gdeering

Ah a live one, I love the rational tone of fantasy


Let's take that 100% and reduce it to the more accurate 0%, what are we left with, "not written by men but by God." Which is what you really mean anyway. So what is the point of debating anything about an eyewitness? They aren't necessary if the book is written by god. It's only a pretense of historicity, since god knows everything, it means the book was written before time, so it did not actually have to unfold in a way we might be able to experience - and no one actually met Jesus. Try as you might no one with an open mind (sceptic or not) believes there is a single eyewitness to Jesus or his passion. There is no biographical information that can be verified. You don't even know his real name in Aramaic. Not that people don't like to play with the - "Jesus ben Joseph" stuff, that's a laugh.

We need an independent source. Books reportedly written by god - which as I have said: by definition preceded the alleged events - can not count as history. We need something outside of the gospels. If only the holy ghost could have inspired a pagan, and we could prove that it was not doctored by Christians later, that would be great. I'll take a Roman's account of the corpses walking around Jerusalem. Nice touch god!

I am so happy that a Christian can see the mythical point of view.

I wish I had more time, I am interested to see how this unfolds.


Gregg

Johnny Skeptic

You made three claims. Let's discuss each of them.

1. The disciples were eyewitnesses to many of the events that took place.

Please state several examples of eyewitness testimonies in the book of Matthew.

2. Even if they weren't at 100% of the events, the Holy Spirit was and helped them.

Please provide historical evidence that the Holy Spirit helped them.

3. After all the books are not written by men but by God.

No, humans wrote the Bible. The only issue is whether or not a God inspired them to write the Bible. Are you an inerrantist? If so, what evidence do you have that the Bible is inerrant?

schriverja

archaeologist,

Since it is clear from your posts that you believe the Holy Spirit helped write the Bible, I am curious as to whether or not you believe the Holy Spirit inspired other texts, such as the Book of Mormon, the Koran, etc.

If you hold the view that the Holy Spirit did *not* inspire those other texts (and I suspect that is your view), what criteria do you use to disqualify those texts? What criteria do you use to qualify the Bible as inspired? Are those criteria the same?

aa5874

It has been totally debunked that the Canon was written by God.

You do not even appear to know the history of the Canon.

Let us examine what is found in a book called "Church History" under the name Eusebius.

"Church History" 3.3.1 So, at least 2 Peter was not written by God even according to the Church itself.

Eusebius would have laughed in your face if you told him God wrote or helped to write 2 Peter.

And now look at the supposed words of the son of God in the Canon.


Mark 9:1 - You must be implying that the son of God was a liar, that God wrote lies or that God cannot count.

The kingdom of God has not been seen and those who stood there have all tasted death including the supposed son of God.

Mathematically, God would appear to be off by about 1900 years minimum.

Look again at the Canon. The supposed son of God told the high priest and those present at his pre-trial hearing that they would see him coming in the clouds.

A lot of clouds have come and gone. Jesus is not known to have been in them unless he came down over middle of the Pacific Ocean at midnight, or some similar site at a similar time.


Mark 14:62 - It must be a man or the devil that wrote Mark 14.62.

Please refer to the Canon. Look at Revelations 22.

Tell me who wrote REPEATEDELY that Jesus was coming back quickly or very soon?

It could not have been God. At least God should have known that his Son would not have been coming in the clouds for at least 2000 years.

Revelation 22.7& 10-12& 20 A Good and true God would not have mis-led people into believing his Son was coming back 2000 years ago and would be seen in the clouds when he knew all along that it would take thousands of years.

It must have been the Devil or men who wrote all the falied predictions in the Synoptics and Revelation.

If the Devil exist, then he must have written something to deceive people. The Devil is a deceiver, right?

It has been thoroughly debunked or demonstrated without reasonable doubt that the Canon was not written by a GOOD GOD, it was written perhaps by mis-guided men or BAD GODS, commonly called Devils.

mountainman

Or they were never written in the 1st century -- but much later.

Atheos

What the opponents of Joseph Smith and the book of Mormon forget is that there were more enemies than friends of Smith and his followers alive at the time. If what the book of Mormon and other writings of Joseph Smith were false then those people would have put a stop to it and Mormonism would not have made it out of the 19th century.

Archeologist, your post belies a lack of familiarity with the evidence regarding the time in question. How can you possibly claim with a straight face that there were no opposing viewpoints when even your own bible accounts are replete with opposing viewpoints from the get-go?

