Jayhawker Soule

Thanks for the response. This seems more appropriate to the BC&A forum ...

Bait

Reasonable,
since you referenced me, defamed me again...Well, here we are again...twisting my ideas and my words to suit your cause. So I'm forced to defend myself. I was trying REAL hard to stop this nonsense. But...

Lets try again.

You are judging me and my God...or I'll even give you any gods...by which morality?

Yours? The terrorists of the Taliban? The cannibals of the South Pacific? The old Japanese Samurai? By which standard EXACTLY are you qualifying your judgements? By whose morals are you judging me? Who taught you your morality...and by which standard did they teach you? Are they (gasp) Christian standards? The ten commandments? How do you know YOU are 100% right? Are you absolutely positive, 100% knowledgable about everything? I'm not putting down your atheism, or whatever you believe/don't believe, in fact, I've gone out of my way to try not to say anything against your belief or lack thereof. Why do you then think it is necessary to try and slander and defame me, personally? And even if you do wish to debate my faith, why do you not tell it straight instead of resorting to half truths and lies, twisting my words to make it seem I'm in league with the terrorists of the Taliban?

You cited a set of scriptures to me on another thread stating God practiced genocide...I proved you wrong...why did you not, in fairness, state that here? The verses in Numbers that you cited actually stated that Moses, as leader of his people, killed the terrorists that were trying to kill the Israelites by biological warfare...prostitutes carrying a sexual desease that caused a plague amoung his people. God did not order it..Moses did, not even in the name of God, but as a leader of a nation. And he did not kill the men that were captured, nor any of the women that had not slept with a man...only the prostitutes that were purposely seducing Israeli's in order to pass on the desease, and the Kings that promoted and condoned the Balaam worship. And he did not order babies killed either. As I recall, your reply was "I'm speechless". I thanked you, and thought that was the end of it. But on that thread too, you didn't read what it said, but rather jumped to conclusions to suit your own purposes. And you dare call me and my faith ugly?

You say God created evil, and one of your friends cited Isaiah 45:7 as proof, which he got the verse from a Rabbi. I looked up the Hebrew of that verse...to see what it really says:
The words used in that verse is Shalom..meaning peace in Hebrew. Shalom also means prosperity, weal (joy), and good fortune. Where the KJV says the word evil, the Hebrew word is "ra" which literally means calamity, woe, trouble. In the verse God is using, he's making reference to opposites..ie: the first pair he mentions is light and dark. Sort of the Ying and Yang thing of the eastern religions and philosophies. So therefore the remainder of the verse translates (literally)as "I make peace and create calamity", or I make weal(joy) and create woe", or I make good fortune and create calamity", or "author alike of prosperity and trouble" (the most literal)... meaning balance, opposites...not necessarily evil, but everything he makes is balanced.

Again, seen in a different light, neh?

Evil is a choice of MEN...men choose to be evil. Even Satan, Lucifer, doesn't make someone to be evil...he only tempts them. God abhors evil. Men choose to give in to temptation, to sin. If a man chooses to rob a bank, gets caught and gets put in jail...is the State then immoral? God doen't make them do evil. MEN kill,MEN rape, MEN pillage, they choose to do so. The only time God would instruct someone to kill is to stop the evil deeds MEN choose to do, such as child sacrifice, murder, rape, etc. I was once asked if I would kill a child if God told me to. No, because God would not tell me to kill an innocent. Because God doen't tell anyone to do evil.

As to the hearts and minds bit (God knowing the hearts and minds, etc...)again, you twist my words...I know what the Bible says of the ones Moses, et al. were warring against. Caaninites usually. It says that those the Isreali's went after worshipped Balaam, which one form of that worship consists of child sacrifice, temple prostitution, drinking of human blood, etc...you know,little unimportant things like that (sarcasm) (I looked it up, why didn't you?). Of course, apparently to you, that kind of actions of MEN should be left alone, condoned. God, or men of faith, should not get angry at anyone who practices such, because that would make him evil in YOUR eyes. You don't seem to mind then if someone EATS A BABY. So I guess that means YOU condon that kind of action...child sacrifice, cannibalism, and such...right? YOUR the one apparently condoning child sacrifice, since you argue against anyone trying to stop it....I ASSUME that it also means you personally like to drink human blood..maybe a little cannibalism on the side?

Doesn't feel good to have your words twisted, does it?

