Evidence behind the new testament.

[GwJ]

If you can't figure out our doctrine, stop trying to judge it.

 

[ballin4life]

@Ballin
Communist russia was set up by Atheists, while the vast majority of our founding fathers were Christian (or theist of some sort). So, you can't just blatantly imply that a religion-based government is automatically more corrupt than a secular one.

WTF? The US was the one of the first ever SECULAR, NON-RELIGIOUS governments. They are an extremely strong example in my favor. The US is not a "religion-based" government.

There are of course examples of really bad non-religious governments. I suppose my overall point is that any time you can foster extremely strong beliefs in the population, that will lead to more corruption (e.g. the Nazis had an extremely strong belief in German supremacy which obviously led to bad things). A strongly religious government is just one particular example of this.

Pretty much all governments before the US were religious and had massive power abuses by the leaders - Kings starting wars at their whims, overtaxing the population to pay for their own monuments, etc.

All else equal there is much more potential for corruption in a religious government.

The way I judge a religion would be based on its doctrine. However, with such a broad definition of "atheist", that would mean atheism doesn't really have a doctrine, which makes it more difficult to judge.

Anyway, the point behind the hitler/stalin/atheist thing is that you can't just dismiss Christianity because of the crusades any more than you can dismiss atheism because of those madmen.

We are going in circles here. Hitler and stalin did not do the terrible things because of atheism. It's just a coincidence - like them both being European.

The crusades on the other hand were a direct product of religion. Similarly, I might dislike totalitarianism because the terrible things Hitler and Stalin did were a direct product of totalitarianism.

(again, I'm not actually condemning religion based on the crusades. They are just an example which backs up my logic about religion fostering corruption).

 

[Dre89]

Nic the Church never said the Pope was infallible in his personal life, and that he is immune to corruption. They said he is infallible with regards to altering faith and morals doctrine, which has never been changed in the history of the Church.

 

[jaswa]

One man (who changes) changing faith doctrine, sweeeeeeet...

I reckon it'd make more sense if it was consistent =] Good for us prots the Bible hasn't changed much lately.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

Just wait until another translation comes out lol

honestly I don't understand why modern Protestants despise the Catholic Church so much.

 

[Nicholas1024]

WTF? The US was the one of the first ever SECULAR, NON-RELIGIOUS governments. They are an extremely strong example in my favor. The US is not a "religion-based" government.

There are of course examples of really bad non-religious governments. I suppose my overall point is that any time you can foster extremely strong beliefs in the population, that will lead to more corruption (e.g. the Nazis had an extremely strong belief in German supremacy which obviously led to bad things). A strongly religious government is just one particular example of this.

Pretty much all governments before the US were religious and had massive power abuses by the leaders - Kings starting wars at their whims, overtaxing the population to pay for their own monuments, etc.

All else equal there is much more potential for corruption in a religious government.



We are going in circles here. Hitler and stalin did not do the terrible things because of atheism. It's just a coincidence - like them both being European.

The crusades on the other hand were a direct product of religion. Similarly, I might dislike totalitarianism because the terrible things Hitler and Stalin did were a direct product of totalitarianism.

(again, I'm not actually condemning religion based on the crusades. They are just an example which backs up my logic about religion fostering corruption).

So, your claim is religion fosters corruption?

I grant that the US government has no preference regarding religion, but the people who founded it (and managed it, early on) WERE for the majority Christians. If religion fosters corruption, wouldn't it make sense that the government we had at the beginning would have been corrupt? Additionally, the government (and country as a whole) has drifted away from Christianity and towards what you might call "practical atheism" (That is, people who live as if there is no God.) However, can you claim that the government we have now is less corrupt than that which we had back at 1776? I think not.

Anyway, I'd say this point is basically moot, as I think we can both agree the way to judge a religion would be by what it teaches, not by the actions of people who claim to belong to said religion.


Now, to wrench this thread back on topic, here's a good summary (with some extra stuff added) I posted earlier, but was lost in all the nazi/communist/crusades discussion.

I figured I'd revive this thread, as there's still plenty of debating left to do, IMO.

Let's take this one point at a time.

My argument:

1: The new testament as we have it today is in the same form as it was originally written nearly 2000 years ago.

Proof of 1:
This is fairly simple, as the new testament has a ridiculous number of manuscripts supporting it from all over the place in multiple languages, with some fragments dating all the way back to early second century. To focus on one specific type, there are 306 unical manuscripts (written in all-caps greek letters), which date back to as early as the third century. The most important of these would be the Codex Sinaiticus, which is a complete copy of the new testament (the only one written in this form, actually) which dates to about 350 AD, long before the catholic church would have been doing any significant meddling. As earlier texts agree with it, I think it's fair to say that we have the New Testament as it was originally written. (As a side note: The total number of ancient manuscripts would be around 24,000, far more then we have of any other ancient documents.)

2: Non-biblical evidence about Jesus.
From A Case for Christ, by a historical expert: (slight paraphrasing here)
Even discarding every scrap of the new testament or other Christian writings, we would still know the following about him: First, Jesus was a Jewish teacher. Second, many people believed that he performed miracles. Third, that some people believed he was the Messiah. Fourth, that he was rejected by the Jewish leaders. Fifth, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Sixth, that despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by AD 64 (about 30 years after his death). Finally, that all kinds of people (man, woman, slave, free, from all sorts of locations) worshiped him as God.

Proof of 2:
Let's start with the recordings of Josephus. Josephus was a Jewish historian, a priest, and a Pharisee, therefore making him part of the group of Jesus's harshest critics. (Despite this, he was very unpopular with the Jews, as he collaborated with the hated Romans.) His most ambitious work was called "The Antiquities", as a history of the Jews from Creation up until his time. It was completed around 93 AD.

Here's the quote:

"He [Ananias, a high priest] convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned."

This proves the existence of Jesus, and it mentions that Jesus was called the Christ. This is an important point, as Christ means "The Annointed One", or "Messiah". Therefore, some people believed Jesus was the Messiah. As far as I know, NOBODY has successfully debated this passage. (Note the neutral historical tone and a delivery of the bare facts. If there was some Christian addition later on, wouldn't you expect it to be supportive of James?)

Josephus also wrote an even lengthier section about Jesus, which is called the Testimonium Flavianum (which is also REALLY hotly disputed, by the way.)

Here's the quote:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

For obvious reasons this passage is controversial. (Note how supportive it is of Jesus, compared to the former's cold delivery of the facts.) Scholarship has gone through three trends about it. For obvious reasons, early Christians loved it as a corroboration of Jesus's lifetime. Then the entire passage was questioned by some scholars during the Enlightenment. However, today there's a remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic, although there may be some interpolations. (That is, early Christian copyists inserted some phrases that a Jewish write like Josephus wouldn't have written.) For example, the first line says, "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man." That is likely authentic, as it isn't normally the way Christians would speak about Jesus, The next phrase says "if indeed one ought to call him a man.", implying Jesus is more than human, and therefore likely an interpolation. The other two points that are likely interpolations would be the two unambiguous statements "He was the Christ", and "On the third day he appeared to them restored to life." Considering how elsewhere Josephus doesn't make these sort of absolute "Christianity is TRUE" sort of statements, you can see how they were likely added later. However, even when you take those out, you end up with the info that Jesus was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem, and that he was a wise teacher who managed to make a large and long-lasting following despite his crucifixion at the hands of Pilate and the request of the Jewish leaders.

