Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aChristian · 11-14-2005, 05:30 PM

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Originally Posted by Weltall

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Originally Posted by mata leao

Pilgrims, scribes,seekers, holy men ect from througout palestine came to Jerusalem to study and learn and they wrote and copied and transcribed, even while the disciples were still in Jerusalem after the resurrection of Jesus.

If so many people were running around and writing things down while the disciples were still around, why is it that not one single source outside the bible attests to the events that take place within it? For example, how is it that every writer in that period missed the resurrection of dead saints? Some of these seekers of yours must have seen them if your assertion is true but they seem to have forgotten to write it down. Funny that.

I assume many people did see it and stories were circulated. However, the church believed that God inspired the authors of scripture to write without error. Although there may have been a few who saved 'a letter from Aunt Martha' who happen to be there and saw it, many copies were made of the account given by God to the inspired authors. The church knew that this was both more reliable than Aunt Martha's account (it's hard to beat inerrant no matter how reliable Aunt Martha was) and it was God's very words. For this reason there were made many copies of God's inspired words and probably none of Aunt Martha's account. It would be nice to have it for history's sake, but God has given us all we need with the reliable witness that we possess today.

gregor · 11-14-2005, 05:44 PM

Correct, aChristian. The golden tablets of Joseph Smith were God's word, for sure.

aChristian · 11-14-2005, 06:03 PM

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Originally Posted by Alf

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Originally Posted by aChristian

Eusebius is considered the father of early church history. Much of what we know is from his history. He had access to a good library. To consider his work 'guesswork' is to just ignore the history. You can make up your own history, but Eusebius was in a much better position to know.

Maybe, but he was also unfortunately someone with an agenda and someone who wasn't afraid of forgery and other cheats in order to promote that agenda.

This is very sad since it is correct what you say, that he was one of the few who had access to such a big library. It is really sad for christians today that there wasn't a person with more integrity that had access to that same library. One would think that an all powerful god would have arranged things better this way for the christians. It appears that this god if he had any finger into what happened has tried his best to discredit the bible as he could.

Alf

I think if you follow the link below by Julian to Lightfoot's comments, you would get a more accurate opinion about Eusebius.

aChristian · 11-14-2005, 06:05 PM

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Originally Posted by gregor

Correct, aChristian. The golden tablets of Joseph Smith were God's word, for sure.

Sorry, no evidence for this and much evidence against it.

Godless Wonder · 11-14-2005, 06:29 PM

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Originally Posted by aChristian

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Originally Posted by gregor

Correct, aChristian. The golden tablets of Joseph Smith were God's word, for sure.

Sorry, no evidence for this and much evidence against it.

aChristian, gregor is not being serious in his assertion. The implication is that YOUR assertions are no more valid than his "assertion" that "The golden tablets of Joseph Smith were God's word." that is, your assertions are not valid.

aChristian · 11-14-2005, 06:35 PM

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Originally Posted by Godless Wonder

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Originally Posted by aChristian

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Originally Posted by gregor

Correct, aChristian. The golden tablets of Joseph Smith were God's word, for sure.

Sorry, no evidence for this and much evidence against it.

aChristian, gregor is not being serious in his assertion. The implication is that YOUR assertions are no more valid than his "assertion" that "The golden tablets of Joseph Smith were God's word." that is, your assertions are not valid.

There is plenty of evidence to back up my assertions and I have given you some places to start you search on the web if you are interested.

Equinox · 11-14-2005, 07:47 PM

aChristian wrote:

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Just because they don't say the things you would expect them to say doesn't remove the historical witness.

Well, it does if you presume that the other ones are at least somewhat accurate. For instance, if you were to go by only John, think about what Jesus' life would look like. Jesus

Never would tell a parable
Never would cast out a demon
Goes around talking about how awesome he is and how he is the messiah, while in the other gospels he hides it and tells people not to tell anyone
Would not have a special birth
Would not be baptized by John the Baptist
Would not be tempted in the wilderness
Wouldn't pray in the garden of Getheseme

Wow. I guess none of those were important enough to even mention!

