FatherMithras

Jesus wouldn't have gotten a tomb anyway^. The crucified were put in piles and eated by wild animals.

RBH

Split and moved from E/C thread.

RBH
E/C Mod

Terrible Heresy

I think at least a semi-detailed list of what you consider to be historically true from the Gospels is called for. I mean, if you can find a single person that claims every single thing in the Gospels is wrong then I will happily join you in labeling them as stupid, if not stupider then the worst creationists out there(and that's not a small task with Hovind roaming the earth)

Lets get a list of the archeological proof for these things you claim are true.

Leave out the obvious stuff like the fact that Rome existed. List some of the stuff you know is contested. Making an assertion about archeology proving something about something does no good.

Mars Man

Without being able to see just where the split had come from, I hope I may be excused for backtracking or overlapping certain points, while jumping in on this topic at this point--since it's still pretty new.

I like the way FatherMithras highlighted the value in at least refuting the arguments by testing--those that can be, at least. I would vouch for the conclusion that simply the contintment achieved by some through Chrisitianity (for the discussion at hand) is enough for them, but such may not necessarily be good for the greater society, in many cases.

Regarding historical inaccuracies in the Gospel narratives, or even in NT, it may be good to put some out on the table and at least look at them, so I'll do that here:

Taking the Gospel Narratives to be kerygmatic bio-historiographs of the norm for the Greco-Roman world, and the more often agreed upon chronological order from about the area of the trip up to Jerusalem for the final time, I would start by taking the account of the meeting of one or two blind man/men while going into or out of Jericho.

Taking the direct quotations as fairly being representative of any original autograph, we could rightfully argue that verse 18:41 of Luke, contradicts that of Matthew 20:32 while verse 18:41b contradicts that of Mark 19:51 b. Verse 18:35;19:1 contradict Matthew's 20:29 and Mark's 10:46.

I would argue that since we are pretty much obligated to reason that the authors intended the readers (the direct and immediate audience) to understand the direct quotations as being verbatim, we have, along with the historical explanations given in the episode, three counts of historical error.

I would like to put that on the table for testing and further insight into it.

FatherMithras

Why thank you good sir.

Mars Man

You are most welcome, my friend.

And as is often the case, I tend to prefer to mispell some word or another, so 'contintment' should have read 'contentment'--although I'm sure all caught it and understood. And that final 18:35; 19:1 would have been Luke's.

Sorry...

LambdaCalculator

I think you may mean "corroborates". Anywho, this statement could not be more false if it came from the keyboard of a creationist on biology. You have, in fact, been refuted on this numerous times. There is not a shred of evidence corroborating the gospel narratives outside of Bible. Even if you take the gospels to have been likely written by people who knew the Jesus figure, all you have are four accounts. I can easily find four people who think that Elvis isn't really dead, especially if I'm using the internet.

It's an article of faith to assume that the canonical writings in the Bible are accurate historically while dismissing everything else from the intertestamental periods as pseudopigripha and apocrypha. Got that: article of faith.

Amaleq13

Agreed. They are as ignorant or dishonest as those who declare the Gospels to have complete historical accuracy.

The Gospels make several claims that are well-supported by evidence but, to my knowledge, none of those verified claims are actually relevant to any of the theologically significant assertions made by Christians.

For example, the Gospels claim that Pontius Pilate was in charge during the time in which the stories appear to be set. Given that apparent time frame, this claim is supported by external evidence. It is, however, utterly irrelevant to and incapable of supporting the more theologically significant claims that Pontius Pilate met Jesus, interviewed Jesus, found Jesus innocent of any crime but had him executed anyway. Those claims continue to lack any reliable external support. Josephus is the only real contender but, as the vast majority of scholars recognize, this potentially supporting passage has been tampered with by Christian editors and the extent of that tampering is unknown. Speculative attempts to reconstruct the "original text" aside, a rational consideration cannot help but conclude that the evidence in Josephus has been rendered unreliable by this tampering.

I'm sure Orthodox_Freethinker is familiar with dishonest apologists who attempt to generalize the support of the mundane claim to the more theologically significant claims and/or ignore the fact of tampering to embrace speculative text reconstructions but I'm hopeful that Orthodox_Freethinker recognizes this to be an illogical effort.

Jack

One answer was provided by Israeli scholars long ago. The presence was real but the numbers were very small and greatly exaggerated in the oral tradition that passed down the story. David ben Gurion (a noted scholar as well as politico) suggested that the people Moses led out of Egypt numbered considerably less than 500. Such a small group could easily escape leaving an archeological record. Exaggeration of numbers is one of the most common traits of oral traditions.

Jack

Sven

And how did <500 people manage to conquer Canaan (and leave no evidence of this, BTW)?