Anyway, despite these and other writings, we still have the question, "Why isn't there more backing outside of the gospels?". However, the answer is fairly simple, and has to deal with the persecution of the first-century church.

Let me start with a quote from Tacitus, a Roman historian.

"Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome.... Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."

You see, there was immense persecution of anyone who called themselves a Christian back then. Therefore, people would obviously be either for Christ, against him, or be very careful to have nothing to do with Christianity! In the first case, any significant testimony would count as Christian (and possibly added to the Bible), which we're ignoring for the moment. In the other two cases, would you write significant testimony supporting a figure whose cause was under intense persecution? You might as well put a "Crucify me" sign on your back.

Additionally, Jesus gives people very few options with his claims to divinity. You either have to dismiss him as a lunatic (As C.S. Lewis put it, "On the level of a man who claims he's a poached egg"), condemn him as a liar, or worship him as Lord. Therefore, any testimony about him by it's very nature, would have to either confine itself to the bare facts (and be strictly historical, such as the one by Josephus), condemn him (as the Talmud does, an important work by the Jewish community), or confirm him as Lord (which would therefore be Christian, which we're ignoring for the moment.)

Finally, the same exact question can be applied to any other significant event in ancient history, and time and time again, it turns out that the events of Jesus's lifetime have far more backing then most.

3: The New Testament itself. I claim that this gives an accurate representation of Jesus's life and teachings.

Proof of 3:
Firstly, in all likelihood the authors of the New Testament (not to mention the thousands of other Christians from that time) suffered intense persecution and death for their beliefs. Let me quote another historical source, Pliny the Younger. (This is from a letter he sent to Emperor Trajan.)

"I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished...."

Secondly, with all the persecution of Christianity going on back then, if the whole thing was a lie, don't you think that the Jewish and Roman governments would have attacked it on that basis? But we have no recordings of any such thing. For example, in the Talmud, a collection of Jewish teachings from the second to fifth centuries, Jesus is regarded as a magician who tried to lead Israel astray. If the miracles never happened, that would have been the perfect opportunity to go "Look, the Christians claim he did miracles, but we're here to tell you that he didn't."

Thirdly, some who were previously extremely skeptical converted to Christianity. Paul is the case in point here, who was murdering Christians before Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Now, in his letters, he occasionally referenced his pharisee background in his arguments. If that was a lie (that is, if he never was anti-Christian like that), it was practically begging his enemies to expose it, and ruin his credibility. But again, that didn't happen. So, you have someone with no motive to convert to Christianity (The religion is being persecuted, he hates it himself, he's already highly regarded by virtue of being a pharisee, and he'd lose all of that by converting), who claims he saw Christ, and became a Christian. How else do you explain that?

Fourthly, the gospels paint a pretty unflattering portrait of the disciples. (Matthew and John were disciples, and Mark got most of his info from Peter, Luke got his from Paul.) If they made the whole thing up, wouldn't they have painted a better picture of themselves? But no, they tend to bumble through the story, not understanding Jesus's true purpose until right before the Crucifixion, swearing to die with him, and then deserting him a few scant hours later. (Peter denied Jesus 3 times, even calling curses down on himself if he lied the last time!)

Finally, what reason is there to doubt the testimony of the disciples and early church? There was no monetary or political gain involved, so the only reason I can think of would be because they reported miracles. However, considering that this is testimony about the Son of God, is that a valid reason to simply toss out their testimony altogether? I don't think so.

 

[GwJ]

I agree with Nicholas that we need to stop bringing up the actions of others as opposed to the doctrine.

 

[ballin4life]

So, your claim is religion fosters corruption?

Religious governments foster corruption.

I grant that the US government has no preference regarding religion, but the people who founded it (and managed it, early on) WERE for the majority Christians. If religion fosters corruption, wouldn't it make sense that the government we had at the beginning would have been corrupt? Additionally, the government (and country as a whole) has drifted away from Christianity and towards what you might call "practical atheism" (That is, people who live as if there is no God.) However, can you claim that the government we have now is less corrupt than that which we had back at 1776? I think not.

The US government is not religious. It doesn't matter what the founding fathers were.

Also the increase in corruption in the US is probably caused by the massive increase in the size of the government. Obviously, a government with more power is going to have more people try to take advantage of that power.

It's worth noting that religious governments have an incentive to be larger governments. Religions try to spread themselves, so a religious government will often try to force religious values on the entire country. They have to be larger in order to have greater control over the citizens. That's when people come in and try to take advantage of that extra power the government claims.

Anyway, I'd say this point is basically moot, as I think we can both agree the way to judge a religion would be by what it teaches, not by the actions of people who claim to belong to said religion.

My point was responding to the discussion about theocracy. I'm not judging anyone's actions here.

Now, to wrench this thread back on topic, here's a good summary (with some extra stuff added) I posted earlier, but was lost in all the nazi/communist/crusades discussion.

You should read the Wheel of Time. Few people say that everything in the Bible is false. It's just very likely that the grains of truth have been twisted around for religious purposes.

 

[rvkevin]

So, your claim is religion fosters corruption?
Religious governments foster corruption.

I think it is better stated that reliance on authority is what fosters corruption. Religious governments necessarily require authority in order to establish their claims. On the other hand, secular governments may or may not rely on authority. Those that have, have been unsuccessful for this very reason. The US is an example of a country where, in principle, does not rely on authority, but instead is governed by the people. However, in practice, the government is only as strong as its weakest link: the people. Given that the US population is an outlier in terms of high religiosity, it is not unexpected that the US lags behind other developed countries in terms of societal health indicators.

 

[Nicholas1024]

This reliance on authority/religious governments/whatever fosters corruption needs to be taken to a seperate thread.

@ballin
You really just dodged all that evidence I presented regarding the New Testament. You can claim the disciples twisted the facts all you want, but unless you give some reason to believe that, it's just empty words. If you want to cast doubt on the testimony the early church gave us regarding Jesus, then refute my arguments.

 

[ballin4life]

This reliance on authority/religious governments/whatever fosters corruption needs to be taken to a seperate thread.

Way to assert your conclusion there

@ballin
You really just dodged all that evidence I presented regarding the New Testament. You can claim the disciples twisted the facts all you want, but unless you give some reason to believe that, it's just empty words. If you want to cast doubt on the testimony the early church gave us regarding Jesus, then refute my arguments.

It's not dodging; we already discussed it in this thread.

