Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Ion · 10-27-2002, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Butters:
I love this stuff!

What were Jesus' last words?
Could be what Matt recorded, could be what he said, or it could be what John recorded, or could be what Luke recorded, but of course there is no contradiction.

Jesus could have spoken anywhere as one account says on a mount, the other a plain, why not halfway, although this would be called foothills.

One geneology has forty something generations, the other twenty something, so maybe one is a summery, and on is his mothers line, even though they both say otherwise.

Did Judas hang himself or not, We don't know because the Bible is not to clear on that.

Who was at the tomb?
Was Jesus coming or going?
Did he come to preach to Jews only, or not?

And after all the wrangling, twisting of words, claiming that much was left out of some accounts, or had double meanings, or meanings that we don't understand today.
...

Right on.

Quote:

Originally posted by Butters:

...
We are still to believe that this is an accurate account of history! Give me a break!

The Bible is below the level of the consistency required from anyone in this century or in the last century, to simply just go to a grocery store for example:
is that low, never mind today's higher standards that rule history, high-tech technology, physics, medicine, mathematics.

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: Ion ]

Radorth · 10-27-2002, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Well,
this kind of struggle for consistency filling the Bible in all places, is good enough for me to disqualify the Bible as being divine, or even much historical.

In other words, Ion, you can't be bothered to purchase or read a Nestle text to find out the truth. Am I reading you correctly?

Quiz:

Why are ordinary Christians so interested in the original Greek text, and so wary of translator bias, that they purchase Greek interlinear versions by the hundreds of thousands?

A. The want to impress their friends

B. They realize Bible scholars need their financial support

C. They want to know exactly what Jesus said and really meant, the exact and original details and descriptions of events, and the exact intent of the writers.

Which Ion apparently can't be bothered with, along with a choir of skeptics on this forum who search the scriptures looking for excuses to remain intellectually lazy, individual scriptures to support novel theories, reasons to mock Christians, and various pins with which to prick the 400 pound gorilla on whom they like to blame all the insoluable ills of society.

Rad

Butters · 10-27-2002, 08:28 AM

Quote:

Quiz:

Why are ordinary Christians so interested in the original Greek text, and so wary of translator bias, that they purchase Greek interlinear versions by the hundreds of thousands?

A. The want to impress their friends

B. They realize Bible scholars need their financial support

C. They want to know exactly what Jesus said and really meant, the exact and original details and descriptions of events, and the exact intent of the writers.

D. Because despite claiming to have preached the perfect word of God in an unbroken line of churchs, they now relize that NO ONE knows what the Bible really said, and what the churh has claimed it says for two thousand years is undefensable, they now feel they must CHANGE that word of God.
All Christians claim the Bible is the true word of God, but no two can agree on what that word means!

The real TruthSeeker · 10-27-2002, 08:36 AM

If Judas did hang himself, he'd have to do it somewhere secluded to prevent someone from trying to stop him. If it was secluded, then no one would have come across the body for at least a few days. Knowing how touchy the jews were about "uncleanness" no one would have gone near the rotting corpse to cut it down. Maybe as the body liquified, it did fall. Perhaps the bursting and falling were two separate incidents...maybe NONE of it happened.

Devilnaut · 10-27-2002, 08:48 AM

Radorth, are you here to debate something? Or are you only here to throw Ad homs and snide / derogatory comments around? Are you angry at atheists in general for some reason, or are you just an ass?

Quote:

along with a choir of skeptics on this forum who search the scriptures looking for excuses to remain intellectually lazy, individual scriptures to support novel theories, reasons to mock Christians, and various pins with which to prick the 400 pound gorilla on whom they like to blame all the insoluable ills of society.

Is there even one person on this forum who does anything close to this?

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]

Radorth · 10-27-2002, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Is there even one person on this forum who does anything close to this?

Here's one:

Quote:

Because despite claiming to have preached the perfect word of God in an unbroken line of churchs, they now relize that NO ONE knows what the Bible really said, and what the churh has claimed it says for two thousand years is undefensable, they now feel they must CHANGE that word of God.
All Christians claim the Bible is the true word of God, but no two can agree on what that word means!

Even if that were not a patently false statement, Christians WANT to know. That's the difference. Meanwhile those who haven't really studied the Bible and can't even bother reading or quoting a verse in context, or researching older ms, offer all sorts of "contradictions" which turn out to be based on simplistic and hypercritical thinking.

Claiming the two geneologies of Jesus are contradictory is like asking us to make the laziest possible intellectual assumption, that at least one is made up out of thin air. And does he who claims a contradiction even proffer a theory as to how NT writers, or future redactors, could be such nits? Does he consider the implications of such an assertion at all, which boils down to an accusation of lying? Does he even say whether he thinks the writer was a nit or a liar? Does he read a Christian scholar's commentary first? No, he doesn't do anything except search the scriptures looking for reasons not to believe it.

Meanwhile how many skeptics ever even ask themselves how absurd the alternatives are, or how much they themselves take on pure faith, especially those who would say Jesus-myther arguments are "rational"? I apologize if I have offended anyone personally (which I doubt) but it gets damn old after awhile. And I might say those who do think very hard or ask hard questions, stick out like sore thumbs around here, Christian or otherwise.

Rad

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]

Family Man · 10-27-2002, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Why are ordinary Christians so interested in the original Greek text, and so wary of translator bias, that they purchase Greek interlinear versions by the hundreds of thousands?

