Skeptical

I'm not "inflexible" if someone would provide an answer that is substantive. All the answers that make sense so far, he was illiterate, he thought the end was near, etc. are very difficult to reconcile with any picture of Jesus as portrayed in the Christian tradition.

I thought I was clear. If you say to me that someone has information that is more important to the world than any other person who has ever lived or ever will live, I would expect this person to convey the information personally. Secondhand knowledge is notoriously poor, and thirdhand is even worse.

I would also say that one could argue that Paul had a much greater hand in the orgins of Christianity than Jesus, since it was Paul who shouldered the burden of the church in its crucial first years. Jesus left a few disciples in Jeruselem, Paul brought "the way" to gentile churches throughout the ME and AM.

Ah, so it was not important to him that people living thousands of years later have confidence in what his thoughts and beliefs were. I would agree with this actually, I don't think he cared at all about what was going to happen even in the near future, much less thousands of years later because he thought "the end was near".

We read in the NT that he knew he was "going about my fathers work" from the time he was 12, he therefore had approximately 18 years in which to write, but he apparently chose not to do so. Besides, why only 3 years (some gospels indicate 1)? It would certainly seem like if God would send his "only begotten son" that he would want as many people to hear about it as possible.

First, as I indicated previously in another thread, I minored in Philosophy, I have read Plato's Republic and some of his other works, so I'm pretty familiar with his writings.

Second, you would have to define what you mean by "authenticity". Do you mean whether or not I think it was written by Plato, or whether or not I think it accurately reflects what was said by Socrates? If the latter, I would say "who knows?". It may or may not, and even if it does reflect what Plato believed was true about what Socrates said, it is _still_ second-hand and cannot give us a complete picture of Socrates. The problem with these sorts of comparisons is no one, so far as I know, is a Socratian in the same sense as someone claims to be a Christian. The works of Plato are studied for their intrinsic worth as Philosophy and the ideas in them, not because belief in Plato or Socrates is required for eternal life. I would readily grant the same status to the NT that I grant to the Republic, the ideas that are contained in them both can be studied and discussed, but I wouldn't base my life on either one.

Incidentally, if you haven't read Luke Timothy Johnsons "The Real Jesus", I highly recommend it. He actually addresses the comparison of Jesus to Socrates with some interesting conclusions.

Actually, you'd probably be wrong, but it's irrelevant. No one is a Lincolnian or a Jeffersonian in the same sense that people are Christians.

First, your wrong about Julius Ceaser, he left some of his own writings. Second, there are many contemporary historians that recorded the events of all of these individuals. Third, there are no religions based on these individuals that require absolute faith that we have an accurate picture of them from 3rd hand sources. You really should read <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html" target="_blank">this</a>, it discusses Caesars crossing of the rubicon and compares it to the "resurrection".

The bottom line is what we know from historians about these individuals _may_ be fairly accurate, or it may not be. It wouldn't make any difference to the vast majority of people living today with the exception of ancient historians. The same cannot be said of Jesus.

His "primary mission" was to save the world. He died 2,000 years ago. If what he had to say was so important, why not leave his own writings?

He could walk on water, feed thousands with a few loaves of bread and a few fish and he couldn't find time in his busy schedule to write down anything? Sure, that makes sense.

What does the "amazingness" of his public life have to do with whether he had time to write or not? Why couldn't he have written before he began his public ministry? Why couldn't he have made the time, he was supposed to be the "son of God" after all? This to me is nothing but special pleading.

Ok, so it made sense for his immediate followers to believe in it. Sitting 2,000 years removed it's a bit more of a stretch. This again is nothing more than special pleading.

In other words, he was _so_ important he couldn't write anyting? This is nonsense. If what he had to say was so important that it needed to survive for thousands of years, the least I would expect is words for the man himself. BTW, I'm very familiar with the story, so you can drop the NT quotes and evangelizing in future posts.

You, like others, are assuming the content, which is not a valid argument. A document outlining his beliefs would have gone a long way toward quieting the controversies in the early church such as Paul's view on circumsion and Marcion's views on Jesus' divinity. It cannot be defended that such a document would _not_ have been useful.