The people who wrote the Bible have an incentive to write it so that it spreads their religion. You counter this by saying "but they were persecuted!" - which isn't a strong argument to me because plenty of people have chosen to continue spreading their religion in the face of persecution.

Why did no one EVER write an account of Jesus performing miracles while it was actually happening (or even right after his death/resurrection)? Why wait until 50+ years after the fact?

 

[Claire Diviner]

There is absolutely no proof that the Bible is word-for-word true. To say that every word in the Bible is true on the grounds that it is what one's religion dictates is asinine. People expect me to believe that our oldest ancestors, Adam and Eve, were created by the mere dirt of the Earth? And what about the other creatures? Were they somehow congealed in much the same way? And what about that man swallowed by that giant fish? I'm sorry, but to take the Bible's word so seriously is rather pointless. To me, the Bible is more of a storybook with guidelines on how to live. That said, I'm sure some eras mentioned in the Bible are true, and I'm sure Jesus existed as well, but as for Jesus, I'm gonna bet he isn't as powerful or as much of a miracle worker as the Bible claims him to be.

I think the writers of the New Testament started to misinterpret the words of others, as they probably heard stories of Jesus from a friend, who heard it from another friend and so on and so forth. Ever heard of the "telephone effect"? As the story gets told by more and more people passing it along, the original details tend to get distorted. As of right now, no one can prove that the Bible is true. On that same token, no one can disprove the Bible for the most part. Until we have some way of traveling back into time to witness these events, we will have to assume that many of the Bible's tales are extreme exaggerations of truths.

Is there a God, or Heaven and Hell? I guess we'll have to find out when we actually die, now won't we? It's a pity we can't simply talk to the dead and ask if God exists or not, but as the saying goes, "dead men tell no tales".

 

[Nicholas1024]

Way to assert your conclusion there



It's not dodging; we already discussed it in this thread.

Actually, there's new evidence in the summary I hadn't presented before. Could you do me a favor and give it a closer look?

The people who wrote the Bible have an incentive to write it so that it spreads their religion. You counter this by saying "but they were persecuted!" - which isn't a strong argument to me because plenty of people have chosen to continue spreading their religion in the face of persecution.

Here's the problem with your counter-argument. Yes, plenty of people have chosen to continue spreading their religion in the face of persecution. However, they believed it to be true. How many people have chosen to continue spreading lies in the face of persecution? Persecution that could be easily avoided by confessing to the truth! If the disciples were lying, you're claiming that a dozen different people died for a lie, and not one of them chose to AVOID trouble by telling the truth! There was no monetary or political gain involved, so you claim that a dozen different people decided "Hey, let's commit political, financial, and probably physical suicide by inventing a giant lie about a dead man that was shamefully executed!" And even given that, how do you explain the conversion of skeptics like Paul? For crying out loud, he was tracking down and murdering Christians before his vision on the road to Damascus! He GAVE UP plenty of power and money (being a respected Jewish leader) by converting to Christianity!

One last point, if the whole thing was false, why didn't the Jewish and Roman authorities attack it on those grounds? The gospels gave tons of references to events the Pharisees supposedly attended, why didn't they just say "Look, we were there and that never happened."

Why did no one EVER write an account of Jesus performing miracles while it was actually happening (or even right after his death/resurrection)? Why wait until 50+ years after the fact?

That was an oral culture (in contrast to today's written culture) back then, and the vast majority of teachings were spread that way. (Recall that the printing press wasn't invented until the middle ages, books weren't cheap back then.) You can apply this question to anything in ancient times, and for most the answer is worse. For example, why did no one EVER write an account of Alexander the great conquering half of Europe and Asia as it was actually happening (or even right afterwards)? Why wait until 400+ years after the fact?? (By the way, it was only 30 years after the fact, not 50.)

There is absolutely no proof that the Bible is word-for-word true. To say that every word in the Bible is true on the grounds that it is what one's religion dictates is asinine. People expect me to believe that our oldest ancestors, Adam and Eve, were created by the mere dirt of the Earth? And what about the other creatures? Were they somehow congealed in much the same way? And what about that man swallowed by that giant fish? I'm sorry, but to take the Bible's word so seriously is rather pointless. To me, the Bible is more of a storybook with guidelines on how to live. That said, I'm sure some eras mentioned in the Bible are true, and I'm sure Jesus existed as well, but as for Jesus, I'm gonna bet he isn't as powerful or as much of a miracle worker as the Bible claims him to be.

Is it really such a stretch to believe that an all-powerful God can do miracles? Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you'd read my argument in detail before posting, as it gets tiring reposting the same thing over and over again.

I think the writers of the New Testament started to misinterpret the words of others, as they probably heard stories of Jesus from a friend, who heard it from another friend and so on and so forth. Ever heard of the "telephone effect"? As the story gets told by more and more people passing it along, the original details tend to get distorted. As of right now, no one can prove that the Bible is true. On that same token, no one can disprove the Bible for the most part. Until we have some way of traveling back into time to witness these events, we will have to assume that many of the Bible's tales are extreme exaggerations of truths.

Sorry, but if you want to go that route you'll have to throw out 99% of ancient history. It would be unprecedented for that type of legend to have crept in over a mere 30 years between the events and when it was written down, and we have such extensive ancient manuscripts of the bible, that it's nigh-impossible for the original testimonies of the disciples to have been distorted through the years. For crying out loud, do you honestly believe that Alexander the Great's story could remain intact for 400 years, while Jesus's supposedly got demolished over less than a tenth of that time?!?

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

Here's the problem with your counter-argument. Yes, plenty of people have chosen to continue spreading their religion in the face of persecution. However, they believed it to be true. How many people have chosen to continue spreading lies in the face of persecution? Persecution that could be easily avoided by confessing to the truth! If the disciples were lying, you're claiming that a dozen different people died for a lie, and not one of them chose to AVOID trouble by telling the truth! There was no monetary or political gain involved, so you claim that a dozen different people decided "Hey, let's commit political, financial, and probably physical suicide by inventing a giant lie about a dead man that was shamefully executed!" And even given that, how do you explain the conversion of skeptics like Paul? For crying out loud, he was tracking down and murdering Christians before his vision on the road to Damascus! He GAVE UP plenty of power and money (being a respected Jewish leader) by converting to Christianity!

Using the bible to support the Bible's validity? Sounds like it to me!

One last point, if the whole thing was false, why didn't the Jewish and Roman authorities attack it on those grounds? The gospels gave tons of references to events the Pharisees supposedly attended, why didn't they just say "Look, we were there and that never happened."

Of course they did. The Pharisees denied Jesus as the son of God and did not believe that he performed any "miracles." A worthy scholar such as yourself should know this.

Is it really such a stretch to believe that an all-powerful God can do miracles? Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you'd read my argument in detail before posting, as it gets tiring reposting the same thing over and over again.

Well what if the world was actually created last week but God fabricated memories from before and made the universe seem billions of years old to us?