What about the Lords Supper? Not important? John doesn't appear to think so, he never mentions it, even though he mentions that they had dinner.

In the other gospels, Jesus at one point takes John and Peter up a hill and then Jesus gets lit up like a Christmas tree in glory. Remember, John's main point throughout his gospel is that Jesus is an awesome god. You really think he just didn't decide to include the freakin' transfiguration because it wasn't important or because someone already said it? If he wasn't including stuff that other people already said, then why mention the crucifixion or resurrection? Oh, I guess because those *are* important, unlike the transfiguration and the last supper?

Now, since it is asserted that the gospels are inspired by the holy spirit, and since there is only one god, then that means that believing the gospel of John is legitimate means we have to beleive the Jesus himself dictated these confused stories about himself. Even worse, the courtroom oath comes to mind "do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?". It seems that claiming that the Gospel of John is real is claiming that the holy spirit told an inaccurate story at least once, and maybe more than once. That seems an awful lot like blaspheming the holy spirit, which according to Mt 12:31 is a ticket straight to hell.

Looking at many gospels, I have to admit that if Mk, Lk and Mt are accurate, then the Gospel of Thomas seems much more likely to be accurate than the Gosple of John. The GoT at least has a lot of very similar sayings, and few if any radically different public portrayals of Jesus like John has.

It's not about "removing" the historical witness - it's about deciding if there is a historical witness there to begin with. I don't assume that the gospel of mary magdalene has a historical witness either until it is examined.

Take care-

Equinox

Alf · 11-15-2005, 12:26 AM

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Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

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Originally Posted by Alf

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Originally Posted by aChristian

Eusebius is considered the father of early church history. Much of what we know is from his history. He had access to a good library. To consider his work 'guesswork' is to just ignore the history. You can make up your own history, but Eusebius was in a much better position to know.

Maybe, but he was also unfortunately someone with an agenda and someone who wasn't afraid of forgery and other cheats in order to promote that agenda.

This is very sad since it is correct what you say, that he was one of the few who had access to such a big library. It is really sad for christians today that there wasn't a person with more integrity that had access to that same library. One would think that an all powerful god would have arranged things better this way for the christians. It appears that this god if he had any finger into what happened has tried his best to discredit the bible as he could.

Alf

Could you give examples of where you think Eusebius says things that he knew to be false.

Eusebius is certainly sometimes wrong and IMO sometimes distorts by deliberate omission.

However it is harder to find clear examples of him making positive statements he knew to be false.

Andrew Criddle

I would count "deliberate omission" as a form of lying and deceit.

Also, it is my understanding that it was Eusebius himself who wrote the paragraph about Jesus in Josephus. Perhaps using or mending a paragraph Josephus himself had written about someone else and relocated it to be placed where it is found today.

Alf

Alf · 11-15-2005, 12:29 AM

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Originally Posted by Julian

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Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Could you give examples of where you think Eusebius says things that he knew to be false.

Eusebius is certainly sometimes wrong and IMO sometimes distorts by deliberate omission.

However it is harder to find clear examples of him making positive statements he knew to be false.

Andrew Criddle

Lie might be a bit strong but I suspect that Alf is referring to Eusebius's famous statement, "How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived."

More on this here: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/eusebius/pe_data.htm

It should, at least, make us read Eusebius with quite a grain of salt as you allude to as well.

Julian

Yes :-)

Julian · 11-15-2005, 07:04 AM

There are just so many things wrong with this post that I feel compelled to dismantle it.

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Originally Posted by aChristian

As John states, if all the things were written that Jesus did, the whole world wouldn't have room for the books.

That makes it even more interesting that no one felt the need to write anything about him outside the bible. Why do you think that is?

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As I read the gospels, I get a different viewpoint from each one.