So, who exactly is practicing argumentum ad ignorantiam at it's ugliest? Me, or YOU. Are you then not practicing "the 'logic' behind 9/11 and every other obscenity"...by twisting my words? Wait! Is that not what Hitler did? Twist words to gain his own means? Twisting the Bible so that all of the Germans hated Jews...and tried to exterminate them? Is that not what YOU are doing, twisting the words of the Bible to eliminate Christians???

Comon Reasonable...stop defaming. You know that I don't "justify 'elimination', or in the hearts and minds of the young virgins that would justify rape and enslavement". Put it to rest. Call peace, truce. I'll quit if you do. Arguments like this leaves a real bad taste in my mouth, doesn't it you?

Ron

Datheron

Tercel,

By "rational analysis", you mean "rational analysis after assuming the Christian God exists". If we try to rationally analyze the Bible, it would have been discredited a long time ago. Would you trust a science text that has blatant and obvious contradictions?

...and thereby insisting that the source must have some part of truth to it. That's what I really see it as - a desparate attempt to scrunge up anything coherent or adhering to reality. Hardly suitable for a deity, don't you think?

But why would one want to investigate it when it has been proven that many instances of the Bible are indeed false, mythology, or just outright crap?

The problem here is that to me, you're just under the guise of investigation when it's clear, from my perspective, that you're already been defeated. There is no "critical analysis" unless you can first show that your side is credible; many times, what I see as "analysis" is merely refutation (and mostly weak) of previous arguments against the Bible, and then using the simple ad ignoratium argument to keep the Bible afloat. Yes, I admit that you may have different arguments, but that's precisely what forming an opinion means - having some bias towards a subject because of prior exposure, thus requiring more counter-evidence to refute.

And that's a problem in itself - does there exist such unbiased work? Everybody that enters into the forlay will have opinions, and I'd say strong opinions - who can say that they're truly unbiased, and can judge objectively? I was quite surprised when checking the little poll on Andrew_theist's site about who "won" that formal debate - it was right down the middle, split completely along the atheist/theist lines. Doesn't that indicate something to you?

As a matter of fact, you betray your own statement with the argument - "just because some parts are false, does not mean that all parts are false". Conversely, what makes any of it true in the first place? If you already believe that some of it is true when you begin your scholarly research, then are you not already biased against research shown against it? Similarly, I would be biased against research shown for it, correct? Yet, we must not forget that the Bible must be shown true, not assumed true - the problem is of you convincing me that it makes some sort of sense, not me convincing you that it doesn't.

Nor have I studied him thoroughly; let me just say that in my opinion, he is a raving idiot. But regardless, there is no doubt that we agree on some things, and if that is the case, then just because we "disagree on some issues, does not mean that we disagree on all issues", which implies that we're on the same wavelength, when we're obviously not. See the problem with such subtle inference?

...with the obvious bias of assuming that God exists, so there is always at least one way out of a dilemma - Goddidit. You already demonstrated this on another thread - if we can define God's omnipotence as something that isn't contradictory, then we can give God such a property. In your mind, the question is not "does this problem invalidate God?", but rather "how can God go around this problem?" Hence, all "proofs" against God are made futile, especially when you consider that the definition of the theistic God allows for a lot of leeway.

I think the crux of the matter is that you're assuming that I believe in the Bible - which I don't. If that was the case, then I agree, we should analytically go through passages, having a priori agreed that the Bible is trustworthy. However, my stance is that we must analytically try to show that the Bible has some merit; not only is the analysis much more critical, but many of the advantages that we presume God enjoys is non-existent. If there is no evidence of a great flood having ever taken place, we cannot take the luxury of believing that God magically removed all traces of evidence of the flood. You must show, with much more vigor, how you would be able to rationalize the passage without having God come in at every step nor various rhetorical questions based on ignorance arguments.

Tercel

Very funny. Have you ever read any scholarly analysis of the Bible?

No, because science texts aren't supposed to have contradictions becuase that's the nature of science. Religious and historical texts can have contradictions without their value being significantly undermined because that's the nature of these subjects.

It's also been proven that many instances of the Bible are true, factual and outrighly trustworthy.

How? How precisely has my perspective been defeated? Would you like to comment on any specific issues here?
Or is this just a biased unwarrented generalisation that the Bible is completely wrong simply because you'd like it to be?

