steve_bnk

Go ahead, present and discuss something. We debunked the Exodus not too long ago. Noah's flood hs been debunked on several levels here and on the science forum. As none of us were there, the Genesis creation story can not be proven. Nothing other than the gospel witnesses has been presented. There is no coorboration for the gospel events.

There is archealogocal eviodence of the ancient Jews.

Over many years we have not had one theist present any coorboration to the gospels.

You are falling into a very typical pattern for theists here. You make no coehernt case, and resort to invoking some sinister anti religion crusade on our part.

What we know.


1. Rome existed.
2. Israel existed.
3. Conflict and collusion existed between Rome and Israel.
4. There were a number of Jews claiming to be the messiah.
5. Jews eventually revolted and were crushed.
6.There is no evidence supporting the itinerant rabai in the New Testament.
7.By the time of Nicea there were numerous Christian denominations and writings, some contradictory. What you have as the NT was chosen more as political compromise among the competing sects thandivibne inspiration. There is no one singular set of writings penned by authors traceable back to an orginal set of events. If you argue based on the NT, you are arguing based on limited part of the overl theolgies that existed.
8. There is ni physiocal evidence of a global flood, and the Noah story is not supportable in terms of the alleged post flood human diversity and civikizations.
9. Egypt existed but there is no evidence of a Jewish Exodus.

On what basis do you assess the authenticity of the giospels you have? Do you know the history of the specific translation you use? Or do you just assume the modern English words and interpretations you see before you accuratly reflects the original works and alleged events without embelishment for 2000 years?

Pick a specifc issue and make your case.

Sheshbazzar

Adam,
The flaws in your methodolgy have been pointed out to you repeatedly in your referenced previous threads.
Your reasonings in the employing of so many "possiblies", "could have's", "might have's", and "perhap's", simply do not provide any sound basis on which to support or build those conclusions which you are attempting to persuade us of.

It is not reasonable to expect others, particularly non-believers, to accept such flights to imagination and speculations as constituting 'evidence' to anything more than your own personal speculations, and perhaps beliefs.

Your methods for determining which texts you choose to incude or to exclude, or to "Omit xxx and substitute xxx" seem to be utterly arbitrary and subject to your often changing personal whims.
You will find few who will be willing to engage in theories that are founded to little more than the shifting sands of your imagined 'possible' scenarios and personal speculations.

For the sake of your personal theory, you wish to present Nicodemus as being a sneaking, spying, conspirator so that he can serve as one to your speculated 'eyewitness writers', while ignoring the fact that there is not one verse within the entire NT that supports any such speculation, much less the elaborate conclusions which you have proceeded to build upon these unprovinanced speculations.

I am truly sorry, but the fact remains, that no matter how many such threads you might open here, unless you address the the speculative nature of your arguments, you will continue to find that few, if any, will be interested in engaging in much discussion of texts that you have plucked, dismembered, and repackaged to suit your personal fancies like they were so many chicken parts.

.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Adam,

This makes sense. If we do admit one eyewitness, it could very well lead to admitting many eyewitnesses.

A parallel case would be if we admit Alfred the Butler as an eyewitness to Bruce Wayne. Doing so would be opening the door to other witnesses. Alfred was with Bruce Wayne from the beginning, and is a close friend, adviser and confidant, so it would make sense that he would have all the information that we get from the various stories told about Bruce Wayne.

This is not to say that all the stories are told by Alfred. Certainly, we would have to say that Police Commissioner Gordon would have access to enough information to have contributed his stories/events, with some of his own eyewitness material. His daughter, Barbara Gordon, might also conceivably be added as an eyewitness, although she would have had access to just a very limited number of stories. We can also suggest that District Attorney Harvey Dent could have been an eyewitness in some cases too.

Now, we can't say that every story about Bruce Wayne is true and based on an eyewitness account. We can surmise that after the initial core of eyewitness stories, there were stories written and drawn by the Joker who made up many stories that he merely heard and did not himself witness. This should not discredit the original true eyewitness accounts.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Adam

Once again, Jay,
You are clever and amusing.
But when you are presented with prosaic data, your wild flights of fancy don't disprove facts.

And for the umpteenth time, Shesh,
Can you devote at least one post to getting beyond complaining you don't want to read beyond verse one of my reconstructed Proto-Luke?

Adam

I did a double take when I read this one, recalling, "Isn't this the Steve bnk who posted several times
on Gospel Eyewitnesses, such as #39 in which he said
in which he uncharacteristically gets into the point at issue, but unfortunately for him comes down supporting my case. Am I to assume that of his 17,000 posts, 10,000 say the same thing 10,000 times? They are not questions for me specifically, and have presumably been answered 10,000 times. I don't need respond to such general broadsides.

As I imply above by quoting such a condescending paragraph, steve knows nothing at all about what I have been posting here on FRDB. (Or have I misunderstood his humor or satirre?) At least his insults are indirect, unlike so many here on this website.