As you should, seing how they are quite different and contradictory.

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They cover some of the same material as I would expect could (but doesn't have to) happen in any set of biographies. You can also read biographies about certain parts of George Washington's life that don't contain other well known stories I'm sure. (I'm no expert on George Washington.) The point still stands that the people back then who knew the facts accepted them as history.

You keep saying this. What people are you referring to? Not one of the authors of the NT claim to be an eyewitness. As a matter of fact, there seems to be no one 'who knows.' The gospels were all anonymous and make no claim to be direct witnesses. Paul never met Jesus. Who are you talking about here?

And the fact that they considered them historical has no bearing on our evaluation. Those same people also considered Herodotus history, you think the Phoenix is a real bird?

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Just because you expect something different to be recorded in that history doesn't change the fact that the people of the time who knew much more about it than you do considered it history.

There it is again. What people?

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I would guess (and again this is only a guess why, if it is wrong it still doesn't affect the fact that it was accepted as history) that one reason John's gospel is different is because the other gospels had been in circulation and were well known to the church when John wrote. For this reason he didn't include some of the well known material.

And the fact that the christology is completely different doesn't give you a clue as to a better explanation?

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In addition, John was writing as an old man who had time to reflect and meditate in communion with God on much of what had happened. God may have revealed new significance to events that John always knew, but didn't realize the significance of them until later in life.

Baseless assertion. We have no evidence of divine revelation and any appeal to such a mechanism puts you outside of science inquiry.

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On another note, Mark and Luke may have used Matthew (I know, you think Mark was written first, but I haven't seen any evidence to convince me of that) as they wrote their gospels. There may have even been a logia, although I doubt it.

Does that mean that you don't believe Papias? We do know that logias existed, like Gospel of Thomas.

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Even if these theories were true, they don't mean that Mark and Luke were not in contact with eyewitness to the events.

It doesn't mean that they were either. Tell me, if Matthew and Luke are accurate, in what year was Jesus born?

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Mark may have heard the accounts from Peter and used Matthew as he wrote his gospel.

Sure, and that explains his vitriolic attacks on Peter all throughout. That would be sarcasm.

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(Moses probably used records passed down from Adam when he wrote the Pentateuch.)

And this depsite the fact that achaeology, and science in general, has shown that most of the Pentateuch is demonstrably wrong? Like no exodus, no flood, etc. You are appealing to magic and, once again, that puts you in a fairytale land.

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This doesn't prevent them from writing accurate history. Mark may have been the boy who fled naked from the garden and been an eyewitness himself to much of the story.

Baseless conjecture.

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This doesn't prevent him from using another eyewitness' document when recording the story that he remembered and lived through. Luke using Matthew doesn't contradict his introduction where he said that he checked everything out carefully with eyewitnesses.

You don't find it suspicious that he needed to emphasize how supposedly accurate his account was? Especially, considering how it conflicts and contradicts the other synoptics?

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The point is, the people who were alive at the time said that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all wrote accurate histories of Jesus. That's the history.

Who cares what they said? They were in no position to have any authoritative view on this. Why do you keep insisting that they somehow knew better than us? They were not eyewitnesses nor did they seem to know any.

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Attempts to disprove this without any evidence from the people who were alive then and knew what went on are unconvincing to say the least. One last item that you are leaving out is that the early church considered them not just history, but history inspired by God without error. God would have no problem giving the story to four different people in exactly the same words.

Yet he didn't. He gave it to more than 20 people and every one of the gospels conflict. Even the four accepted gospel can't agree on many things. We have thousands of NT manuscripts and I don't think that any two agree completely. I think your god needs to go back and take remedial divine inspiration. Also, the early church disagreed on what was authorative and what wasn't. Even today the christians are split among thousands of sects and denominations.

Julian

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11-14-2005, 05:44 PM	#132
gregor Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Texas Posts: 932	Correct, aChristian. The golden tablets of Joseph Smith were God's word, for sure.

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