openlyatheist

I’ve been trying to compile my own mini-FAQ on Christianity. So I’ve taken this small exerpt from a Christian elsewhere on the internet so that I can collect opinions on the truth of these claims.

Here’s what one Christian said he believed:

1. We have the records of multiple eye-witness testimonies,

2. written during the lifetimes of tens of thousands of witnesses to the life of Jesus,

3. which was in fullfillment of specific prophesies about his birth, acts, death, and resurrection.

What do you think of the 3rd claim? All info is appreciated.

Joan of Bark

1. The vast majority were probably not eye-witness testimonies. Besides, we have multiple eye-witness testimonies for alien abductions, ghosts, and Elvis-after-death.

2. Tens of thousands?

3. Absurd. Prophesies are usually so vague they can be manipulated into applying to a number of people. Also they were applied to Jesus by his followers, who wanted them for propaganda. Besides, why don't practising Jews believe He was the messiah? They know the OT better than anyone, and they don't believe He fulfilled the prophesies.

show_no_mercy

We have the records of multiple eye-witness testimonies, written during the lifetimes of tens of thousands of witnesses to the life of Jesus - but for some reason, none of these tens of thousands of witnesses happened to be philosophers, historians, and theologians who were contemporaries of Jesus and would have definitely written about all of these miraculous things.

The fact is, there are no eyewitness testimonies. Anyone who says that there are is trying to sell you something. The gospels were written anonymously in third person. Those two facts alone preclude any sort of "eyewitness" testimony.

As a matter of fact, it seems more likely that the gospel writers go ahold of an LXX and simply picked out "cool sayings" in their Greek version of the OT and turned them into "prophecies" for their Jesus character to fulfill.

Sheshbazzar

What all of the gospels, and most of the other NT writings suffer from, as far as being credible eyewitness accounts is the missing "I".
Where if the gospel accounts were written by the original "eye" -witnesses, or even being written down as verbatim accounts by others for them, there would be much more use of "I".

How strange if these are really "eye-witness" accounts, that not one of these "eye-witness" is able to say;

"I was standing on steps of the Temple, and I saw Jesus, Peter, and John walking towards me."

Or "I was astonished when I saw my old friend and neighbor Seth, who had been crippled from birth, jump to his feet and begin to dance."

Or "From my hiding place behind a heap of baskets I was able to watch, and I heard Dan speaking..."

For claimed "eye-witness accounts" there are altogether far too many "I"s, "my"s, and "me"s missing.

Toto

Everyone - please notice that openlyatheist thinks he has the first two points covered and is looking for responses to the third claim.

openlyatheist: read the stickied thread on overdone subjects. Christian claims on prophecy tend to rely on Hebrew Scriptural passages that are not specific, or not about Jesus. Tim Callahan of the Skeptics Society has written a book on debunking prophecy - Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment? (or via: amazon.co.uk)

openlyatheist

Thanks for that link Toto. Perhaps I'll move on to the 4th and final component of this series.

An additional question: Is there a thread already dealing specifically with the restoration of Israel as a successful prophecy? This thread seems to address it a little, but I have yet to read it all.

My interest was piqued while listening to a 'Things That Matter Most' radio interview of Sam Harris. The 'rationalist' Christian host seemed to be quite impressed with that prophecy.

spamandham

No we don't.

Where are the tens of thousands of evidences of this nonsense?

Suppose all prophecies were exactly fulfilled. Would that be evidence that he really was god, or would it be evidence that people who never even met him made stories up to show he fulfilled prophecy?

semiopen

The penalty for false prophecy in Judaism is death. If this is true, it seems safe to say that probably the large majority of the prophecies in the Hebrew bible that came true, were predicted after the event happened.

My understanding of this is that a valid prophecy cannot be issued without a timelimit. For example, if someone 2000 years ago said that someday pigs would fly, this would be technically true today (with airplanes), but wouldn't validate that person as a prophet.

We see samples of long delays in the Hebrew Bible, like Genesis 35:31

Clearly, this is evidence that the Bible was written later than literalists say.

Jacob blessing Ephraim before Mannasseh is another more famous example.

I thought this liink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Joseph

has a passage...

which is such a cool way of putting it, it is very difficult to believe it could be wrong.

Regarding modern attempts to reconcile old unfulfilled prophecies with current reality; this is interesting at a certain level, but eventually boils down to being a load of crap

bacht

Yes, might as well de-construct Nostradamus

What I find interesting is the evolution of the idea of prophecy. If the older parts of the OT are at all reliable it would seem that pre-exilic prophets were social and political critics concerned with their own times and troubles.

The writing prophets produced seemingly formulaic denunciations of Israel's external enemies (Moab, Ammon, Syria, Phoenicia et al)

By the time we get to the Qumran writers there is the tendency to interpret old sayings in light of much later history. Maybe Daniel and the apocalyptic thinkers were responsible for this.

aa5874

But, there is an eyewitness to the resurrected Jesus, a writer called Paul.

He did include the word "me" in his "eyewitness" report of Jesus in a resurrected state.

1 Corinthians 15.4-8