Steven Carr

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-b...e?item_id=2636

'I’ve been told that in some Muslim fundamentalist circles people are taught to walk on water as a spiritual exercise. I’m prepared to believe it.'

'First-century Christianity didn’t see itself so much as living in the last days, waiting for the parousia, as living in the first days of God’s new world.'

Gawen

The first statement is rather ambiguous. What does he believe? That they are taught to walk on water or that he believes they actually do walk on water?

The second statement...how can he possibly know what the ancient Christians thought? He doesn't even qualify the statement with some, many,
very few or the majority of. He leads one to believe ALL Christians.

The more I read of Wright, the less I wish to read.

Steven Carr

'Was Jesus resurrected or is it all a fanciful story at odds with the modern world? Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, sets out to prove the historical truth of the resurrection on a journey that takes him to the places where the real Jesus lived and died.'

This is what Channel 4 in the UK say about Wright's hour long TV special, 'proving' the resurrection, broadcast at 18:25 BST today.

Vinnie

'I’ve been told that in some Muslim fundamentalist circles people are taught to walk on water as a spiritual exercise. I’m prepared to believe it.'

The physics of buoyancy say otherwise so I'm not prepared to believe it.

Vinnie

joedad

There's a big difference between truth and accuracy, so such statements leave much wiggle room. And yet another "real Jesus?" Someone needs to develop a test for christian literalism. I submit:

The canonical gospels contain inaccuracies. - affirm/reject
The canonical gospels contain false statements - affirm/reject

Two affirmations are required to confer non-literalist status.

gregor

After reading Ehrman, I would ask: "The beliefs of the dozens of first century groups holding themselves out as Xians is so disparate, how can the bishop hope to speak for all of them."

More importantly, how can he hope to ignore the dozens of "last days" references in the NT.

SLD

NT Wright ignores a lot of history. In one book of his I read, on Paul, he made the comment that later on in the book we would see that Paul was one of the zealots, or part of the Jewish revolutionaries of the first century. A while later in the book he then says, but we have already seen that Paul was a member of the zealots. I looked in vain between the two passages to see what he meant and what I may have missed. I must confess that I put down the book in disgust. If he says he's going to prove something, he better provide at least some evidence to support the position.

SLD

Steven Carr

Paul writes in Philippians 3:6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

As Paul uses the word zeal, that makes him a zealot and one of the Jewish revolutionaries of the first century.

What more proof do you need that Wright is right?

TySixtus

That's a stretch. If I use the word 'Murder', does that make me a 'murderer'?

That is logic of the most dubious sort. So what if Saul/Paul wasn't a horrible liar who hijacked Christianity for his own purposes and totally screwed up the whole 'ressurection' thing? Whose to say he had the real story about Christ? Odds are, he didn't. Even if he didn't do all that, Wright is just one more yahoo seeking to reconcile his faith to fit modern paradigms. 'The Real Jesus'? Just using that term shoots his credibility all to hell.


Absolutely. They need to crawl before they can walk. At the very least, they need to take an honest look at their scripture (the only source for indepth information on their Man/God figure) and determine what is false and what isn't, before they go hunting for 'The Real Jesus'.

:banghead:

SLD

Hunnnh??!!

You mean one use of the word "zeal" makes him a part of the Jewish revolutionaries who were waging a guerrilla war on Roman rule in Judea? With arguments like this, no wonder I don't believe this shit.

Paul was from the Jewish diaspora in Tarsus, Asia Minor. He was a Roman citizen, and presumably his father was as well. His parents were supposedly from the tent making trade, and thus would likely have had as their customers, the Roman Army. The Jewish revolutionary zealots of that time, came primarily from the Galillean area of Judea and were fanatical in their zeal to destroy Roman rule and reestablish the Davidian line of Kings. And you think Paul, a Roman Citizen, was a part of this group because he uses the word "Zeal" in one of his letters?

I don't think so. Show me the real evidence. N.T. Wright is a hoaxer.

SLD