Yup. Hence rendering all arguments against the existence of God as unsound.

What? I don't need to have God magically doing anything. I'm happy to admit to a local flood or even no flood at all.

Tercel

Datheron

Tercel,

Funny? Where?

But yes, I have read a few analyses of the Bible; I noticed that they weren't as formal as they could be, however, so I'm unsure of whether you'd accept them as "scholarly". Regardless, if you want to prove me wrong, here's the perfect opportunity for you to post various links, books, and what-not.

The nature of science?! So, as long as we're in a historical context, you're saying it's alright to have contradictions?! I hope you'll forgive me for scoffing at this supposed "nature" that laughs in the face of logic yet manages to retain their value.

Really? Granted, some minor parts may be rationalized or proven true, but as far as I know, many of the tales in the book, including the adventures of Jesus, have not been proven true or factual. Would you care to provide a few studies on how this, or some other major claim of the Bible, has been indeed proven?

Certainly. Starting from the story of creation and on through Genesis is already a prime example of the ridiculousness seen in the Bible. I don't want to go into the details here (they're much better suited for the BC&A forum), but once we figure out that much of this is already mistaken and wrong, doubts arise on all the other sections, regardless of what you think would be of value because it's a religious text. Why would any text, religious or otherwise, have much value after it has been proven that its stories are outright lies? Methinks your insistance of allowing contradictions in religious texts came after the fact of having your own text disproven.

No - hence rendering all attempts to make religion believable and logical fail. I love how theists often draw from any discipline they can find to prove their God; not only via logic, but also with emotional appeals and definitions. Of course, the instant that the atheist or the non-theist argues the point, the theist would jump back and claim that God works in mysterious ways, making their arguments unsound...while they magically use the same systems for God.

...and it's the "nature of religious texts" to be false, right? Or, at least some of it?

So, at least we agree on the flood being false. How about the birth of Jesus from a virgin? Goddidit?

Jayhawker Soule

To what scholarly analysis are you referring?

Tercel

Yes.
It is the difference in subject matter that is the key here. Science deals with claims involving repeatability and objectivity. If Professor A tells me that X happpened when he performed a experiment and Professor B tells me that Y happened when he performed the same experiment. Then something is very wrong. The whole point of science is that different observers willl observe the same results when doing the same experiment any number of times. A science text book with contractions in it therefore has very very serious problems.

History on the other hand is quite different. It deals with the unrepeatable. Any time two different people recount an event they both experienced there will be differences in the accounts. Each person sees different things as important, one might forget a couple of points the other remembers or think of something they saw as important while the other person didn't think it worth mentioning. People generally don't remember details very accurately, so two stories from different people who experience the same event tend to contradict in the details.
With History, more often than not, the person writing the text was not an eyewitness to the event but must rely on other sources themselves. Hence in any historical situation where there are multiple accounts they always conflict in at least some details. However this is perfectly acceptable as it's the nature of historical accounts and in no way impares the truth of the major points of the story agreed upon by all sources.
Indeed if the details did agree in all the accounts then we could be absolutely sure that the accounts were simply direct copies of the others. The existence of discrepancies in the details between the accounts gives added value to historical texts because it shows they are independant testimonies to the same event - making us more sure of the truth of the major events that they agree about.

Of course Genesis is ridiculous: It's a collection of Hebrew myths, what do you expect? However Genesis only constitutes one book of 66 books, the vast majority of which are completely unrelated to Genesis. The fact that much of Genesis is stupid is no reason whatsoever to through out the rest of the Bible. Christianity stands mainly on the Gospels and Paul’s letters. I think you could even declare all the Old Testament ridiculous without hurting Christian claims in any significant way.

However, it has yet to be proven that any significant stories are outright lies. Investigation into the historical accuracy of the Gospels has only served to generally confirm their truth in testable matters.

Yes. We must always investigate in what position the writer was in that he “knew” what he is claiming to know.

It appears that the early Church had a belief in a virgin birth and they were in a much better position to accurately analyse the situation than I am now, so I trust their judgement.
The flood on the otherhand, I am in a better position since I can analyse it with scientific data compared to the writers who were recount an event that supposedly occured a few thousand years prior to their birth.

Tercel

Datheron

Tercel,

I quite agree with you there; science involves the ability and the discovery of predictability of natural laws.

