Vorkosigan

Mags, didn't anyone tell you that you can't trust an apologist? Around here we have a saying: how do you know when an apologist is lying? His lips are moving.....here's some thoughts on CARM.

But, an archaeological inscription was found that said Lysanias was the tetrarch in Abila near Damascus at the time that Luke said. It turns out that there had been two people name Lysanias and Luke had accurately recorded the facts.

Nonsense. A text of the inscription is here: Scroll down. The fact is that coin evidence nails Luke; there was no such ruler at the time he specified, and the inscription admits of alternative interpretations that fit the other evidence we have. Sorry, but this is wrong.

Also, the walls of Jericho have been found, destroyed just as the Bible says.

As anyone who knew their archaeology could tell you, redating has shown that that could not have been Jericho in the time of Exodus. See any of numerous books on the OT, from Dever to Fox.

Many critics doubted that Nazareth ever existed, yet archaeologists have found a first-century synagogue inscription at Caesarea verified its existence.

The inscription is not from the first century, but from the third. See Reed's book Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus that discusses the evidence (thin, but there) for a tiny hamlet called Nazareth.

Finds have verified Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipas.

Who ever doubted it?

The remains of the Apostle Peter's house have been found at Capernaum.

The owner of the house is unknown.

Bones with nail scars through the wrists and feet have been uncovered as well demonstrating the actuality of crucifixion.

Who doubted it?

The High Priest Caiaphas' bones have been discovered in an ossuary (a box used to store bones).

Who doubted his existence? He's mentioned extensively in Josephus' writings.

Vorkosigan

emur

Posted by Magnus:
How about the near improbable chance that all Muslims are wrong? Consider this - Allah exists based on Muslims' own experience with divine intervention, the Koran, and their own feelings of his presence. Muslim apologetics is interesting stuff. You should take a look at it. The parallels in methodology are fascinating.

Seems to me you have already decided that your biblical God exists, and as a result you cling to every shred of info (whether legitimate or not) to support it. This is NOT a good approach to discovering truth.

Mel

Magus55

Vorko, the NT was no written based on prophecy. Sorry but you can't plan Jesus' birth, death, and ressurection prophecies ahead of time.

The statistics are right in front of you - Sorry its still a mathematical impossibility for God not to exist and Jesus not to be God. You just live in denial.

Jack the Bodiless

Just who is "in denial"?

The Bible contains many false prophecies, historical errors, and statements disproved by science. Therefore any "statistic" based on the imagined accuracy of the Bible is erroneous.

So why are you insisting that we accept these false claims?

Some false prophecies have been revealed to you. Here are some more.

Furthermore, you have repeatedly made false assertions of successful prophecy. These include baseless claims about the "tomb of Jesus" and so forth, and attempts to claim prophecies that aren't. Such as the prophecy of the coming of "Emmanuel", which does not refer to Jesus at all. This was to be a sign to King Ahaz, centuries earlier, that "within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people". Nor does it mention a virgin birth (not in the original Hebrew).

Similarly, the claim of a prophecy that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem is triply false: there is no evidence that he WAS born in Bethlehem (and the two Nativity stories contradict each other), he apparently wasn't (according to John), and there is no such prophecy anyhow! (Micah refers to the birth, from the clan of Bethlehem Ephrata, of a military leader who will lay waste to Assyria with the sword, centuries earlier).

Don't expect us to be impressed with statistics derived from falsehoods. We DO know what we're talking about here. We know more about such matters than the authors of the articles you cite.

lpetrich

(Quote order reversed so Magus55's second comment won't be buried beneath a lot of other stuff)
Magus55:
There are tablets and inscriptions attesting to the validity of the Bible.

Parts of it, but some of them counterindicate the Bible in various ways. Consider the Moabite Stone vs. the Bible on King Mesha vs. King Omri. Both sides agree that the two sides fought each other, but they disagree on who won.

Magus55:
(Bible vs. Greco-Roman historians...)
Yes even more accurate than them.