How much of a stretch is that?

Sorry, but if you want to go that route you'll have to throw out 99% of ancient history. It would be unprecedented for that type of legend to have crept in over a mere 30 years between the events and when it was written down, and we have such extensive ancient manuscripts of the bible, that it's nigh-impossible for the original testimonies of the disciples to have been distorted through the years. For crying out loud, do you honestly believe that Alexander the Great's story could remain intact for 400 years, while Jesus's supposedly got demolished over less than a tenth of that time?!?

Alexander conquered like all of Eurasia. Jesus... didn't.

 

[Nicholas1024]

Using the bible to support the Bible's validity? Sounds like it to me!

So obviously we should throw out everything the Bible itself says when considering how accurate the Bible might be. </sarcasm>

Of course they did. The Pharisees denied Jesus as the son of God and did not believe that he performed any "miracles." A worthy scholar such as yourself should know this.

Wrong. They DID deny him as the Son of God, but they never claimed he didn't perform miracles. Instead they called him demon possessed and a magician. (For instance in the Talmud.)

Well what if the world was actually created last week but God fabricated memories from before and made the universe seem billions of years old to us?

I'm being serious. You can't just say "Oh, there's no way the Bible can be true because that would require an all-powerful God that ACTUALLY does miracles!"

Alexander conquered like all of Eurasia. Jesus... didn't.

Well, to the people who believed in him, he was far more important than anyone else could ever be period. Besides, there are similar timegaps (similar to Alexander the great, I mean) with just about every ancient event.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Is it really such a stretch to believe that an all-powerful God can do miracles? Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you'd read my argument in detail before posting, as it gets tiring reposting the same thing over and over again.

I read your argument, but it doesn't prove Jesus was the miracle worker as was written in the scriptures. Again, you seem to be missing the point that perhaps Jesus was a great man in personality and charisma, but didn't have the powers as was stated. That's my point. The "evidence" here, to me, may merely prove the existence of many people portrayed in the Bible (I mean Julius Ceasar was mentioned as well during the time of Christ), but that's all the proof really shows.

Sorry, but if you want to go that route you'll have to throw out 99% of ancient history. It would be unprecedented for that type of legend to have crept in over a mere 30 years between the events and when it was written down, and we have such extensive ancient manuscripts of the bible, that it's nigh-impossible for the original testimonies of the disciples to have been distorted through the years. For crying out loud, do you honestly believe that Alexander the Great's story could remain intact for 400 years, while Jesus's supposedly got demolished over less than a tenth of that time?!?

Alexander the Great existed, and I'm sure he's as real and as believable as Jesus, but is everything written about Alexander true? There's a good bet that there are half-truths to his tale. For all we know, he may not even be as "great" as his namesake. Just because these people may or may not have existed does not mean everything written about them is fact.

Whether the tale of Jesus was written throughout the time he lived, or Alexander's tale was written 400 years after his death, you fast forward the age of those tales to this very time and there will be distortions whether you like it or not. Unless they had video cameras to record Jesus's life (or the life of other historical figures), there's nothing that can confirm the stories written are true.

 

[ballin4life]

Actually, there's new evidence in the summary I hadn't presented before. Could you do me a favor and give it a closer look?

I don't know what's new and what isn't.

Here's the problem with your counter-argument. Yes, plenty of people have chosen to continue spreading their religion in the face of persecution. However, they believed it to be true. How many people have chosen to continue spreading lies in the face of persecution? Persecution that could be easily avoided by confessing to the truth! If the disciples were lying, you're claiming that a dozen different people died for a lie, and not one of them chose to AVOID trouble by telling the truth!

They might have believed it. How many of the writers were actually present for every miracle?

There was no monetary or political gain involved, so you claim that a dozen different people decided "Hey, let's commit political, financial, and probably physical suicide by inventing a giant lie about a dead man that was shamefully executed!"

There is always political gain to gathering followers for your religion.

And even given that, how do you explain the conversion of skeptics like Paul? For crying out loud, he was tracking down and murdering Christians before his vision on the road to Damascus! He GAVE UP plenty of power and money (being a respected Jewish leader) by converting to Christianity!

I don't know who Paul is. But I can explain conversions in general by the fact that people want to believe the Messiah has come. If I'm not mistaken, Jews were pretty oppressed by the Romans and were looking for something to save them.

One last point, if the whole thing was false, why didn't the Jewish and Roman authorities attack it on those grounds? The gospels gave tons of references to events the Pharisees supposedly attended, why didn't they just say "Look, we were there and that never happened."

Perhaps they weren't there? Maybe these writings have been lost, or maybe they talked about it but never wrote anything down? There's lots of alternate explanations.

I'm pretty sure they were not there for most of the miracles anyway.

Plus again the books were written years later so many of these people who could have come out would not be around any more.

That was an oral culture (in contrast to today's written culture) back then, and the vast majority of teachings were spread that way. (Recall that the printing press wasn't invented until the middle ages, books weren't cheap back then.) You can apply this question to anything in ancient times, and for most the answer is worse.

One thing I'd point out here is that the Bible probably has a lot of manuscripts/sources precisely because Christians were preserving them to spread their religion.

Also, all I'm saying is that if the MESSIAH were walking around I'd probably write the book while he was still around, or right after, rather than years later.

For example, why did no one EVER write an account of Alexander the great conquering half of Europe and Asia as it was actually happening (or even right afterwards)?

I would assume people did - wasn't there also some issue with the great fire in Alexandria and losing tons of these types of historical documents?

Why wait until 400+ years after the fact?? (By the way, it was only 30 years after the fact, not 50.)

Could you explain this quickly? Wikipedia says Jesus died circa 30 AD and I thought none of the books were written till at least like 80AD.

Is it really such a stretch to believe that an all-powerful God can do miracles? Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you'd read my argument in detail before posting, as it gets tiring reposting the same thing over and over again.

Sorry, but if you want to go that route you'll have to throw out 99% of ancient history. It would be unprecedented for that type of legend to have crept in over a mere 30 years between the events and when it was written down, and we have such extensive ancient manuscripts of the bible, that it's nigh-impossible for the original testimonies of the disciples to have been distorted through the years. For crying out loud, do you honestly believe that Alexander the Great's story could remain intact for 400 years, while Jesus's supposedly got demolished over less than a tenth of that time?!?

You don't have to throw out 99% of ancient history. Historians recognize that sources aren't always reliable and they try to determine what likely happened. Plus, due to religion people have a pretty big incentive to (intentionally or unintentionally) exaggerate what Jesus did.




Anyway, I'm kinda breaking my "minimal research" rule here but some people did a study of the Bible as a historical source - here's the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar

As we can see from the wikipedia page alone, it's pretty complicated (I really don't want to have to read about Q or the Gospel of Thomas, for example).

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

So obviously we should throw out everything the Bible itself says when considering how accurate the Bible might be. </sarcasm>

First of all:

Second of all: should I really bring up the supernatural events and miracles again, and how if we judged the bible by that merit, it would sit clearly next to Harry Potter and Eragon?