This I don't agree with. Certainly, the singularity of historical events means that we cannot hope to replicate it in a lab or observe it again. However, the eyewitness accounts that you speak of, even in their discrepancies, does not give them an excuse to outright contradict each other.

True, most likely, each person will recall an event from his perspective - i.e. distinctively from others. However, the expectation is that the accounts are from different perspectives, and not mutually exclusive. If I was to bring up a panel of witnesses for an accident, I do not expect them to tell completely contradictory tales of the accident and expect myself to rule on which one is the right version, if any. Furthermore, you realize that through the passage of time, history becomes myth and legend. Robert Jordan, the author of the Wheel of Time series, does an excellent job of portraying this in his novel series, but needless to say, it does not take long for a few stories to be exaggerated into great myths. Indeed, there is very little to distinguish from a great tale being told and recorded, and actual history being told and recorded - we can rule on the discrepancies between stories to determine how far-fetched it is, but that is an entirely subjective argument.

Hence, we usually search for something more than historical accounts. Archaeology, of course, is the precise branch of science that deals with historical evidence, as to strengthen the hearsay tales that float around. So far, it has been successful in validating other claims of history, but as far as I know, there is not much in terms of Biblical historical evidence other than a few alleged holy items and the like.

But how did you determine that it's a collection of Hebrew myths, while the Gospels and Paul's letters aren't fabricated as well? We see a resemblance of the life of Jesus to other popular God-myths at the time; a lot of time is no doubt spent discussing Jesus's claims while he was on earth and what came of those claims.

Because it's hard to prove or disprove anything that doesn't leave anything behind! The lack of evidence for the entire life of Jesus, other than these writings in the Bible, can be worked as evidence against his tales and stories. Another problem I see is that there is really little mention of the Son of God/God himself outside of the Bible; independent sources are virtually non-existent, and those that Christians claim to be such evidence are usually vague and mysterious. Um...a search on Google on "Gospel Contradictions" came up with this page:

<a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9449.htm" target="_blank">http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9449.htm</a>

Regardless of whether you think this is "scholarly research" or your agreement with the author, the point is that working in that limited region of the Gospels is itself a problem. If I told you that there was a nuclear explosion in the Middle East, and I have a few accounts of the blast, would you believe me based solely on these accounts, noting that a nuclear detonation should produce something much more noticable to a wider audience?

But that in itself is not enough. Even if the writer was verified to be an actual eyewitness, that does not mean that what he speaks has to be truth, especially when he is one of the few in witness of something that would be easily noticable by a wide range of observers. As far as I know, none of Jesus's miracles, save for perhaps his resurrection, is recorded well anywhere other than the Bible. Knowing that the Church must have certainly wanted more evidence to support the Gospels, it is strange that very little of such is actually found. The only conclusion that we can come to is that no such records exist, which casts a shadow of suspicion on Jesus's 30-some-odd years of life filled with alleged miracles.

Well, isn't that a circular argument? Obviously, the Church is going to claim that the virgin birth took place, since their beliefs hinges upon this claim! It is a self-referencing source, not exactly the most trustworthy in that regard. Are there any independent sources that we can use to cross-examine the case?

Tercel

Datheron

I agree that eyewitness accounts should not contradict in any significant ways beyond what can be classified as “perspectives”. By history very rarely actually deals with eyewitness accounts. Usually the writer has obtained accounts second-hand from other sources and put their own emphasises into it as well.

Of course you would not expect completely contradictory tales. All the stories, would, I hope agree on the major points of the story. Some disagreement on details and significantly disagreements on subjective judgements such as who was at fault would not be suprising though.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth... Do you think there’s any chance of Book 10 being longer than books 8 and 9? -Because personally I found them annoying short.
Anyway,
How long exactly do you mean by “not long”? Personally I would say it takes a long time, and that even after a very long time when the story has degenerated into a myth that it is still generally possible to extract the core events of the story as literal truth.

I have to disagree entirely. Telling whether something is a history or a tale is generally not difficult at all. We spend much of our lives reading and identifying clearly the type and nature of literature being read is something we can do without even thinking about it. True, ancient literature is of course slightly different to modern literature in some respects, however it still doesn’t make the task significantly difficult.

