HaysooChreesto!

I wouldn't call a failed prophecy a "minor contradiction". If one believes that the Bible is the inerrant word of the Xtian god, then any contradiction should be major-especially the one in question.

The fact that I will forget about this by tonight stems from the fact that I more or less violated a personal rule to not engage in the debating equivalence of hitting my head against a brick wall. I see that prophecy as exhibiting a big time "ooops, what happened there?" flavor. You don't. Oh well.
But I'm sure that any moment now, the end will come to pass... In our lifetimes of course.

Jack the Bodiless

Doherty's claims were irrelevant to the issue at hand. But, for what it's worth, I also think there's a lot of middle ground between the historical-Jesus and mythical-Jesus positions.

Many regard the wizard Merlin as mythical. Yet he was a real person: we even have some of the writings of Myrddin the Bard, which we don't have in the case of Jesus. An actual man can act as the focus for so much myth that the resultant character can fairly be described as "mythical".

And Paul obviously knew stories about Jesus. Claiming that he knew "the Gospels" is quite a stretch, as it's generally agreed that they weren't even written yet.

Radorth

Well OK, but hundreds of historians have to apply tests of truth to the NT they apply to no other documents, and don't need to to get them to fail. Durant notes this and clearly suspects the miracles of Jesus happened, and certainly believes with Klausner that Mark is "in essentials, genuine history." Meanwhile he knows Merlin and Earp existed, but doesn't believe the Merlin or Earp myths because they lack the details and witnesses which he sees in the Gospels, and many facts which "mere inventors" would have left out. In the one case there is no problem separating fact from myth after a little study. In the other there are all sorts of issues of historical menthod, volume of witnesses, etc.

Your analogy falls short in may respects.

Rad

Radorth

I have no idea. Jesus said only the Father knows when he will physically return, and specifically said so.

Rad

Ronin

Find it yet, mon brave?

<crunch, crunch...Buuurrraaaaap!>

Ronin

Alas...always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

Fiach

It was literary paradox, a form of using a contrary expression to express true belief. The de-paradoxed version is "Man created God in man's own image and likeness."

Modern fundies not and admit the story that God produced the Noah's Flood of 2.3 billion cubic Kilometres of water to cover the Earth to 8 km (mount Everest) killing every living baby, child, adolescent, man, woman/mother on the Earth (how many, several hundred million?) Then he killed thousands of Egyptians in plagues, first born Egyptians by a death angel, ordered slaughter of millions of Canaanites (men, women, children, babies) in over 100 cities. Repeating myself he invented all viruses, bacteria, deadly parasites, genetic diseases, degenerative diseases, badly designed arteries with hundreds of thousands of intracranial hemorrhages most fatal, coronary artery disease, and all sorts of Cancer. And Why did God do this?
BECAUSE HE LOVES US.

Aren't we glad that he doesn't hate us?

Fiach

Radorth

Yeah yeah yeah. Take it up with a Jewish scholar.

Well we agree on one thing Fiach. God is has certainly left you to your own devices.

Rad

Stephen T-B

Fiach's Contradiction is not something for Jewish scholars alone to address - but for anyone for whom the Bible represents the Word of God.
If it is the case that only parts of it are, who has the right to choose them? Who, at the risk of committing heresy, DARE choose them?

spacedOut

Here's the contradiction that has always bothered me.

From years of going to church, all I heard is what a great sacrifice Jesus made by dying for our sins. Now, for a human to give a life for another human is one thing, but Jesus is supposedly God, so where's the great sacrifice?

For a deity to become human must be much worse than the most horrible camping trip we can imagine (e.g. no heat, running water, food, comfortable bed, etc.), so in effect by dying, Jesus was getting out of this hell hole to return to all the glories associated with being King God of the Universe - where's the sacrifice in that? If I were in his shoes (sandals, I guess), I couldn't wait to die so I could go back to being perfect and all powerful again.

I'm constantly amazed that this concept can produce so much emotion and appreciativeness in Christians when, if they would think about it rationally just for a second, would make no sense at all...