I'm being serious. You can't just say "Oh, there's no way the Bible can be true because that would require an all-powerful God that ACTUALLY does miracles!"

This is true. HOWEVER, one little thing you're forgetting-your evidence is flimsy at best and circular at worst.

 

[Dre89]

Here's a question for the defenders of the Bible-

It's widely accepted that accounts of Jesus' resurrection were written about 30 years after his death, by religious people, the account itself arising from rumours. What's interesting is that the resurrection wass supposed to prove that Jesus is the son of God, yet He only revealed Himself to believers. Why didn't he reveal Himself to the skeptics?

 

[jaswa]

What do you mean he only revealed himself to believers? Maybe he revealed himself to skeptics, who became believers as a product of witnessing him post-resurrection. Also it's not our place to demand God to give us signs and miracles anyway as we read in Matthew 16:4.

 

[Dre89]

But then what was the point of the resurrection if it wasn't to show that He is the son of God? Seeing as He didn't really do much other than briefly appear to a few, already-believing people before He left.

Also-

Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17, 6:16- God is invisible.
Exod. 33:20- One will die if they see God’s face.
Gen. 32:30- Jacob sees God’s face yet his life is spared.
Gen 12:7, 26:2; Exod. 6:3- God appears to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Exod. 24:9-11- Leaders of Israel see God.
Exod. 33:11,23- Moses sees God.

John 8:58- Jesus suggests He is God.
John 20:28- Jesus does not correct Thomas when he calls Him “my God”.
John 10:33- Others think that Jesus considered Himself God.
John 14:28- The Son is inferior to the Father.
John 1:2- Jesus is with God.
Tim. 2:5- Jesus mediates between God and man.

Mark 6:5- Jesus is not omnipotent
Matt. 28:18 Jesus came to be omnipotent.
Mark 13:32- Jesus is not omniscient.
John 16:30, 21:17- Jesus is omniscient.

Just to name a few.

 

[GwJ]

I jusr asked my christian friend about this. He says the first section is irrelevant;god reveals himself to who he wants. He isnt bound by rules.

The other two he says are confusions of the holy trinity.

Does what he say have merit to it?

 

[Dre89]

I jusr asked my christian friend about this. He says the first section is irrelevant;god reveals himself to who he wants. He isnt bound by rules.

The other two he says are confusions of the holy trinity.

Does what he say have merit to it?

I don't think it does.

It makes sense that God could reveal Himself to whoever He wants, but then what doesn't make sense is that people will die if they see Him.

"Confusions of the Holy Spirit" is too vague and therefore unsatisfactory. He needs to elaborate on that.

But I'm very curious to see how Jaswa and Nic answer this.

 

[jaswa]

Will have to be on a computer to open up as many tabs as google chrome will hold with all those verses!

 

[jaswa]

Let me say 4 things:
1. My explanations are my interpretations, not that of scholars who actually exegete Scripture.
2. Sometimes the way we use words in our culture is different to how they were used if translated back to Hebrew/Greek
3. You seem to be just machine gunning out heaps of verses without context etc.
4. Dual monitors come in handy for opening up 21 tabs on BibleGateway

Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17, 6:16- God is invisible.
Exod. 33:20- One will die if they see God’s face.
Gen. 32:30- Jacob sees God’s face yet his life is spared.
Gen 12:7, 26:2; Exod. 6:3- God appears to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Exod. 24:9-11- Leaders of Israel see God.
Exod. 33:11,23- Moses sees God.

So we see that by default God is invisible, although if he chooses he can reveal himself to people. The purpose of him being invisible is that people 'seeing his face' would die? It doesn't seem to me that anyone sees his face - as in Exodus 33:23 Moses doesn't end up seeing his face. The face-seeing doesn't seem to be voilated by him appearing (revealing himself from being invisible which he has the power to do so) and the way appear and speaking are used may not be a physical presence.

John 8:58- Jesus suggests He is God.
John 20:28- Jesus does not correct Thomas when he calls Him “my God”.
John 10:33- Others think that Jesus considered Himself God.
John 14:28- The Son is inferior to the Father.
John 1:2- Jesus is with God.
Tim. 2:5- Jesus mediates between God and man.

So we see Jesus as a 'person' of the Trinity - God incarnate on earth (of which some people say the OT stuff above are 'Christofanies' or something which is Jesus appearing in time before the immaculate conception, anyways...). Luke 22:42 - “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” We see here in Luke that Jesus submits to the Father, in that he is happy for the will of God the Father to be done. God the Father is not 'greater' ontologically (in his otherwise-than being-ness just for you Andre) but is 'higher' up in the heirarchy of Trinitarian relation. Simlarly, the Holy Spirit has a different relational function in the Trinity. Not really sure about your point of Jesus mediating prayers between God and man - yeah he says that's stylistically how prayers are taught to be done I guess.

Mark 6:5- Jesus is not omnipotent
Matt. 28:18 Jesus came to be omnipotent.

So the Matthew verse Jesus says, "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Let's take a further look in the Mark passage by about half a verse Mark 6:56a - He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith. The fault isn't on Jesus for not being able to heal, but of the people. We see there is a direct correlation in the faith of someone and them receiving healing. Too much to chuck in this example, so read this passage here (link).

Mark 13:32- Jesus is not omniscient.
John 16:30, 21:17- Jesus is omniscient.

I'm not sure what the Greek says, but in both of the John examples, it seems that the people talking to Jesus seem to be talking about 'earthly knowledge', in that 'he can answer questions without them even being asked' and 'you know of all the people that love you.' I guess there's just that little particular piece of information withheld from the Son for some relational reason.

 

[Dre89]

I want to contest the first point about God revealing Itself.

Firstly, you say one does not see God's face when It reveals Itself, but then there would be no point mentioning the killing ability of God's face if no one could ever see it, seeing as when It reveals Itself, the face is not seen.

Secondly, the idea of God having this killing potential with Its face, then temporarily altering such a trait seems implausible as well, seeing as It only revealed Itself to people It didn't want to kill, and when it did kill people, it resorted to other means. So death being the default position makes no sense at all.

 

[Nicholas1024]

Finally got around to replying to this.

*small snip*
They might have believed it. How many of the writers were actually present for every miracle?

Matthew and John were disciples, so they would have been there for every miracle. Mark got his testimony from Peter, and Luke from Paul (a pharisee, who was likely present at some of them.) So there's enough eyewitness testimony (Whether direct or indirect) in my opinion.

There is always political gain to gathering followers for your religion.

Not when you can get arrested, tortured, and crucified for doing so. I admit the persecution wasn't quite as intense when they started spreading Christianity, but there still was some.

I don't know who Paul is. But I can explain conversions in general by the fact that people want to believe the Messiah has come. If I'm not mistaken, Jews were pretty oppressed by the Romans and were looking for something to save them.