Mostly, it's because if they think that if they look at the trees closely enough, no one will notice that they can't see the forest.

It doesn't matter if they understand the original if they are misinterpreting the context in which the NT was written. They can't understand Jesus's words if Jesus didn't utter them, and even Christian scholars recognize that much (though not all) of Jesus's utterances were put into his mouth by his later followers.

Jesus's alleged final words are a prime example of this. As noted above, according to the NT none of Jesus's followers were there to witness his final words. Yet we have a number of differing accounts. The reason isn't that someone was sitting closer to the dying Jesus; the reason was that each writer had a theological point he wished to make through those words. In other words, it is a prime example of NT fiction.

Family Man · 10-27-2002, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ion:

I am addressing it:
I don't know of any paranormal event to be true in the historical record.

Unexplained events did and do happen, like cancer cures or physical events of the dinosaurs extinction type.
However paranormal events -like the Biblical supernatural miracles- are not in the historical record as having happened.

Thank you, Ion, though my challenge was directed more at those who have spent all their time avoiding the point.

What's going on here is much like I pointed out to Radoth: Christians can't stand to evaluate their text in a larger context. Every response I've had referred exclusively to the text itself; none has even tried to look at the larger historical context. The reason is obvious: the shortcomings of the NT as history becomes glaringly obvious when you do.

Radorth · 10-27-2002, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Mostly, it's because if they think that if they look at the trees closely enough, no one will notice that they can't see the forest.

It doesn't matter if they understand the original if they are misinterpreting the context in which the NT was written. They can't understand Jesus's words if Jesus didn't utter them, and even Christian scholars recognize that much (though not all) of Jesus's utterances were put into his mouth by his later followers.

I vote this "Cynical Post of the Week"

Quote:

Jesus's alleged final words are a prime example of this. As noted above, according to the NT none of Jesus's followers were there to witness his final words. Yet we have a number of differing accounts. The reason isn't that someone was sitting closer to the dying Jesus; the reason was that each writer had a theological point he wished to make through those words. In other words, it is a prime example of NT fiction.

In fact the possible reasons for getting dying words "wrong" are far more endless than FM's cynicism and premises will allow. Lincoln's statements before his death are all over the map, and so are the reports of many last words. So all we really have here is more proof that myriads of unknown Bible redactors did a terrible job.

Rad

leonarde · 10-27-2002, 10:32 AM

Isaac Asimov on the Bible as an historical
source:

Quote:

Most people who read the Bible do
so in order to get the benefit of its ethical and spiritual teachings, but the Bible has a secular
side, too. It is a history book covering the
first four thousand years of human civilization.

The Bible is not a history book in modern sense, of course, since its writers lacked the
benefit of modern archaeological techniques, did not have our concept of dating and documentation,
and had different standards of what was and was not significant in history. Furthermore, Biblical
interest was centered primarily on elements that
impinged upon those dwelling in Caanan, a small section of Asia bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. This area makes only a small mark on the history of early civilization (from the secular
viewpoint) and modern histories, in contrast to the Bible, give it comparatively little space.

Nevertheless, for most of the last two thousand
years,the Bible has been virtually the only
history book used in Western civilization.
Even today, it remains the most popular, and its
view of ancient history is still more widely and
commonly known than is that of any other.

So it happens, therefore, that millions of people
today know of Nebuchnezzar, and have never heard of Pericles, simply because Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned prominently in the Bible and Pericles
is never mentioned at all.

Millions know Ahasuerus as a Persian king who married Esther, even though there is no record of
such an event outside of the Bible. Most of those
same millions never suspect that he is better known to modern historians as Xerxes and that the
most important event in his reign was the invasion
of Greece that ended in his utter defeat. That invasion is not mentioned in the Bible.

Millions know certain minor Egyptian Pharoahs, such as Shishak and Necho, who are mentioned in the Bible, but have never heard of the great conquering Pharoah, Thutmose III, who is not. People who very existence is doubtful, such as
Nimrod and the queen of Sheba, are household words
because they are mentioned in the Bible, while figures who were colossal in their day are sunk in oblivion because they are not.

Again, small towns in Caanan, such as Shechem and
Bethel, in which events of the Bible are described
as taking place, are more familiar to us today
than are large ancient metropolises such as Syracuse or Egyptian Thebes, which are mentioned
only glancingly in the Bible, or not at all.

Moreover, usually only that is known about such
places as happens to be mentioned in the Bible. Ecbatana, the capital of the Median Empire, is remembered in connection with the story of Tobit,
but its earlier and later history are dim indeed
to most people, who might be surprised to know
that it still exists today as a large provincial
capital in the modern nation of Iran.

In this book, then, I am assuming a reader who is
familiar with the Bible, at least in its general
aspects, but who knows little of ancient history
outside the Bible.[...]

(All above emphases those of leonarde)
Above from pages 9-10 of "Asimov's Guide to the Bible; the New Testament" by Isaac Asimov (Equinox
books 1971, New York)

Cheers!

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10-27-2002, 08:36 AM	#134
The real TruthSeeker New Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 3	If Judas did hang himself, he'd have to do it somewhere secluded to prevent someone from trying to stop him. If it was secluded, then no one would have come across the body for at least a few days. Knowing how touchy the jews were about "uncleanness" no one would have gone near the rotting corpse to cut it down. Maybe as the body liquified, it did fall. Perhaps the bursting and falling were two separate incidents...maybe NONE of it happened.

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