Regardless, the fact remains that your argument begs the question of the veracity of these myths. There is no evidence to support the concept of "inspiration of the Holy Ghost", and there is plenty of reason to doubt that these documents were dictated by some cohesive and extremely intelligent agent. Internally they contradict each other in many key areas, and they include absurdities that would be in keeping with a primitive and pre-technology understanding of the world. On top of that they include details that just didn't happen such as the Roman census requiring everyone to go to their ancestors' homeland to be counted and Herod's slaughter of the babies, not to mention the "night of the living dead" zombie parade in GMatt's crucifixion account.

show_no_mercy

According to the gospel narratives, the "eyewitnesses" were Aramaic fishermen native to Galilee. The gospels themselves were written in Greek, quote from the Greek version of the Tanakh, and in the case of John, are highly influenced by Greek philosophical ideas. In the first century, literacy was a luxury and not a necessity for survival. And the language of the gospels show no signs of being translated from Aramaic. Though apologists are happy to throw their lot on the few Aramaisms in Mark and when John Hellenizes the Hebrew "Messiah" as Μεσσιας. I also know a few Hebraisms but this doesn't mean that I know Hebrew.

There's a disconnect here that apologists simply gloss over.

In order for your gospels to have been written by eyewitnesses, you have to posit quite a few unlikely assumptions. Like native Aramaic fishermen somehow getting a Greek education to the point where they were fluent in Greek, which isn't even their native language, and then preferring to quote from the Greek version of the Tanakh instead of the version of it in their own language.

And not only that, but somewhere along their Greek education they completely forget the geography of the place where they lived their entire lives at to account for the geographical errors in the gospels.

They also completely forgot about Jewish life prior to the fall of the 2nd temple such as calling itinerant preachers "rabbi" instead of "elder" (the former is a reaction to the decentralization of Judaism due to the fall of the 2nd temple), thinking that "all the Jews" (Mk 7:3) had to wash their hands before a meal prior to the 2nd century, thinking that synagoges were commonplace when in actuality their ubiquity was due to the decentralization of Judaism due to the fall of the 2nd temple, and thinking that it was commonplace for Jews to be buried in shrouds prior to the 2nd century, and thinking that the Pharisees would bother to stalk Jesus in synagoges prior to the fall of the 2nd temple.

Nope - all of this is more adequately explained by the gospels being written by Greeks or Diaspora Jews far removed from the sociological context of 1st century Palestine. By Greeks or Diaspora Jews who lived well into a post-2nd temple era.

Huon

No, there is no archaeological evidence. God (which one, G1 or G2, or G3, I do not know) swept everything some time later. Clean, the world must be clean !

archaeologist

No, magic is all about illusion and fooling people. The Bible is not an illusion and it does not fool people. it tells the truth.

"Finkelstein and Perevolosky, who were engaged in considerable survey work in the Negev and Sinai, argue for negliableevidence, if any, which is true not only of ancient desert dwellers but even of 19th century Beduin, whose traces are difficult to identify. They further observe that nomadic societies do not establish permanent houses and the constant migration permits them to move only minimal belongings. Moreover, their limited resources do not facilitate the creation of a flourishing material culture that could leave rich archaeological finds...But for the most part, they speak of the nomadic lifestyle as archaeologically invisible." (Hoffmeier (or via: amazon.co.uk):2005:150)

Proof please. it has never been debunked, as you say but it has been disbelieved for God's requirements are ignored for secular man's idea of doing things. You forget it is God's creation, God's Book, God's salvation and it is God's rules not man's that need to be used here.

(My copy of eusebius is formatted differently than yours it seems, so you would need to be more specific onthe reference pages and chapters. plus you also have to remember that Eusebius' work is not scripture and not infallible, just like Luthor's writings. The Bible trumps both.)

archaeologist

Part 2

No, because we have mss. and fragments that go back to just after the 1st century ended provong that the Bible was written far earlier than some want to believe.

The error you make here is Smith incorporated much of the Bible into the Book of Mormon and any good con artist knows that to be successful one must incorporate a lot of truth into their cons.

Smith needed the Bible to be successful not because the Bible was false but because it was true. We find this with many cultic beliefs. They have many of theirown teachings but they all refer back to the Bible or use a lot of the Bible to deceive people. i.e. JW's, Jim Jones, Children of God, and so on. Even in the ancient world, we know that the ancient false religions incorporated the writings of the disciples and oOT authors into their religious writings. The disciples didnot copy the ancient cults, it was vice versa.

You obviously missed my point and just basically repeated what I said in different words. Please re-read what I wrote and then recall that all the ancient authors surviving today who were not followers of Jesus or the disciples, not one of them presented evidence that the disciples were wrong and lying. Instead they reported what was happening or confirmed what we already know--Jesus was historical, he rose again, he taught the truth.

The disciples were NOT Aramaic but Jewish people. Big difference.

The former-- It is possible that they wrote in Greek,we do not know for the original mss. are not preserved

The latter-- That is an argument from silence. Dever and others assume illiteracy because of the lack of evidence for schooling and because they like to mis-identify what they do find. A lot of archaeologists place their own ideas upon the ancient world and ignore too many facts because those facts get in the way of their re-constructing what the ancients did.

This idea of illiteracy would be similar to archaeologists 1,000 years from now excavating America and discovering the library of congress only and concluding that all of america was illiterate except for government officials.

Don't believe every theory you hear.