Evidence behind the new testament.

[GwJ]

Can you stop quoting your ridiculous 'proof' now that it's been covered Nicholas?

 

[Nicholas1024]

Well, you dismissed the whole Jesus Seminar with a claim of "they're biased". Note that you are biased, and so is the guy who wrote this book.

Everyone has a bias of some sort. However, the question is if you can look at the evidence objectively and see where it leads.

The original Christians were trying to spread their religion.

Ok mega post time.

By the way, I appreciate you coming back to address my huge post.

In the same form as those manuscripts, yes. Not necessarily in the same form that they were originally written, or in the same form as what actually happened. I don't see how you can claim that 350AD or even 150AD is long before anyone could have done any "meddling".

Not in the same form as originally written? Look, this backing is excellent by ANY historical standard, and if you want to claim that the gospels were modified somewhere in between, you're going to have to back it up with more than "Well, it could have happened." Well, we could be in the matrix, but nobody believes that.

For comparison standards, the average Greek author has fewer than twenty copies of his works still in existences, and they come from no sooner than five hundred to a thousand years later. You just can't legitimately throw doubt on the New Testament in this way.

Remember also that there are other gospels that the church decided not to include in the Bible, so they may have picked out the ones that fit their agenda the most.

Alright, let me deal with the most popular false gospel, the gospel of Thomas.

Now, as far as historical accuracy goes, there's three main criteria.

1) Dating (Obviously something from 30 years after is much more reliable than for something in mid-2nd century).

2) Location (What do you think is more likely, accurate documents to appear in Jerusalem, or out in Siberia?)

3) Cultural details. (If a writer is telling the truth, then he'd know all the cultural details to go with the story. If not, there will be some holes. I'll elaborate more on this later.)

Then there are motivational questions (does he have an axe to grind? etc.)

Now, the New Testament documents do have an agenda: They're affirming that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. But they also make all kinds of statements that can be evaluated. Are they culturally accurate? Are they true to what we know from other historical sources? Were they written in a time and place that has proximity to Jesus's life? The answers are yes.

The first hint regarding the gospel of Thomas is that over half the New Testament writings are quoted, paralleled, or alluded to in Thomas. This means that it's late. There isn't a Christian writing prior to 150 AD that references this much of the New Testament. For example, the Epistles of Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch were written around 110 AD. Nobody doubts their authenticity, and they don't even quote half of the New Testament.

So, we know that the gospel of Thomas has to at least be after the gospel of John. However, it gets even better. Some of the material that certain scholars think is old and independent actually reflects Syrian development.

The gospels were published in Greek, and Christianity later spread to all sorts of language groups. So, it went eastward, where people speak a form of Aramic called Syriac. And the gospels weren't translated into Syriac until a guy named Tatian created a written harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the year 175. That is, he blended the 4 gospels, and wrote it in Syriac. In blending together the sayings of the four Gospels, Tatian created some new forms, because it was part Matthew, part Luke, and so on. Here's the thing: Those distinctive Syrian forms show up in the Gospel of Thomas.

So, we know that Thomas must have been later than Tatian's writing in 175 AD, and hails distinctly from the Syrian church. And we're supposed to believe that it comes from 50-some AD and is MORE reliable than the 4 gospels? Give me a break.

Case for Christ is not by a historical expert. It's by a Christian apologist, and it's about him interviewing Christian apologists.

It's by an atheist journalist going to the top Christian historical experts, and intervewing them about Christianity. At the end he decided the evidence was compelling, and converted to Christianity himself.

This Josephus quote is highly disputed as well, particularly because it doesn't make sense for him to say "Jesus, who was called the Christ". Josephus never converted to Christianity, so that puts the authorship of this line in doubt.

I don't think so. He's saying that Jesus was called the Christ, not that Jesus WAS the Christ. It's the difference between saying "Hitler was called a glorious leader" (which he was, by Nazi Germany), and saying "Hitler was a glorious leader".

They have a copy of Bishop Origen writings where he quotes the above passage and it does not talk about Jesus the way it does (and it's known to be a very early quote of the passage).

