of the time (so you can compare them). But wait, you even have the man's body and some of his relatives to show that they were related, plus their tombs.

No this sorry sort of attempt to say that historical methodology is too hard for everyone doesn't work.

spin

Kilgore Trout · 04-28-2004, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

Wayne Delia,

Good points about the Passover moon. I will be interested to see what specific evidence is used to argue for the year 33CE. I wonder if it will involve selective reading?

It may have been arrived at by process of elimination by using years when passover fell on a Friday. And selective reading....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

According to your previous interpretation strategy, we are being told here that it will take 49 years (seven weeks) and 434 years (sixty-two weeks) between the time of the decree and the time of the Messiah. That gives us 483 years. What happened to the other seven from the previous passage? How do you determine that the author wasn't, in the first passage, rounding off the more specific figure given later?

In the next few verses it says after the annointed one is "cut-off" there is another "week" in which the city and the temple are destroyed. Therefore if jesus is said "annointed one" then his death would have to be 483 years after the decree. Seven years later, the temple would have to be destroyed. The temple wasn't destroyed till 37 years or so later.

The other problem with this is that according to Daniel, "sins will be forgiven" after the 70 weeks and the 70 weeks is not up until the temple is destroyed. According to christian mythology, the moment of christ's death is when sins were forgiven, not many years later. That is another reason why jesus can't fit Daniel 9, no matter when his death took place.

Amaleq13 · 04-28-2004, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

It may have been arrived at by process of elimination by using years when passover fell on a Friday. And selective reading....

When I got home, I dug around my computer for some notes on the subject. I found an old, buried article containing exactly what you describe and the results obtained were April 7, A.D. 30, and April 3, A.D. 33. The article mentioned the discrepancy between the Synoptics and John but I think they went with the former in establishing the date.

Now there is just the "little" problem of why the most obviously appropriate decree was not chosen...

Surely it wasn't to preserve the math!

Quote:

In the next few verses it says after the annointed one is "cut-off" there is another "week" in which the city and the temple are destroyed. Therefore if jesus is said "annointed one" then his death would have to be 483 years after the decree. Seven years later, the temple would have to be destroyed. The temple wasn't destroyed till 37 years or so later.

So the first verse was a "grand total" that should have encompassed the time between the decree and the destruction of the temple?

This does not appear to be helping azuresky's case at all and neither does the other problem you point out.

Amaleq13 · 04-28-2004, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magus55

Its very common for Biblical authors to round, so I'd say Daniel doesn't have to be an exact date. It can be within a few years of his date. Even coming up with a date plus or minus 10 years of the actual date is impressive for someone who predicted it a 1000 years earlier.

I agree that getting within 10 years would be an impressive prediction for a mere mortal man. As a divinely inspired prophecy, however, I think we can expect a bit more from the Creator of the Universe don't you?

Regardless, as Kilgore Trout has explained, we should be counting 483 years from the decree rather than 490. Until either you or azuresky provides a really good reason to skip the obvious fit of Cyrus' decree in favor of the other, I don't think we even approach the error range you suggest. In fact, we don't even reach the Common Era but land around 55BCE!

I can't even give the benefit of the doubt to a human on that one!

Kilgore Trout · 04-28-2004, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magus55

Its very common for Biblical authors to round, so I'd say Daniel doesn't have to be an exact date. It can be within a few years of his date. Even coming up with a date plus or minus 10 years of the actual date is impressive for someone who predicted it a 1000 years earlier.

Considering jesus doesn't fit at all as I just explained above, it's not at all impressive. As I said, you can't count 70 "weeks" till jesus' death, you have to count 69 "weeks". And the temple wasn't destroyed a "week" later. It was destroyed 5 "weeks" later. Also since there is no way to know that jesus "died for our sins," or jesus is an anointed one, it would be begging the question to say jesus fulfills Daniel 9. Who knows? Maybe one of the thieves was the messiah. After all, according to christians, the messiah will not be recognized and jesus was recognized by some people, so that disqualifies him. I don't think anyone thought one of the thieves was the messiah....

I vote for the "bad" thief.

So... are you ready to renounce your lord yet?

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