If I expected my thoughts and views to be important 2,000 years in the future, not only would I leave my own writings, I'd have them carved in the side of mountains, especially if I had magical powers. If I was the "son of God" and peoples eternity hinged on belief in me, I'd have a copy of my teachings on every doorstop and backwater tavern before I met my untimely end.


You don't watch much "Law and Order" do you? Clients _often_ speak on their own behalf, it's by far more compelling to hear what happened from the source than some second-hand testimony. Besides which, your analogy is fatally flawed, the "disciples" aren't here to be questioned and the documents we have are almost certainly not written by anyone who even _knew_ Jesus. What we have is at best "hearsay" from a 3rd hand source that cannot be identified, the absolute weakest kind of evidence and something that would not be admitted in any court.

I answered this once already, it would help if you would read the previous posts in the thread. I _never_ said we should have writings of Jesus _instead_ of the gospels. I pointed out that we could have writings of Jesus _in addition to_ the gospels. Your also assuming the writings would be a biography, which I also never said. Simply having a short document of his core beliefs would be very important as an example.

Quoting bible verses is the weakest sort of argument and its unecessary. I've read the NT several times, I know what it says.

Your again assuming the content, which is not a valid argument. And again I covered this earlier in the thread. Paul's writings could be the same as the currently are, but instead he could have had an actual document written by the man himself to give to the churches he visited. To say this would not have been useful is ludicrous.

Perhaps not, but it would be difficult to argue that Jesus didn't exist. It would have helped the early church know the thoughts of Jesus on important matters I alluded to earlier. It might answer some key questions that non-theists such as myself have.

Because secondhand testimony is weak, and thirdhand testimony is nearly worthless. Any writing after the 1st century is of almost no value in determining what Jesus may or may not have said or done. A document with a very early circulation by Paul plausibly claiming to be from Jesus is, to me, one of the bare minimum pieces of evidence I would expect to see from "the son of God".

Most of your arguments basically amount to "he didn't have enough time", as if the creator of the universe was on a time crunch and he couldn't have given his "only begotton son" as much time as needed to leave his own writings. The only other argument you've made is "it wouldn't have been useful", which is clearly false. At a minimum, clarification of Jesus' thoughts on many matters would have been very important to the early church movement, so this argument does not hold.

Radorth

So the apostles clarified them.

Also he was in the flesh, so he had to eat, sleep and preach to as many people as possible before he was crucified, many of whom could not read. And I'm sure not a few kept diaries and notes. I certainly would have.

He was not the "God of the universe" in the eternal sense- not yet anyway- so you overreach with that objection. He also believed the Holy Spirit would "teach you all things" and "bring all things to your memory." And I'm sure not a few kept diaries and notes. I certainly would have.

Radorth

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]</p>

Infinity Lover

If Jesus could've written, perhaps he would've send his mother a message. (Hi mom, all is well... etc.)

Is such a scenario conceivable? Factor to be taken into acount?

Skeptical

Are you serious or joking? The gospels we have do not cover things which were clearly controversial in the early days of the church such as the disagreements between Paul and the disciples regarding circumsion and the Marcion issue. If they had clarified it, there would have been no problems. Besides which no matter how close any particular disciple may have been to Jesus, to say they could speak for him on all matters is obviously wrong.

Not sure what your trying to say here. If your trying to use the "he didn't have enough time" argument, I think I covered this in my answer to Vander. You haven't indicated why my answer isn't sufficient, so I don't see anything new here.

He was supposed to be deposited here via God's will, God could certainly have given him the time necessary to leave his own writings. As far as your quote of John 14:26 goes, I assume your interpretation of this is that God will just "pop" the thoughts into your head? I don't think this actually deserves a response. The problem with people who have thought that God was putting thoughts in their heads are plentiful enough to speak for themselves.(e.g. the witch hunts, the inquisitions, the crusades, etc)

Skeptical

I have tried to be clear, but somehow I am not making myself understood. My objection to your argument was _not_ that you made some assumptions about what the content of a document written by Jesus would be. We can clearly make some assumptions and see where they take us. My objection was that one cannot assume a particular content and then based solely on this assumption say that _no_ content would have been useful. It is easy to see that there is content that Jesus could have left that _would_ have been useful. That has been my point. There are some assumptions about content that would have been useful for Jesus to have written about, therefore arguing that any writing by Jesus would not have been useful is not a valid argument.