What exactly in the Bible were you expecting to be evidenced that hasn’t been? And what form of evidence were you expecting Archaeology to provide?
The Exodus is a big archaeological question, of course. But the Exodus is only a tiny part of the Bible and in the greater scheme of things is not important at all. -I don’t see a mention of the Exodus in the Nicene Creed, for example.
On the other hand, things like Pontius Pilate being governor at the appropriate time and names and titles of other governors as well as other coincidental details such as correct cultural details, descriptions of cities, knowledge of details in Jerusalem before it’s destruction in 70AD etc are all things that archaeology can and has confirmed the accuracy of the Gospels in.
For example, Luke, who begins his Gospel with the claim that:
“Many people have written accounts about the events that took place among us. They used as their source material the reports circulating among us from the early disciples and other eyewitnesses of what God has done in fulfilment of his promises. Having carefully investigated all of these accounts from the beginning, I have decided to write a careful summary for you, to reassure you of the truth of all you were taught.” (NLT)

Luke makes the claim to historical accuracy that he has “investigated everything carefully from the beginning” (NASB) this and that reading his account will give the reader absolute “certainty” (NASB). He follows this claim through with a huge number of deliberate and incidental details eg:
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar--when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene-- during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,...”
In the books of Luke and Acts the author makes over a hundred statements individually testable by archaeology. Testing these statements shows us the overwhelming accuracy of the writer in even these details which are for the most part not directly important to the story. If the writer shows extreme historical accuracy in even coincidental details and claims to have investigated everything he is writing about carefully from the beginning: then surely we can be assured of his accuracy involving the major events of the story!

Here’s a random article on the <a href="http://www.apologeticsinfo.org/papers/actsarcheology.html" target="_blank">archaeological accuracy of Acts</a>.

Genesis is written 500+ years after most of what it describes. It’s clearly a story of the Israelite nations traditions - it’s their folktales about who they are as a nation and where the came from. I have little doubt that some of it is factually correct, but it is not a history. When I say they were “myths”, I’m not meaning that they are completely made up by some person who sat down and decided to make up a story. Rather, it’s like Robert Jordan’s myths: Where time has passed and the truth has been obscured in the retellings and the story’s grown and gathered details.
Seven of Paul’s letters are “undisputed” and accepted as authentically by Paul by most all scholars, even the radical ones. In many ways the Gospels are testable by archaeology, especially Luke.

Most/all of those parallels were overstretched, pet-ideas of radical scholars which have been subsequently proven unsustainable. The only reason they are even mentioned is because the conclusions are liked, not because of any merit the theories possess.

But “other than these writings in the Bible” is just circular logic. The Church put all the major writings about Jesus in the Bible because they were about Jesus. Ignoring them because they are in the Bible only then serves to beg the question. At anyrate, apart from the four major gospels, and numerous mentions of Jesus in the other New Testament books, we still have the hundreds of apocryphal gospels, the early Church Fathers, the Jewish Talmud, the historians Josephus and Tacitus...
Bede has a short essay touching on some of the appropriate points <a href="http://www.bede.org.uk/jesusmyth.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.
Very few people ever before the invention of the printing press (perhaps no one), have had the volume of writing about them in the two centuries following their life that Jesus has.

[quote]Um...a search on Google on "Gospel Contradictions" came up with this page:
[URL=http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9449.htm[/quote]Wow is that ever crap. That is effectively nothing but the atheist equivalent of what fundamentalists write. It seems aimed at disproving inerrancy, and since I don’t believe in inerrancy, I didn’t particularly appreciate it for that. I'm aware that this is just a website you've found, but some parts of it are so bad I just have to comment:
“But seeing this anti-Jewish, pro-Roman bias in all four Gospels is very important to seeing that the entire Gospel story is itself one massive contradiction.”
That doesn’t seem to follow. Let’s see: The Gospels have anti-Jewish and pro-Roman tendencies, therefore they are “one massive contradiction”? What sort of logic is that?
”he [some author] shows that Jesus (if he existed at all) was almost certainly a Pharisee”
That’s funny because it seems generally accepted that Jesus wasn’t a Pharisee.
“Mark, the earliest Gospel, was written no earlier than C.E. 70”
That’s extremely debatable. Stating it as a straightout and sure truth like this is simply lying.
”Otherwise, we have absolutely no mention of a historical Jesus.”
More of the same lies.
“A very small number of Christian apologists still point to the so-called Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus (Antiquities 18:63-64). Most who've studied the arguments against the validity of this fragment tend to consider it a move of desperation on the part of those who still argue for its genuineness: it is thought to be easier simply to admit that there are no contemporary witnesses to Jesus's historicity. (It's certainly more honest!)“
Wow: actual outright lies! The majority of scholars agree that while the passage contains interpolations, it did originally contain a reference to Jesus. I just had to follow the link on the subject to a more detailed discussion by the same author, in which is stated: “Origen (circa C.E. 185-254), who in his own writings relies extensively upon the works of Josephus, does not mention this passage or any other passage in Josephus that mentions Christ.” Which is more outright lies since Origen twice quotes Antiquities 20:9:1 in which Josephus refers to “James, the brother of Jesus - the so-called Christ”.