Could you be more specific? I've never heard of this.

Blame oral tradition and all that, but when your followers are writing your story DECADES later there's a pretty good chance that it isn't the truth.

I have a challenge for you, Ballin. Name the timegap you would find acceptable. Then name so much as ONE ancient instance where that timegap has actually happened.

This was written like 100 years after the fact.

That's hardly unusual for ancient writings, so what's your point?

I'm going to need more backing for "immense persecution". If I remember right, it's not that Jesus was executed for religious reasons, but for starting a movement in general, a sort of "disturbing the peace". Christians may have been persecuted for this reason, but I'm going to need some evidence that Christians in particular were persecuted for being Christian.

Well, basically Jesus was executed for claiming to be God and insulting the Pharisees. However, they couldn't execute him without going to the Romans at first, and they didn't think their religious claims would impress Pilate, so they wrapped it up in a phony political charge, and just pressured Pilate until he gave in. As for more evidence, you have several independent historical sources, not to mention the testimony of the early church. What more do you want?

If this is really the case, how is it that the religion spread at all? Obviously not all Christians were crucified, and since they were actively spreading their religion it's not like they were all hiding under rocks.

Well, Christians converted new people (despite the persecution) faster than the Romans could murder them. Also, the persecutions only got intensified into mass murder once Nero came into the picture (I think about 60 AD), so it had put down some roots by then. (They were still there before, but mainly from the Jewish government, which a bit weaker.)

You'd think too if Christianity were so important that maybe some people from the other side would write about it? Of course, winners write the histories (literally in this case).

That would be like Hitler writing a history of the Jews.

Only if you accept the testimony of the gospels. It's entirely possible that he was deified later.

If he was just a prophet, why deify him at all? That was one of the huge things that offended other groups. (In fact, it was the main reason that he was killed!) I mean, if they just went "Hey look, Jesus was a prophet, let's follow his teachings", I doubt they'd have come under any persecution whatsoever, and they'd still have gotten a nice Jewish movement going.

And again, there were no contemporary historical references to Jesus. No eyewitness accounts, besides supposed ones given by his followers trying to spread a religion.

Again, if you're going to set the burden of proof this high, I'd like to see an ancient writing where it's been followed.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Also, don't forget about the contradictions in the gospels (which I assume we will get to in a moment).
EDIT: looks like we didn't

They're all in the secondary details, and have explanations, which is a bit of evidence that they didn't make it up. (Think about it: If you're going to all this effort to invent a religion, aren't you at least going to get your story straight with your co-authors?) The primary details (miracles, death and resurrection, opposition from Pharisees, etc.) are unchallenged.

Anyway, I highly doubt that Jesus's lifetime has better historical backing than most. Remember that he was initially a nobody and only became important after his death, when his followers spread their religion. This makes it much more difficult to say that we have backing for the events of his life.

Hardly a nobody, ballin. If someone came in and healed the sick and paralyzed in your hometown, wouldn't you sit up and take notice? Besides, if you're going to make that claim, you should back it up and give ancient examples with better historical backing.

This can't have happened to all Christians, or the religion would not have survived.

This was also written well after the events of Jesus' life (and after the gospels were written), so by this time Christians had much more of a foothold.

The Romans in particular wouldn't have cared about Christians the same way that we don't care about random cults. Only once they became powerful (i.e. once the story of Jesus had spread) would they be considered a threat.

My point is that the religion came under intense persecution some 30 years later.

Do you bother refuting every claim from all the cults in the world? By the time that Christianity was a significant threat, Jesus had been gone for a long time.

Not by historical standards.

The Talmud was written well after the fact as well, and of course would be influenced by the stories of Jesus that were going around. Unless you think the Jews passed on for HUNDREDS of years knowledge that Jesus didn't actually commit any miracles. Remember too that most of the miracles didn't occur in front of tons of eyewitnesses (and even the ones that did, you'd think that someone would have written about them, right? Not one person that could write felt the need to write "whoa some guy fed like 4000 people with a loaf of bread today". Not even his own followers did this until DECADES later).