Paul (called Saul before his conversion) was originally a Jewish Pharisee, who went out persecuting Christianity. However, he's also the second most important person in the New Testament (next to Christ, of course), who was behind the vast majority of the churches, and wrote half the new testament himself. (The parts he wrote were letters to various churches) So, here you have someone in excellent standing in the Jewish community, who converted to a religion he was previously persecuting, causing him to commit political suicide and come under that persecution himself.

Anyway, regarding conversions in general, you're part right, but part wrong. Yes, Jews were oppressed by the Romans, and DID want someone to save them. However, Jesus repeatedly squashed any attempt by the Jews to picture him as an earthly king. (This did not gain Him any popularity. In fact, at his trial before Pilate shortly before His death, the Jewish mob was shouting "Crucify him!") Also Christianity was persecuted first by the Jews (almost as soon as the disciples started spreading it), and later on by the Romans. Although converting saved them spiritually, it only worsened their political situation.

Perhaps they weren't there? Maybe these writings have been lost, or maybe they talked about it but never wrote anything down? There's lots of alternate explanations.

Then why didn't they say that they weren't there? It would have worked (not as well as saying it never happened, but still decently) to strike a blow against the credibility of the gospels. Also, even if their writings were lost, or they never wrote it down, there's no record of Christians responding to those arguments, and we have plenty of material from the early church.

I'm pretty sure they were not there for most of the miracles anyway.

They weren't there for all the miracles, but they were there for a decent portion of them. Just check the gospels, the Pharisees pop up all over the place.

Plus again the books were written years later so many of these people who could have come out would not be around any more.

30 years isn't that much. It would be a miracle of chance if all of them were dead by then. Additionally, I'm sure the disciples told stories about Jesus's miracles before the gospels were written, so there still should have been dispute.

One thing I'd point out here is that the Bible probably has a lot of manuscripts/sources precisely because Christians were preserving them to spread their religion.

I must admit, that's a good point.

Also, all I'm saying is that if the MESSIAH were walking around I'd probably write the book while he was still around, or right after, rather than years later.

Well, considering the time gap compared to other historical sources, it would be unprecedented for legend to have crept into the text. Eyewitnesses to the events were still around at the time the gospels were written.

I would assume people did - wasn't there also some issue with the great fire in Alexandria and losing tons of these types of historical documents?

You can apply the exact same sort of reasoning to any historical text. Maybe people did write in their diaries about Jesus, but it got lost at some point in the past 2000 years.

Could you explain this quickly? Wikipedia says Jesus died circa 30 AD and I thought none of the books were written till at least like 80AD.

Alright, the book of Luke and the book of Acts were a 2-part series by Luke. Acts ends with Paul (the main character for the last 60% or so of the book) under house arrest, which means it was likely written before Paul died, and so was written no later than 62 AD. Therefore the gospel of Luke (and likely Mark as well, as historians agree that was the earliest gospel) was written at most 30 years or so after Jesus's death.

You don't have to throw out 99% of ancient history. Historians recognize that sources aren't always reliable and they try to determine what likely happened. Plus, due to religion people have a pretty big incentive to (intentionally or unintentionally) exaggerate what Jesus did.

Anyway, I'm kinda breaking my "minimal research" rule here but some people did a study of the Bible as a historical source - here's the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar

As we can see from the wikipedia page alone, it's pretty complicated (I really don't want to have to read about Q or the Gospel of Thomas, for example).

There was a chapter about these guys in "The Case for Christ", so I already know about them.

Anyway, these guys are a radical fringe group of scholars, who basically found what they set out to find. The criteria they use for determining what Jesus said and didn't said are horribly biased.

For example, one of their tests was that Jesus said it only if it doesn't sound like something a later Jewish/Christian copyist would say. Of course, since Jesus was Jewish and founded Christianity, obviously a LOT of stuff he said falls into that category!

Another is that Jesus said something only if it appears in multiple sources. While I admit that having something in more than one source makes it more reliable, why go the other direction and eliminate everything only one person wrote down? A lot of history depends on just one person's testimony!

Additionally, since they theorize that Matthew and Luke used Mark in writing their gospels, if an account of a miracle appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they count all that only as one source. So as you can see (or at least I hope so), these guys aren't even close to objective by any definition of the word.

 

[ballin4life]

And you are objective? I don't really find your claims of bias in the Jesus Seminar convincing. But like I said, I just found the wikipedia article so I don't know much about it (by the way, there's no mention of your claims in the "Criticism" section. There is one guy saying something somewhat similar to what you were saying earlier about people remembering the events, and a few guys who says their results were "predetermined" or biased without offering any evidence, but your specific claims about the Jesus seminar's biases are not in there).

Anyway 30 years was basically life expectancy back in the day. That's a long time.

Plus wikipedia says Gospel of John circa 90 AD. Gospel of Matthew is circa 70 - 100 AD, with a minority of scholars believing it could have been written as early as 63 AD or that it was the first one written. Suggested dates for Luke are 75-100, with evidence that it could not have been written before 70. Mark is circa AD 70.

Since according to wikipedia Jesus circa 30 AD it's a huge stretch to say that it was 30 years.

Overall, I'm not a biblical scholar. My entire knowledge of Jesus comes from Jesus Christ Superstar. I am not going to do tons of research to find inconsistencies or anything.

All I am trying to say is that a reasonable, unbiased person is going to require a lot more evidence than what you present to really believe that someone was walking on water, turning water into wine and feeding thousands of people with 5 loaves of bread 2000 years ago, especially when there is a whole religion dedicated to him, giving an incentive to exaggerate his deeds.

 

[jaswa]

I want to contest the first point about God revealing Itself.

Firstly, you say one does not see God's face when It reveals Itself, but then there would be no point mentioning the killing ability of God's face if no one could ever see it, seeing as when It reveals Itself, the face is not seen.

Secondly, the idea of God having this killing potential with Its face, then temporarily altering such a trait seems implausible as well, seeing as It only revealed Itself to people It didn't want to kill, and when it did kill people, it resorted to other means. So death being the default position makes no sense at all.

Can't I have the ability to kill people with knives, not kill people with knives, then end up killing people with a gun? Probably a weak analogy, but I don't see how the lack of the use of this ability means it didn't exist, plus not sure how literally it's meant to be taken or if a physical presence is actually what is being implied.

The Old Testament is a little tricky in understanding especially coming from the language it was written in and the context of the time. Did you have any problem with what I said about the New Testament?

My entire knowledge of Jesus comes from Jesus Christ Superstar.

Quoted for the awesome xD

 

[Nicholas1024]

Ballin, I have just one question for you, and that is the following:

What evidence would you find sufficient?

 

[ballin4life]

Probably none for something that happened 2000 years ago. If it were 100 years ago and you had the same evidence that you do now, I'd accept some additional eyewitness accounts and sources perhaps. But for something 2000 years ago it's probably too likely that any new source would be doctored or just an example of an early Christian trying to spread his religion.