Did I say that this link was as bad as fundamentalists trash? I’m sorry, I was wrong: It’s worse. At least the fundamentalists hardly ever lie outright, they merely present the data selectively.

Why? I don’t see how the link relates to your comment at all.

Of course not. However the whole point is that Jesus was a marginal Jew. As Meier points out, Jesus was a marginal Jew in a Roman provincial backwater. Very few people would actually care enough to notice, nevermind write anything about some criminal who founded a new cult in a remote part of the empire that was always throwing up religious fanatics. Widespread interest in Jesus by non-Christian sources would only come when non-Christians began to see Christianity as important, which didn’t happen
‘till a couple of hundred years later.

No, however I we can determined that it is the writers intention to speak the truth to the best of his ability, and that he has that ability, then we can conclude that he writes the truth.

Why should they be recorded “well” elsewhere? The ability to write wasn’t particularly widespread, even out of those who could write, very few people every wrote histories. That we have four records of the life of Jesus in the form of the Gospels is pretty amazing.

What evidence should exist that doesn’t? Please be specific.

It’s not a circular argument at all. I believe, because people who were in a much better position than me to verify the truth of the matter believe it to be true. Source-wise, we have Matthew and Luke both of which are clearly quite independent to the extent of conflicting greatly in the case of the birth narratives. Paul gives a passing reference that Jesus is “born of a woman”, a curious phrase in a society in which women were treated as second-rate citizens and regarding genealogies and births it was always the father that was mentioned. Curious, unless Paul is referring to the virgin birth.
There is no conflicting sources until the second century (c179AD) when Celsus an anti-Christian writer alleges that Jesus was an Egyptian wizard who had a illegitimate birth via a Roman soldier. It seems most likely that Celsus simply is anti-Christian and read Matthew (Matthew was generally the most used of the four gospels for evangelical purposes in the 2nd century) and is making up this counter-story out of whole cloth as a response.

Tercel

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Datheron

Tercel,

...which, of course, just speeds up the myth-creation process. Second, third, fourth hand accounts all allow the stories to exaggerate, to make into legend. It's like a bad game of telephone.

But by this time, we have no idea where the source comes from anymore, and is thus very unreliable. Especially in ancient times, when superstition ran rampant, I would imagine it'd be quite easy to insert a few myths in a village, and then have the villagers mangle and spread the word, so to speak. Soon, a scholar comes along, asks a few locals for "eyewitness accounts", and gets third/fourth hand stories that have originated from one common source, which is now obscured enough by layers of retelling that we cannot say whether it was true or not. The result of such a process would produce something precisely like the Bible.

Eck, well, I haven't had time to go through book 9 yet, but book 8, IMO, was indeed fairly short. The story is picking up lots of steam, though.

Assuming that there was a truth to begin with. As I point out above, it's very easy to start with a fictionius story, have it degenerate down into a myth, and all we'll be able to analyze is what the original story was, not its own validity. Urban legends, myths, and the like, IMO, would be examples of stories retold and transformed, thus creating a collection of different versions of the same original event which may or may not have happened.

It depends on how good the storyteller is, but novels and modern fiction usually exaggerate in order to capture the attention of the reader. However, historical novels have also stuck to the gritty realism of its context and worked solely in a realistic manner. Hm....one such example in history that I can think of would be Homer's Odyssey. We know that it's fiction now, but for one that does believe in the Greek Gods, the story is very plausible. Another common vein is that we have no idea where the story came from; theories have suggested that Homer himself wrote the entire story, and others have said that he merely took a collection of myths and compiled them into a coherent piece.

