David Conklin

Last question first: no.
First question: I don't because there is no Scriptural basis for either.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: David Conklin ]</p>

lpetrich

That's the "you know the story" defense. Except that it doesn't work very well. Jesus Christ was not the best-known person in the world, and Paul would have seen fit to mention JC's life and career in more detail than he had done.

For example, why not mention JC's raising of Lazarus from the dead as an example of how JC could conquer death?

And I wonder what would happen to a present-day clergyman who said "I won't be preaching on the Gospels because you all know the story."

Jayhawker Soule

Again, what.

lpetrich

Cultural-relativist excuse-making. Also, there were several reasonably careful historians in the Greco-Roman world; consider Herodotus and Thucydides.

lpetrich

Also, I'm sure that the virgin-birth idea had a pagan origin.

It is absent from the Old Testament, aside from certain mistranslations and out-of-context quotes.

However, the notion was everywhere in Greco-Roman pagan mythology, with deities being described as having numerous progeny, including historical people like Pythagoras, Plato, and Alexander the Great.

David Conklin

What we are talking about here is "parthenogenesis". Note that the first part of the word “parthenogenesis” is “partheno” from the Greek word “parthenos.” So, Leeming {David, Adams “Virgin Birth,” The Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade, Vol. 15 (Macmillan, 1987):272}, can state that “According to this definition, the story of the birth of Jesus is a virgin birth story whereas the birth of Buddha and Orphic Dionysos is not.” Cranfield {C. E. B., “Some Reflections on the Subject of the Virgin Birth,” Scottish Journal of Theology 41 (1988): 177-89, page 181} points out that “none of the alleged parallels is a real parallel. In none of them is there any question of a truly virginal conception: rather it is a matter of physical intercourse between a god and a mortal woman from which birth results.” However, not all writers have done an adequate job of researching the topic before voicing their opinion(s) on the matter--see, for example Addinall {Peter, “A Response to R. J. Berry on ‘The Virgin Birth of Christ’,” Science & Christian Belief 9 (April 1997): 65-72, page 71} and Kersey Graves. Also, in 1955, Bundy (Jesus and the First Three Gospels (Harvard Univ. Press, 1955): 11; cited by Boslooper {Thomas, The Virgin Birth. (Westminster, 1962); see especially pages 135-186.}) wrote that “The idea of a supernatural or virgin birth is pagan, and it must have found its way into the story of Jesus through Gentile-Christian channels.” Boslooper (135), who thinks that the virgin birth is a myth of the highest order (page 21), responds with: “It is difficult to find a statement in all the literature of historical criticism which is more misleading.” He further notes that “Contemporary writers invariably use only secondary sources to verify such claims. The scholars whose judgment they accept rarely produced or quoted the primary sources. The literature of the old German religiongeschichtliche Schule, which produced this conclusion and which has become the authority for contemporary scholars who wish to perpetuate the notion that the virgin birth in the New Testament has a non-Christian source, is characterized by brief word, phrase, and sentence quotations that have been lifted out of context or incorrectly translated and used to support preconceived theories.” He then spends the next 50 pages directly examining the available evidence and arrives at roughly the same conclusion as Leeming gave above. On this point Bratcher {Robert G., “A Study of Isaiah 7:14,” Bible Translator 9:3 (July 1958): 97-126, page 108} astutely points out that ideas such as “a divine child [being] born to a virgin goddess” would have been “completely foreign to the Hebrew faith” because it not only lacked the “necessary preconceptions” but also because the concepts “were distinctly irreconcilable with the basic article of the Hebrew faith, namely, the oneness and uniqueness of God.” He refers the reader to “a convincing refutation of the influence of ethnic myths upon Hebrew thinking cf. the article by Louis M. Sweet.”

David Conklin

See the Jesus and Paul thread.

David Conklin

Vs. imperialism! I'll take paying attention to the socio-culutural and historical context any day of the week.

Herodotus wrote his Histories between 430 and 424 B.C.E..

Thucydides wrote his The History of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C.E..

Neither mentioned every notable person in all parts of the then known world--no modern historian would either.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: David Conklin ]</p>

Butters

Posted by David Conklin

Once again we get a false analogy. We are not talking about predicting the future here. We are trying to determine if something presented to us is indeed fact, or a myth.
If we wish to avoid believing every myth ever presented to us, we must set some standards.
If we choose to believe a story, that is presented to us without knowledge of the author. that presents events that could not be known to be true by the author, but are presented by hearsay from some other anonomous sources, backed by no physical evidence, then we are forced to believe anything.

If I say to you that Jesus spent the three days he spent in hell, turning water into wine, and partying all day and night with the Devil. And if I say I know it to be true, because Joe told me he saw it in a dream, you would be forced to believe it, or admit that I have no reason to believe the Virgin birth story.

Predicting the future, and realizing that people living in the past made up all kinds of God stories are two different things. Even though I know man can fly today, if you showed me a story about a man that invented the airplane 2000 years ago, I would need more proof than someone I don't know anything about, telling me that someone else saw it in a dream, I would need more proof than that.
Virgin births are possible today. But if someone I don't know, tells me that a girl I don't know anything about claims that she is pregnent by a spirit, and her boyfreind claims it's true because he saw it in a dream, I would have to reject the account. I wonder how many young girls in trouble have tried this tactic. Not many, no one today is gullible to belive such a story.
And yet, when I am told that this happened in a time when all manner of superstitious events were believed, and when the punishment of being pregnent out of wedlock was death, I should believe it!

Oh, no, Paine was just a poor ignorant fool, and if he knew then what we know now, he would see the light!
I say that if he knew then what we know now, he would have been an atheist, instead of a Deist.

David Conklin

Thank you very much, I had forgotten they didn't have electricty and light bulbs back then.

Deiests were for all practical purposes atheists. They merely claimed to believe that there was a deity for fear of what the masses would do if they believed there were no god. Hmmm, one wonders what they would have said if they could see the crime stats of today.