It's just difficult to believe that something supernatural would happen one time, 2000 years ago, and then never happen again. If someone started doing all these miracles now that would be helpful.

So I don't know. You could try giving an example and I'll say whether that would make me believe it.

My point is that extravagant claims require an extravagant level of proof. For example, the claim "Jesus the religious teacher existed" is much easier to believe a priori, so I need less evidence to affirm this conclusion.

It's a case of Bayesian Inference.

Let H be "Jesus performed miracles" and let E be the Bible and all the evidence that we have so far.

Bayes' Theorem states:
P(H | E) = [ P(E | H)P(H) ] / P(E)

Now my contention is that P(E) is large relative to P(E | H)P(H). E can be explained by alternate methods - like Christians trying to spread their religion., so I think P(E) is relatively large.

P(H) is obviously very small already - after all NO ONE else in the last 2000 years has done ANY miracles, let alone dozens of them. Without any evidence we would be very unlikely to believe in any miracles.

And P(E | H) is difficult to say. I say that if H is true, there would be more evidence than there is.

So increasing the amount of evidence will make me more likely to believe, but it's going to be hard to overcome how small P(H) is initially. There would have to be some new evidence that is EXTREMELY unlikely to happen without Jesus performing miracles, and extremely likely to happen with Jesus performing miracles.

 

[Dre89]

You guys should watch the debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on Youtube.

 

[Maniclysane]

Can't I have the ability to kill people with knives, not kill people with knives, then end up killing people with a gun? Probably a weak analogy, but I don't see how the lack of the use of this ability means it didn't exist, plus not sure how literally it's meant to be taken or if a physical presence is actually what is being implied.

The Old Testament is a little tricky in understanding especially coming from the language it was written in and the context of the time. Did you have any problem with what I said about the New Testament?



Quoted for the awesome xD

I know I rarely post here, but stop debating a debater in the proving grounds.

 

[JeKartaN1]

I agree with Nicholas1024 The New Testament is true, for all believers in science, not everything can be explained. There are many things that cannot be explained. The New Testament was started almost immediately after Jesus, the Son of God, second person of the Blessed Trinity, and the only son of God the Father ascended into heaven. Some books were finished as early as 40 years after the Ascension. All the writers of the Bible were filled with the Holy Spirit and God was basically writing through them. If you are not convinced then you can read multiple different Roman pagan authors who lived around the of Jesus and confirm his works, which means that not just his followers witnessed and documented the Miracles of Jesus. Not to mention God is a spirit which means he does not even have a face, there is not one instance in the Bible where seeing God, known as the Beatific Vision where someone dies. The vision usually leaves the person speechless because the beauty cannot even be described.

 

[GwJ]

Sunday mass isn't for another two days Karta.

 

[Nicholas1024]

GwJumpman, please quit trolling. You yourself admitted that you couldn't refute some of the points I've made in this thread. (And neither has anyone else, for that matter.)

 

[GwJ]

Maybe he shouldn't have posted that garbage here. What hasn't been refuted?

 

[Nicholas1024]

@GWJumpman
Here you go. Ballin refused to tackle it because he said it was already debated, and when I told him there was new evidence, he said he didn't know what was already debated and what wasn't.

I figured I'd revive this thread, as there's still plenty of debating left to do, IMO.

Let's take this one point at a time.

My argument:

1: The new testament as we have it today is in the same form as it was originally written nearly 2000 years ago.

Proof of 1:
This is fairly simple, as the new testament has a ridiculous number of manuscripts supporting it from all over the place in multiple languages, with some fragments dating all the way back to early second century. To focus on one specific type, there are 306 unical manuscripts (written in all-caps greek letters), which date back to as early as the third century. The most important of these would be the Codex Sinaiticus, which is a complete copy of the new testament (the only one written in this form, actually) which dates to about 350 AD, long before the catholic church would have been doing any significant meddling. As earlier texts agree with it, I think it's fair to say that we have the New Testament as it was originally written. (As a side note: The total number of ancient manuscripts would be around 24,000, far more then we have of any other ancient documents.)

2: Non-biblical evidence about Jesus.
From A Case for Christ, by a historical expert: (slight paraphrasing here)
Even discarding every scrap of the new testament or other Christian writings, we would still know the following about him: First, Jesus was a Jewish teacher. Second, many people believed that he performed miracles. Third, that some people believed he was the Messiah. Fourth, that he was rejected by the Jewish leaders. Fifth, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Sixth, that despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by AD 64 (about 30 years after his death). Finally, that all kinds of people (man, woman, slave, free, from all sorts of locations) worshiped him as God.

Proof of 2:
Let's start with the recordings of Josephus. Josephus was a Jewish historian, a priest, and a Pharisee, therefore making him part of the group of Jesus's harshest critics. (Despite this, he was very unpopular with the Jews, as he collaborated with the hated Romans.) His most ambitious work was called "The Antiquities", as a history of the Jews from Creation up until his time. It was completed around 93 AD.

Here's the quote:

"He [Ananias, a high priest] convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned."

This proves the existence of Jesus, and it mentions that Jesus was called the Christ. This is an important point, as Christ means "The Annointed One", or "Messiah". Therefore, some people believed Jesus was the Messiah. As far as I know, NOBODY has successfully debated this passage. (Note the neutral historical tone and a delivery of the bare facts. If there was some Christian addition later on, wouldn't you expect it to be supportive of James?)

Josephus also wrote an even lengthier section about Jesus, which is called the Testimonium Flavianum (which is also REALLY hotly disputed, by the way.)

Here's the quote:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

For obvious reasons this passage is controversial. (Note how supportive it is of Jesus, compared to the former's cold delivery of the facts.) Scholarship has gone through three trends about it. For obvious reasons, early Christians loved it as a corroboration of Jesus's lifetime. Then the entire passage was questioned by some scholars during the Enlightenment. However, today there's a remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic, although there may be some interpolations. (That is, early Christian copyists inserted some phrases that a Jewish write like Josephus wouldn't have written.) For example, the first line says, "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man." That is likely authentic, as it isn't normally the way Christians would speak about Jesus, The next phrase says "if indeed one ought to call him a man.", implying Jesus is more than human, and therefore likely an interpolation. The other two points that are likely interpolations would be the two unambiguous statements "He was the Christ", and "On the third day he appeared to them restored to life." Considering how elsewhere Josephus doesn't make these sort of absolute "Christianity is TRUE" sort of statements, you can see how they were likely added later. However, even when you take those out, you end up with the info that Jesus was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem, and that he was a wise teacher who managed to make a large and long-lasting following despite his crucifixion at the hands of Pilate and the request of the Jewish leaders.

Anyway, despite these and other writings, we still have the question, "Why isn't there more backing outside of the gospels?". However, the answer is fairly simple, and has to deal with the persecution of the first-century church.

Let me start with a quote from Tacitus, a Roman historian.

"Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome.... Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."