True, there are parts of the Bible that are accurate; obviously, some of its events must have taken place. However, as you well know, there also exists a number of incorrect details in the Bible - the size of armies, the number of angels, the order of events, etc.

The most powerful lie is one that twists truth. Once again, I bring up Homer, because he serves as a good example of how one can easily mix myth, history and a bit of creativity to create a believable story. As long as you believed in the myths that the book told, the story made sense, and one could easily argue that such a piece of history, in its entirety, took place. Another example would be Orsen Wells' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Back when we had very little clue of what was happening in our own solar system, something that touches on enough points of truth (that there exists Mars, that the bulletin sounded authentic) that many actually believed in the broadcast, even when a disclaimer was made in the beginning that the tale was adapted from H.G. Wells' book. It's not hard to draw parallels to a people even more gullible and superstitious.

I believe I have already addressed this above. Tell me if I missed anything.

They're testable, but only on unrelated claims. Like you mention above, many of the authors went to great length to show that they were indeed writing in the era and location where they claim to be writing; that's certainly well, but, what does that amount to the actual story and its context? If I begin a story with a thorough description of the United States from its creation to the present, and then in the next 20 pages tell of how the US invaded Russia in 2000, would you believe in the entire story? From what I know, most of what has and is being validated have very little to do with the actual life and story of Jesus - they're placed in the Gospels precisely to convince its readers that it is authentic. Once you accept the story as truth, everything else is just easier to shallow, hm?

Overstretched? Not really; I skimmed through a dialogue in our own II library:

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/price-rankin/index.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/price-rankin/index.shtml</a>

And the good doctor makes a few good points, tying in the life of Jesus with that of a hero archetype. I'm reluctant to discuss this much before you respond though, for you may not even take it to your liking; judging from a past link, I think I'll wait for your response first.

So you have proven that the biggest lie is the easiest believed.

Here's something that I found interesting:

<a href="http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon.htm" target="_blank">http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon.htm</a>

Whether the information found in the apocryphal literature is factually correct or not is not necessarily important. These documents give interpreters valuable insight into what some Jews and Christians believed in various places at different times.

...which brings me back to my point that many of these sources just refer back to earlier writings, which is the subject being debated on. It also blurs the line between an original, an elaboration, or an alteration. When you make the claim that we have apocryphal gospels to fall back on, remember why they're called such and not a part of the Bible - because there are problems with them! Out of hundreds, the Church manages to pick only four and a handful of others that are relatively close enough to defend...what does that say about myths and the distortion of stories over a short period of time?

Then I apologize for wasting your time. Note that I'm not a great Biblical scholar myself, so I have to rely on various links and sources to keep myself well-informed. In this case, I did what I always do and skimmed through, noticing a few good points here and there. &lt;shrugs&gt; He was not that important to the argument anyway, more like filler for space.

Which of course invites the question - why would God place his only son in some backwater Roman country? Why would interest not perk up for Christianity, especially in the light of the writing that you mention above? As you say, the stories that came out are indeed powerful, and naturally people doubted their validity, and they have the added advantage, back then, to be in a similar historical context as the stories themselves.

Truth via multi-hand accounts. I may have the best intention and the best scholarly examination in the world, but if I research UFO's and publish a volume of books based on eyewitnesses and multi-hand accounts, would yuo believe it?

....but chosen out of hundreds of records that are rejected from the Bible. The argument is troublesome both ways; if it is true that hundreds of writings exist in the case for Jesus, then we should have plenty of evidence independent of the handful of sources that are in the Bible and the apocryphal gospels. If instead writing was a rare skill, then the fact that there exists these four accounts in the Bible, plus various others that are rejected, is suspicious in itself.

Specifically, I was thinking about the many "magic tricks" that Jesus performed, but do not seem to be noticed much by anybody other than Church writings. The healings, the transmutation, etc. - these are events that are quite momentous, if they occurred. The least I'd expect is for an onlooker to just take down a few notes...a lot more than four.

It's interesting to see how quickly you denounce Celsus's claims, when at the same time you support the fathers of the church whose writings are also ipso post facto (is that the correct Latinate term?)

But we can debate all we want on the psychologies of the writings and reactions, and not get anywhere. I can just as easily point out the lack of believers in the light of such miracles - why would anybody that holds an actual eyewitness account to something that is clearly not commonplace not believe in Jesus? But ultimately, this gets us nowhere, as all we can do is spectulate reasons and guess intentions.