Well, the knowledge of Alexander the Great was passed on for HUNDREDS of years. Many of the miracles did occur in front of eyewitnesses, and if someone wrote briefly about it, why would we assume the document survived? If you were a later Christian copyist, would you copy down "Dear diary, someone fed 5000 people with just a few loaves of bread today!" over some important historical writing or the gospels themselves?

Not to mention, how would you even know that the Jews are wrong here? How would you know that Jesus was not just a magician even if the miracles were true? You couldn't really prove it...

A house divided against itself cannot stand. If Jesus was a magician with some demonic powers, why on earth would he have been casting out demons? It makes NO sense whatsoever.

Paul's conversion is doubted by many. For one, the main story of his conversion has contradictions in it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_Paul_the_Apostle#Differences_between_the_accounts

Regarding that "contradiction", whether the others heard the voice or not is really a background detail. It's like whether Alexander the Great preferred javelin throwing or the discus as his favorite sport. Nobody cares. Also, there's an explanation. Perhaps like in the NIV translation, they heard the voice but didn't understand it.

Also, again, maybe his enemies didn't bother to expose him, or maybe that's been lost in time.

Why WOULDN'T his enemies bother to expose him, even just verbally? There's no response to such stuff in the early Christian writings, and we have loads of those.

Plus him seeing Jesus and converting can be explained by the usual process of conversion. He got convinced Jesus was the Messiah, just like many others who wanted to see the Messiah come. It's also possible that he initially persecuted Christians that he saw because he saw them as a cult, but then got convinced when he met the leader.

As a Pharisee, he would have known all the arguments against Jesus, and have been familiar with the evidence. So, are you claiming that he as a Pharisee took an objective look at the evidence, and decided that the Christians are right and Jesus is the Messiah?

One of the best ways to write this sort of propaganda and convince others is to claim that you were unenlightened and became enlightened (ahem, like Leo Strobel).

History is studied under the assumption that people are not compulsive liars, else we'd know very little about it! If you want to claim someone's a liar, you're supposed to show why. [/QUOTE]

Plus they are trying to sell Jesus as being perfect, not themselves.

If I ever write a religion, I'm going to sell myself as a leader, a right-hand man to the central figure, not a bumbling idiot.

They were trying to spread their religion.

That seems to be your fallback rebuttal for everything. Does it automatically mean we should assume they're lying?

Why would you doubt Greek Mythology, or Islam, or anything?

Because they claim miracles, but lack evidence to back it up.

Also the gospels contradict each other and get historical facts wrong. It's therefore highly unlikely that they were perfect accounts of what happened.

Perfect? No. Highly trustworthy? Indeed. Although I believe that there are explanations for these "contradictions" you present, they're all about background details, and even if there are a few minor mistakes in the gospels, that hardly invalidates the central message.

Also what's your opinion of Mormans? They were persecuted, and plenty of them died for the cause, and they were not even 200 years ago so they have better historical backing.

I'd have to investigate them further to give you a qualified opinion.

 

[GwJ]

You like assuming people don't exaggerate things. Why should I hold the Sumerians less trustworthy than early Christians?

 

[ballin4life]

I don't want to do a line by line refutation, but Leo Strobel was NOT an atheist when he wrote the book. According to this source (http://www.bidstrup.com/apologetics.htm) on p14 of the book he states that he was a Christian when he wrote it. Of course he plays up the fact that he was at some nebulous time an atheist to sell more books.

Also, a quick glance at wikipedia says that scholars disagree on when the Gospel of Thomas was written. Some say as early as 60AD others as late as 140AD. Some say that it was a source used by the other gospels, so that would account for these so called allusions.

And a fire alarm just went off so I gotta go lol

edit: Stop asking me for other historical examples. I am not a historian. I have not done any case studies about how exactly we know about Julius Caesar or whatever. But none of those stories involve ridiculous claims of miracles. Greek Mythology claims to be from eyewitness accounts too, and you don't have any proof that that isn't the case, but since they make claims that are incongruent with today's conceptions of physics and the universe, we don't take them at face value.