How so? There is lots of counterevidence; consider the case of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon with his army; Historian Richard Carrier has analyzed the reports of this incident, and shown it to be MUCH more reliable than the accounts of Jesus Christ's resurrection. Here's what he had to say:

• First of all, we have Caesar's own word on the subject. Indeed, The Civil War has been a Latin classic for two thousand years. On the other hand, not only do we not have anything written by Jesus, but we don't even have anything written by anyone who actually knew him--unless we accept the questionable authenticity of some of the non-Pauline epistles, but they don't describe the resurrection and thus present no direct evidence of that event anyway.
• Second, we have many of Caesar's enemies, including Cicero, reporting the event, whereas we have no hostile or even neutral records of the resurrection until long after the Christian's own claims had been printed and widely spread across the whole Empire.
• Third, we have a huge number of inscriptions produced in the very same years of the Republican Civil War attesting to the event, including mentions of battles and conscriptions and judgments, which in fact form a continuous chain of evidence for Caesar's entire march. We also have coins referring to the event. On the other hand, we have absolutely no physical evidence of any kind in the case of the resurrection.
• Fourth, we have the story of the Rubicon crossing in every historian of the period, including the most prominent scholars of the age: Tacitus, Suetonius, Appian, Cassius Dio, and Plutarch. Moreover, these scholars have a proven reliability, since a great many of their reports on other matters have been confirmed in material evidence and in other sources. In addition, they all quote and name many different sources, showing a wide reading of the witnesses and documents, and they show a regular desire to critically examine claims for which there is any dispute. If that wasn't enough, all of them cite or quote sources which were written by witnesses, hostile and friendly, of the Rubicon crossing and its repercussions. Compare this with the resurrection: we have not even a single prominent historian mentioning the event, and of those few people who do bother to mention it, none of them show any wide reading, never cite any other sources, show no sign of a skilled or critical examination of conflicting claims, have no other literature or scholarship to their credit (which could in turn be tested for accuracy by comparison with other evidence), and have an overtly declared bias towards persuasion and conversion.
• Fifth, the history of Rome could not have proceeded as it did had Caesar not physically moved an army into Italy. Even if Caesar could have somehow cultivated the mere belief that he had done this, he could not have captured Rome or conscripted Italian men against Pompey's forces in Greece. On the other hand, all that is needed to explain the rise of Christianity is a belief that the resurrection happened. There is nothing that an actual resurrection would have caused that could not have been caused by a mere belief in that resurrection. Thus, an actual resurrection is not necessary to explain all subsequent history, unlike Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon.

lpetrich

Magus55:
Vorko, the NT was no written based on prophecy. Sorry but you can't plan Jesus' birth, death, and ressurection prophecies ahead of time.

Except that the Gospel accounts are most likely fiction -- the Gospels' writers very carefully made Jesus Christ's career seem like OT prophecy fulfillment.

openeyes

Just wanted to second that.

:banghead:

Jayhawker Soule

What tablet?

Jack the Bodiless

The Babylonians didn't write about the Flood of Noah. You have it backwards.

The Hebrews stole and reworked the story of the Flood of Ut-Napishtim. The reason the Middle East had so many Flood stories, with so many similar details, is because they all copied the Sumerian/Babylonian one. The further you go from Babylon, the less likely you are to find similar details in Flood stories: the Ark, for instance, is basically confined to the Middle East.

So others survived a worldwide Flood on floating trees and suchlike? That, in itself, would contradict the Bible.

Gooch's dad

Magus55, you really don't understand what has been said time and again to you, do you?

You are assuming that the gospels are exact eyewitness records of the events they claim to describe. They simply are not eyewitness accounts.

Will you carefully read this and let me know if you even comprehend my point here? My point is this--the writers of the gospels did NOT record actual events, but wrote stories about the person they worshipped as Christ, to portray him as fulfilling OT prophecy. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Let me give an example--if someone wrote a prophecy in 1850 about something that would happen within 100 years...and I wrote a story now about events from 1945, that described the fulfillment of that prophecy, would that mean the prophecy was actually fulfilled? Get the idea here?

Please tell me if you can even understand that point, ok? Yes, you may not agree that the gospel accounts aren't eyewitness accounts, but do you understand our side of the argument? Yes or no? Does the point get through your fundy ears into your fundy brain?

We need you to understand the basic point here, ok? If you want to start a thread about the reliability of the gospel accounts, then start a separate thread for THAT topic.
-Kelly