Again, it's not that we cannot make some assumptions about content, we clearly can. It is making an assumption about what a hypothetical document might look like and then saying that solely based on this assumption of this _particular_ content that _no_ content would have been useful that is the problem. My argument was specifically that it is not valid to assume that documents written by Jesus might have assumed a certain form and then based on this assumption to say that he didn't write anything because that content wouldn't have been useful. As long as there is a reasonble assumption we can make about what the content might have been that would have been useful, that is all that is required to show that the specific argument about a hypothetical document not being useful is invalid. This is as clear as I can be on this.

First, I never said that it would be _more_ trustworthy, I said we would have at least as good a reason to think it was written by Jesus as we do to think the letters attributed to Paul are written by Paul. Quite a difference. Second, Paul didn't write about the details of his conversion, that is found in Acts. Third, Paul claims he received his teachings "from no man", so it's not clear exactly what level of detail he received from the disciples. Fourth, your assuming I don't think Paul is "reliable", which is a loaded word. I think Paul reliably reported what he believed. Whether or not this reflected reality is quite a different matter.

You are also mischaracterizing what I said. Paul would clearly have received such a document from the disciples themselves, making such a document as reliable as anything else Paul may have received from them. It would not have been something he "just read".

leonarde

Posted: I was talking about admissibility of evidence as
happens in our legal system: a witness talking about an experience that happened to him personally will, assuming it has bearing on the
case or related issues, almost always be able to
testify without objections. A witness trying to
introduce WRITTEN evidence (ie documents that he
himself did not write and did not PERSONALLY see
written originally) has more of an obstacle to face: the court may rule the documents to be of
uncertain provenance and/or that the given witness
is not qualified, in the sense of being a witness
to the WRITING of the document (ie it would be something like WRITTEN hearsay evidence) to testify as to their validity. It is a matter of being at two removes from the document: not having
seen the events described AND not having seen the
documents written. THAT is what I mean by Paul "just read" (that is, WOULD just have read in our hypothetical) the document.
Cheers!

leonarde

Posted by Skeptical: But what sort of "assumptions" did I make? That
a pre-Crucifixion Jesus could not have written
about, as a fait accompli, the Crucifixion OR the
Resurrection. He could only have made some (in itself unverifiable)prediction about the Crucifixion and Resurrection. This assumption is
based on the fact that dead men don't write books
of even the slightest length. To me disagreeing on this point seems a bit outlandish. The fact that He couldn't have written in this vain DOES in my view have some bearing on the usefulness of such a(hypothetical) work. I think you are being arbitrary in ruling out such an "assumption". It
is hardly as if I assumed Jesus would be writing
about nuclear physics or some unlikely topic!

Cheers!

leonarde

Posted by Skeptical: Could you quote me saying the "any writig by Jesus
would not have been useful" or words to that effect?? That is NOT my position and I don't THINK
I said that. Rather I was contrasting the likely
reality of such a Jesus-written work with the
starkly optimistic picture that you gave it in the
early going: I tried to give a few suggestions as to possible reasons. Given them,
it doesn't seem to ME to be "completely illogical"
for Jesus not to have written something.

Cheers!

motorhead

If this hasn't been mentioned already, I think it's a good possibility that Jesus would've left writings behind had he known that a worldwide organization would be set up in his name, and had he thought his return wouldn't be for at least 2000 or so years. The fact is he thought the Kingdom of God was coming very soon, probably while he was still alive too. When he realized he was probably going to die for his preaching, he still predicted that the Kingdom would come within the lifetime of his disciples. Want proof? Look it up. It's well documented in the "divinely inspired" writings of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.

Skeptical

You listed as one of your reasons in your first post:

6)the Gospels contain (and this is most explicit
in John) an element of WITNESS: hey, I saw this
guy raise Lazarus with my own eyes! If Jesus had
written a Gospel it would have been one guy "witnessing" to himself. Not so persuasive; what if he really WERE loco?

This seems to me to assume that a document written by Jesus would have been merely stories of Jesus saying "I did this" or "I healed this person" or "I raised this guy from the dead", sort of like the Gospels but told from the POV of the first person. If you assume this sort of content, then I agree it wouldn't be useful. However, one can easily imagine a document written by Jesus that took some sort of form of his sayings and beliefs about himself and his mission that would have been valuable.