Johnny Skeptic

Yes, that is a major part of the problem of reasonably verifying the claims.

Supposedly eyewitnesses testimonies in the Gospels are so rare that it is amazing that fundamentalist Christians ever bring up the issue.

Consider the following from the Mircosoft Encarta Deluxe Encyclopedia 2004:

I do not find a book to be convincing that was probably written after 80 A.D. possibly after 90 A.D. Who was the author of the book of Acts. What were his sources? Why should people trust his sources? Were his sources eyewitnesses sources, or second hand sources?

Josephus is a questionable source at best regarding the miracles of Jesus. One of many Internet articles that question Josephus' supposed writings about Jesus is at http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/josephus-etal.html.

Please quote your sources.

How did Quadratus obtain his information? How did Papias obtain his information?

What evidence was written before the Gospels? When were the Gospels written?

In 'The Rise of Christianity,' Rodney Stark estimates that in 100 A.D., there were 7,530 Christians in the entire world. If Stark is anywhere near correct, very few people who lived in the first century believed that Jesus performed miracles.

Establishes what?

Today, millions of Christians disagree as to what constitutes a miracle healing. I assume that that was the same situation during the time of Jesus, especially if Jesus did not perform any authentic miracles.

Logic indicates that if Jesus performed as many miracles in as many places as the Gospels say that he did, including many more miracles which the texts say are not mentioned, he would have gotten the attention of the Roman government. Consider the following Scriptures:

Matthew 4:23-25

"And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan."

Surely such activities would have attracted the attention of the Roman government, and historians, but what Roman history mentions the miracles of Jesus?

andrewcriddle

I thought I made this clear already but I'll try and clarify.
I was not claiming that the accounts in Acts were direct evidence that Jesus actually did do miracles but they are probably evidence that Christian preachers before 50 CE were claiming this.

quadratus
papias
Papias and Quadratus are both apparently using rather unreliable oral tradition. However it is probably independent of the written Gospels.

Miracles (or alleged miracles) in the Galilee would be less likely to be noticed by the Roman government than miracles in Judea.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

But, the date of Acts of the Apostles is unknown, there is really no support for your probability. It is not known if the author of Acts wrote in the 2nd century and just merely made up stories about the apostles.

It is NOT apparent at all that Papias and Quadratus are using unreliable oral tradition. It is not known if anyone talked or could have talked about Jesus of the NT at anytime during the reign of Tiberius.

Again, there is really no support for your probability, you may mean that you are just guessing.
And, it should be noted that if no miracles were carried out then no-one could have noticed.

spin

The notion of evidence tends to be used a little too lightly in my opinion, Andrew. Acts is evidence for something about the time it was written. (We don't know when Acts was written.) That evidence regards the traditions current at the time, so Acts claims that christian preachers before 50CE were claiming Jesus did miracles. If Acts was written near contemporary to the time of these christian preachers, then your probability would be more likely to be correct. If not, then your probability is based on nothing!


spin

exbeliever

I'm not in complete agreement with Zeitgeist premises i.e. that 9/11 was an internally planned incident (please explain a plane flying into a building??) but I do agree that Christianity and the story of Jesus is a myth built around astrological beliefs handed down from generation to generation.

Religious beliefs and this includes Islamic beliefs, Hindu beliefs, Chinese beliefs and Christian beliefs, are without question, the most powerful 'memes' in the world we live in.

Google Richard Dawkins and memetics if you don't know what a 'meme' is.

After 60 years of belief as a Christian I am now an atheist and have broken free of these lies and this made up figure called Jesus and those using these beliefs to hold other people in bondage all of their lives.

I'm glad, that finally, I came to the truth that it was all bullshit!

Lucis

i once used to think religion was all bullshit... but then i was awakened and i found all this astrology in them, and i realized that religions are supreme wisdom.

mountainman

There does exist a consensus of knowing opinion that the apochryphal acts of philip was written in the later fourth century. However the apochryphal acts are - rightly or wrongly - extremely undervalued.

What business does a new testament non canonical act of Philip have being written in the fourth century? And who wrote this? And why? It's nice that mainstream routinely pursue the utter vagueries of the canonical acts, not knowing the century of authorship, not knowing the author, or anything whatsoever at all about the author. But what is the mainstream opinion (or anyone else's opinion for that matter) doing in ignoring explanation of the apochryphal acts? Are these bits of evidence concerning christian origins to be forever reserved to some proverbial "Too hard basket"? Who wrote the fourth century apochryphal Acts of Philip? Historically?

Best wishes,


Pete

bacht

I'm an ex-believer too. What people believe may be less important than the mental/emotional processes it reveals. Studying religion is a way to understand human nature, in all its messy glory. If people want to be lied to, can we blame those that provide the untruths they seek?

storytime

yes, I think we can. The risk is to high imo if we don't.

storytime

Concerning eyewitness accounts - I can't remember the thread in discussion of how eyewitness account was constructed, but it went something like this:

Luke got his information from brethren who told him such and such was true. Luke believed what was told him by his brethren and transmitted the same to others. The eyewitness account went through men in this fashion. All heresay but believed without doubt. Why then should people have been expected to believe their heresay as truth? Because they said so. Their eyewitness account was truth. So some believed and some did not.

Roman leaders were probably already accustomed to hearing Jewish magic mountain stories and flying chariots circling the skys. Dead men walking must have been just another one of those fantastic fables being passed around. Else, Jesus would have gained an audience with Pilate sooner than he did in the story.