By the way, a timegap that I would find acceptable for the MESSIAH coming would be like 1 year tops

On contradictions: here's a small list of contradictions that I found from google
http://www.bidstrup.com/bible2.htm

Plus one that I know of that I didn't see on there is Judas's death.

The point about contradictions is that it casts doubt on the story. If these people were actually there and could confirm these things, they wouldn't get historical details wrong or have significant contradictions. Getting details wrong or inconsistent is a sign that the stories were based on prevailing myths at the time (so the authors had to just "fill in the details"). For example, biographies of Alexander the Great, written 400 years after his reign, have nowhere near the number of inconsistencies that the Bible does.


Okay I'm just going to give a brief summary. Jesus was a religious leader who started a movement and got killed by the Romans for "disturbing the peace". His followers then deified him and tried to get more people to follow their new religion. 30-40 years after the fact (Jesus died circa 30AD and the Gospels were written in the 60s at the earliest, while most scholars place the earliest of them at 70AD or later), some of them finally wrote about him, and because they wanted to convert more people, they had an incentive to exaggerate (not to mention even misremembering ... and this assumes that the gospels really were written by eyewitnesses, which is disputed). Exaggerations and myths about Jesus probably spread even earlier than that.

 

[Nicholas1024]

@Ballin
Here's the problem. You're asking for an amount of proof that is completely unrealistic for ANYTHING from ancient times. You really want a timegap of just 1 year when we've got timegaps of literally hundreds of years with other texts? You might as well ask for a videotape of Jesus's miracles.

Regarding the contradictions, that's just an example of atheist picking on the tiniest things they can find. There's rational explanations for them, if you bother to look.

For example, regarding the first one they present, the one about King David capturing 1700 vs 7000, there isn't a discrepancy at all in my version of the Bible (NIV, both accounts say 7000). They just picked a translation with a copying error and said "Hey look guys, the Bible is obviously false!"

Regarding the second one, there's several possible explanations. For example, these accounts weren't taken at the same time, it's quite possible that additional people had come in/left by the time of Nehemiah. Additionally, note how many of the numbers differ by a single digit. Copying errors are likely the culprit there. No true contradiction, simply some later scribe's sloppiness.

The issue in the third one is that the Bible refers to bats as birds. You realize, that this was written back during ancient times, and the people who it was written to classified the bats as such? Our modern designation of "bat" didn't even exist back then (and I'm pretty sure some atheist in one of the other DH threads argued that our scientific classification of birds and such is completely arbitrary), so what do you expect? A similar thing holds with the rabbits. These designations were made to help the Ancient Israelites distinguish what to eat/not eat, not to hold with our modern scientific classifications.

Regarding Judas, I'm sure I've answered that before in this thread. Basically, he hanged himself, then was later cut down, at which point his body had decayed to the point where he burst open on the rocks.

I'll stop here, as you can see how there's plausible arguments against these "contradictions".

The point about contradictions is that it casts doubt on the story. If these people were actually there and could confirm these things, they wouldn't gethistorical details wrong or have significant contradictions. Getting details wrong or inconsistent is a sign that the stories were based on prevailing myths at the time (so the authors had to just "fill in the details"). For example, biographies of Alexander the Great, written 400 years after his reign, have nowhere near the number of inconsistencies that the Bible does.

Key word here: Significant. Can you call stuff like "Rabbits chewing the cud" significant? And I'd bet money that nobody's bothered to comb through Alexander the Great's biographies looking for tiny contradictions like the ones in your list. I'm sure if he had thousands of people out to deny his existence then there'd be boatloads of contradictions plaguing him.

Also, don't these supposed contradictions point to the gospel writers NOT colluding? After all, if you're going to spend decades preaching a myth before dying painfully for it, you'd better get your story straight.

