leonarde

Actually my memory is that from 1963 to about 1973
it was practically verboten to say much negative
about JFK himself and his administration's reputation prospered accordingly. Then when all sorts of personal revelations about Nixon came out
via the Watergate scandal, reporters who had sat
on (negative) info started to feel that there was
an (inexcusable)double standard; so that is when
JFK's multiple liaisons and pot use started to come out (eventually corroborated by at least one retired Secret Service agent). About the same time
(mid 1970s) there was the Church commission/committee investigating the CIA. The
Camelot-endorsed efforts to assasinate Castro started to become public knowledge.
I think in some ways, JFK's rep has rebounded in
recent years: the archival info about the Cuban
missile crisis indicates that he did conceal info from the public but that in toto he
handled the crisis admirably well. So there has
been a see-saw record in the past 40 years.

Cheers!

Ion

Leonarde,
my post:
says that Jesus resurrection didn't appear to "...all the tribes on the earth..." like Jesus prophesised according to the Bible.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: Ion ]</p>

Family Man

As am I. But on the other hand, we live in a time where modern medicine has greatly expanded our life spans. Most people born in the 1st were dead before they reach our ages. People reaching their 70s in 1st Century are roughly equivalent to people in their 100s today. It is highly unlikely that the apostles, even if they did survive into their 70s would have had the ability to write the gospels. Didn't anyone ever teach you not to compare apples and oranges?

Aside from the fact that you making an invalid comparison as outlined above, and besides the fact that those people would be writing first-hand accounts even if they used ghost-writers, your analogy further fails because the figures you mention above are known public figures who definitely are tied the the events that they would write about. The gospel authors are unknown, worked from stories handed down to them form unknown sources and fanciful interpretations of the Old Testament, and were only assigned names at the end of the 2nd Century if memory serves. Heck, even conservative Christian scholars like Raymond Brown state that the gospels were not written by the apostles. You're so out in right field you've left the park.

Actually, the important things weren't lost. They were added.

Family Man

I know you think that. But can you demonstrate it in the historical literature? No one has so far.

Mental illnesses recognizable by modern psychiatry hardly qualifies as a supernatural event.

leonarde

Posted by Family Man: No, but a cure of such, instantaneous--
or close to it---without any known therapy or drugs 2000 years ago would be arguably
such a supernatural event. How do we evaluate such accounts? If we simply say "supernatural, therefore totally bogus" we obscure
more than we enlighten. Therefore people who are
truly interested in the degree of historicity in the Gospels go over such accounts
with a fine-toothed comb and try to see whether
they can eliminate one or more of the sub-categories for Scriptural "supernatural events" which I alluded to in an earlier post.

Cheers!

Radorth

And guess who gets to decide if they are really historians or not.

Oh we answered you all right FM. I forget. How did you respond to Durant's assertion again? i.e.

"no one who reads these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels."

Durant also thinks that the statement "he could not do many miracles there" is hard evidence of miracles.

Rad

Devilnaut

Can you guys answer me a simple question? What is preventing me, right now, from simply making up and penning down a bible-sized book of inspirational stories of miracles and magic? Keep in mind I cannot actually perform such things. So exactly what is preventing me from writing about them??

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>

Ion

In US, William Dever, professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona, Bryant Wood, director of the Associates for Biblical Research in Maryland, Carol Meyers a professor specializing in Biblical studies and archaeology at Duke University, Joseph Fitzmayer professor emeritus of New Testament studies at Catholic University in Washington, which I already mentioned in my earlier post here about this question.

Their methods are, like I mentioned before, internal inconsistencies in the Bible, possible bias by who wrote the Bible (in the case of the New Testament, these are the unknown writers after the time of the 'apostles') and external inconsistencies with independent texts like Egyptian manuscripts, with medicine, archaeology like excavations in Kadesh Barnea in the east Sinai desert, and physics.

These US historians -establishing the US position with regards to history- like I wrote earlier follow the same scientific standards that are being used by historians across the world, no matter the credulity in reminiscent ancient beliefs by the masses.

leonarde

Posted by Devilnaut: Uh, a rich enough imagination of a particular type? Seriously, 'The Lord of the Rings', 'Harry Potter' type books etc. are full of
"inspirational stories of miracles and magic"
as I understand them. Knock yourself out! Getting
people to take you seriously (ie that it is more
than just fiction) may be (heck, will be) more difficult by far.

Cheers!

Devilnaut

leonarde, perhaps you misunderstood. My comment was in reference to claims that the Bible's veracity could be confirmed by virtue of its content and without corroborating evidence or independent confirmation from outside sources.

Maybe not as hard as you think. But, to a rational person, my stories of miracles would only be believed if there was extremely strong evidence from outside the stories themselves.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>