As best as I can recall (among all the numerous "steve" members), steve bnk is a mythicist, or in any case a mythicist would do better not to admit as above that a [crucified] messiah should not be admitted, as this would make it too easy to accept the Passion Narrative as historical. But if we accept for the sake of argument (the scholars' consensus) that Jesus was crucified, does the Passion Narrative of the Johannine source make sense in the context of the times? And OK to add in the Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem? Is there a key place where a domino must not be allowed to fall, or will the line need to be drawn before the next domino, the Johannine discourses that I will discuss next, my Post #38 in Gospel Eyewitnesses? I argue there that
"The marked change in attitude toward Jesus shows that Nicodemus wrote all this (or at least notes) while Jesus was still alive."

steve_bnk

As I have oft stated elsewhere and on this thread, I believe there was likely a non-divine non-supernatural flesh and blood human HJ upon which the tale grew, or possibly JC in the gospels beinbg a composite figure.

That gets your arguments nowhere. It is an opinion of mine not supportable by objective facts. There is no support for specific occurances in the gospels.

Sheshbazzar

The problem is Adam, that this alleged 'change in attitute' is only part and parcel of your -highly speculative personal theory-, in which you -choose- to assign large segments the gospel texts to 'Nicodemus' without one iota of actual -textual- support.

Even if there is some 'change in attitude' which you can derive by eliminating huge sections of the actual texts so as to suit your -highly speclative personal theory- you are still far from establishing as any fact your -highly speculative personal theory- that Nicodemus was an 'eyewitness' to, or the writer of any of your selected texts.
Not even most devout of Christian scholars would endorse such a methodology.

Can you name even half a dozen -recognised CHRISTIAN NT textual scholars- who accept or support your 'Nicodemus as the gospel writer' conspiracy theory?

It appears that your efforts to push these highly -speculative pesonal theories- here are a direct result of being consistently ignored or rejected by whatever Christian sites or audiances where you have previously attempted to present this personal highly speculative and unprovinanced theory.

.

Sheshbazzar

For the umpteenth time you have addressed me with a personal insult that in no way addresses the actual objections and arguments being raised.

No matter how many times I read through your selections of verses, (and I have, repeatedly, contrary to your multiple insults within these threads) no matter how many times I, -or anyone else- takes the time to read through that selection of verses you have listed, it will not, as you have presented it, comprise any kind to 'Gospel' as all you have presented are plucked, dismembered, and rearranged chicken pieces. A tale sorely lacking in plot and character develpment, or any rational for its presentation or existence.

IF that which you have presented in your listing of verses was -all- that comprised the original 'Gospel' text, it would have never gotten off the ground.
The story simply 'does not fly' in the plucked, dismembered, and truncated version you have here been postulating.

Tom Sawyer

It's less of a "refusal" to acknowledge it and more of a lack of decent rationales to acknowledge it. It's along the same lines of how people don't refuse to acknowledge that Hercules once wrestled a lion but instead don't have a good reason to suspect that it's a historical account as opposed to a fictional story. There just isn't enough supporting evidence for the claim to accept it as factual.

Personally, I think that it's much more likely that the Jesus accounts are based on a real person. How much of that real person is reflected in the Bible story is another question, but I think that it's more likely than not that it's based on someone. What that is, however, is a somewhat baseless assumption on my part which isn't much more than a guess because there isn't enough information to come to a valid conclusion one way or the other.

The question isn't all that important to me, though, so I don't have a big issue with having a position that comes from a fairly baseless guess. If someone feels that the question is important, then the amount of evidence which is required to support it should be proportional to the importance of the matter to them. Given that this evidence doesn't exist, the claim that the Bible is a depiction of historical events should be rejected until such time as that evidence presents itself.

Now, the MJ supposition is, of course, based on just as little as the HJ one. It is more of a negative claim, however, and the claim that something exists is the one which needs to be validated more than the claim that something does not exist, which is rational to take as a default stance until there's a good reason to assume its existence. That means that if you want to make a choice between the two viewpoints, taking the MJ one is quite justifiable if you feel that the evidence doesn't point either way.

aa5874

It is completely erroneous that the MJ position is based on little evidence. The very name Jesus was NOT pulled out of the air. The name Jesus is found in the EXISTING Codices.

MJers do NOT make stuff up about Jesus. They are DOCUMENTED and DATED.

The claim that Jesus was the Son of a Holy Ghost was NOT Presumed--it is found in DATED Texts.

We have many DATED Codices with the Jesus stories with claims that Jesus was the Son of a Ghost, was God the Creator, was NOT human, Walked on water, Transfigured, Resurrected and Ascended to heaven.

See Matthew 1.18-20, Luke 1.26-35, Mark 6.48-49, Mark 9.2, John 1, Acts 1 and Galatians 1.

We also have many many writings from Apologetic sources that claim Jesus was truly the Son of a Holy Ghost, the Son of God and had NO human father.

Plus, 100% of all Texts dated by Paleography or Scientific means do NOT show that there was a human Jesus.

The MJ theory is SOLID and cannot be refuted at all by any credible evidence.

Based on Dated and Documented written statements Jesus was a MYTH.

The disciples and Paul suffer the same Fit.