Okay I'm just going to give a brief summary. Jesus was a religious leader who started a movement and got killed by the Romans for "disturbing the peace". His followers then deified him and tried to get more people to follow their new religion.

Deifying someone who died shamefully doesn't make sense. Being mortal and able to die isn't something people naturally associate with an all-powerful God, you know? Not to mention, why lie at all? That just makes you lose a ton of credibility, especially if you're going to reference miracles and other events that can easily be checked! Why not just push the cause of Jesus as a great moral teacher? You'd get a lot less argument from other people, little to no risk of persecution, and overall just better odds of success.

30-40 years after the fact (Jesus died circa 30AD and the Gospels were written in the 60s at the earliest, while most scholars place the earliest of them at 70AD or later), some of them finally wrote about him, and because they wanted to convert more people, they had an incentive to exaggerate

Having an incentive to exaggerate doesn't mean they lied about it. For crying out loud, I have an incentive to exaggerate (and so do you!), are you going to consider me a liar?

(not to mention even misremembering ... and this assumes that the gospels really were written by eyewitnesses, which is disputed).

The testimony of the early church is unanimous in that the gospels were written by the people they're named after. Additionally, misremembering shouldn't have been a problem. The disciples didn't write the gospels entirely from memory, they could have easily gone to the places where the miracles happened to refresh their memories, or asked other people who were there.

Exaggerations and myths about Jesus probably spread even earlier than that.

I don't think so. For legend and myths about Jesus to have spread to that extent would require a century AT MINIMUM (which, interestingly enough, is when the false gospels start popping up.) For crying out loud, eyewitnesses to Jesus's teachings and deeds would have still been alive (not everyone, perhaps, but you're not telling me the entire population of Judea died out in 30 years) at the time the gospels were written.

 

[ballin4life]

I was referring specifically to the contradictions in the account of Jesus' death. Things like not agreeing on what time it was or who was there are pretty good indications that at least one of the Gospels is not a correct account (certainly not an eyewitness account).

Your explanation of Judas' death doesn't gel well with a simple reading of http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts 1:18

Anyway, I was saying that the Gospel writers were compiling the various myths and stories about Jesus and that's why they have differences in the details.


And you're saying that Jesus died shamefully? Why would his followers think that? They would say he was a martyr.

Also, I'm not necessarily saying that gospel writers purposefully lied (although that is possible). It's also possible that they were not present for the events depicted and that they were going off stories and hearsay. When you're writing stuff 30 years later, you don't exactly tend to have an accurate memory either (I can hardly remember stuff from 10 years ago, personally. Certainly not an exact chronology).

As to calling you a liar, I am not doing that. However, it seems fairly often that when I fact check your claims you are using extremely optimistic interpretations. Here's another example: you maintain that the gospels were written by the people that they are named after, but here's a quote from the wikipedia page for the Gospel of Matthew:

"Today, most critical scholarship agrees that Matthew did not write the Gospel which bears his name,[20][21] and prefer instead to describe the author as an anonymous Jewish Christian, writing towards the end of the 1st century."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#Composition).

There is also debate about the Gospel of Mark:

"All four canonical gospels are anonymous, but Early Christian tradition identifies this gospel's author as Mark the Evangelist, who is said to have based the work on the testimony of Saint Peter.[4] Some modern scholars consider the traditional authorship account to be essentially credible,[5] while others doubt it.[6]"

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark)


A century for myths? What? Myths can spread around in a few years, or even less, especially when we are talking about uneducated ancient peoples.

30 years was a long time when people didn't have medical technology like today. Lots of illnesses and other medical problems meant that people often died before 30. Hence all the sick people that Jesus healed, right? (note also that people would have to live to be at least 50 to be old enough to witness Jesus and still be around when the Gospels were written).


One last point that I will say again: I don't mind a timegap of a hundred years if the testimony contains things that are plausible (I wouldn't trust just one testimony, but that's not a problem for Alexander the Great at least). If the testimony contains miracles and things that seem incredibly unlikely, then I want more evidence. This goes back to Bayesian probability which I mentioned earlier.