You see, there was immense persecution of anyone who called themselves a Christian back then. Therefore, people would obviously be either for Christ, against him, or be very careful to have nothing to do with Christianity! In the first case, any significant testimony would count as Christian (and possibly added to the Bible), which we're ignoring for the moment. In the other two cases, would you write significant testimony supporting a figure whose cause was under intense persecution? You might as well put a "Crucify me" sign on your back.

Additionally, Jesus gives people very few options with his claims to divinity. You either have to dismiss him as a lunatic (As C.S. Lewis put it, "On the level of a man who claims he's a poached egg"), condemn him as a liar, or worship him as Lord. Therefore, any testimony about him by it's very nature, would have to either confine itself to the bare facts (and be strictly historical, such as the one by Josephus), condemn him (as the Talmud does, an important work by the Jewish community), or confirm him as Lord (which would therefore be Christian, which we're ignoring for the moment.)

Finally, the same exact question can be applied to any other significant event in ancient history, and time and time again, it turns out that the events of Jesus's lifetime have far more backing then most.

3: The New Testament itself. I claim that this gives an accurate representation of Jesus's life and teachings.

Proof of 3:
Firstly, in all likelihood the authors of the New Testament (not to mention the thousands of other Christians from that time) suffered intense persecution and death for their beliefs. Let me quote another historical source, Pliny the Younger. (This is from a letter he sent to Emperor Trajan.)

"I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished...."

Secondly, with all the persecution of Christianity going on back then, if the whole thing was a lie, don't you think that the Jewish and Roman governments would have attacked it on that basis? But we have no recordings of any such thing. For example, in the Talmud, a collection of Jewish teachings from the second to fifth centuries, Jesus is regarded as a magician who tried to lead Israel astray. If the miracles never happened, that would have been the perfect opportunity to go "Look, the Christians claim he did miracles, but we're here to tell you that he didn't."

Thirdly, some who were previously extremely skeptical converted to Christianity. Paul is the case in point here, who was murdering Christians before Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Now, in his letters, he occasionally referenced his pharisee background in his arguments. If that was a lie (that is, if he never was anti-Christian like that), it was practically begging his enemies to expose it, and ruin his credibility. But again, that didn't happen. So, you have someone with no motive to convert to Christianity (The religion is being persecuted, he hates it himself, he's already highly regarded by virtue of being a pharisee, and he'd lose all of that by converting), who claims he saw Christ, and became a Christian. How else do you explain that?

Fourthly, the gospels paint a pretty unflattering portrait of the disciples. (Matthew and John were disciples, and Mark got most of his info from Peter, Luke got his from Paul.) If they made the whole thing up, wouldn't they have painted a better picture of themselves? But no, they tend to bumble through the story, not understanding Jesus's true purpose until right before the Crucifixion, swearing to die with him, and then deserting him a few scant hours later. (Peter denied Jesus 3 times, even calling curses down on himself if he lied the last time!)

Finally, what reason is there to doubt the testimony of the disciples and early church? There was no monetary or political gain involved, so the only reason I can think of would be because they reported miracles. However, considering that this is testimony about the Son of God, is that a valid reason to simply toss out their testimony altogether? I don't think so.

 

[GwJ]

Point 1: So?

Point 2: Robin Hood has historical writings about himself from the 14th(?) century, including historically correct facts about stuff going on when he suposedly existed. It's likely he never existed too.

Point 3:
a) It doesn't matter if they showed persecution. All that means is they believed. Muslims believe in their religion too.
b) They believed Jupiter was a real God and they waited a helluva long time to realize it was all garbage. Your point?
c) I was a Roman Catholic with everything I could ask for in the church. I was friends with the priests, I was in the youth group and I loved it. I went to the activities and I truly believed it. Then I became an atheist. My motive? I didn't have one. I lost a lot of friends and future opportunities. It sucks but that's how it is. How do you explain that? Atheism must be correct if I convert without a motive to.
d) Maybe they were modest and humbling?
e)What reason is there to doubt the testimony of pagan believers? There was no monetary or political gain involved. Believers in Isis were guaranteed an afterlife. Why not believe Isis? She's a nice lady.

Problem?

 

[ballin4life]

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.

The original Christians were trying to spread their religion.

Ok mega post time.

I figured I'd revive this thread, as there's still plenty of debating left to do, IMO.

Let's take this one point at a time.

My argument:

1: The new testament as we have it today is in the same form as it was originally written nearly 2000 years ago.

Proof of 1:
This is fairly simple, as the new testament has a ridiculous number of manuscripts supporting it from all over the place in multiple languages, with some fragments dating all the way back to early second century. To focus on one specific type, there are 306 unical manuscripts (written in all-caps greek letters), which date back to as early as the third century. The most important of these would be the Codex Sinaiticus, which is a complete copy of the new testament (the only one written in this form, actually) which dates to about 350 AD, long before the catholic church would have been doing any significant meddling. As earlier texts agree with it, I think it's fair to say that we have the New Testament as it was originally written. (As a side note: The total number of ancient manuscripts would be around 24,000, far more then we have of any other ancient documents.)

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".

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.

2: Non-biblical evidence about Jesus.
From A Case for Christ, by a historical expert: (slight paraphrasing here)
Even discarding every scrap of the new testament or other Christian writings, we would still know the following about him: First, Jesus was a Jewish teacher. Second, many people believed that he performed miracles. Third, that some people believed he was the Messiah. Fourth, that he was rejected by the Jewish leaders. Fifth, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Sixth, that despite this shameful death, his followers, who believed he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by AD 64 (about 30 years after his death). Finally, that all kinds of people (man, woman, slave, free, from all sorts of locations) worshiped him as God.

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

Proof of 2:
Let's start with the recordings of Josephus. Josephus was a Jewish historian, a priest, and a Pharisee, therefore making him part of the group of Jesus's harshest critics. (Despite this, he was very unpopular with the Jews, as he collaborated with the hated Romans.) His most ambitious work was called "The Antiquities", as a history of the Jews from Creation up until his time. It was completed around 93 AD.

Here's the quote:

"He [Ananias, a high priest] convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned."

This proves the existence of Jesus, and it mentions that Jesus was called the Christ. This is an important point, as Christ means "The Annointed One", or "Messiah". Therefore, some people believed Jesus was the Messiah. As far as I know, NOBODY has successfully debated this passage. (Note the neutral historical tone and a delivery of the bare facts. If there was some Christian addition later on, wouldn't you expect it to be supportive of James?)

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.

Josephus also wrote an even lengthier section about Jesus, which is called the Testimonium Flavianum (which is also REALLY hotly disputed, by the way.)

Here's the quote:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

For obvious reasons this passage is controversial. (Note how supportive it is of Jesus, compared to the former's cold delivery of the facts.) Scholarship has gone through three trends about it. For obvious reasons, early Christians loved it as a corroboration of Jesus's lifetime. Then the entire passage was questioned by some scholars during the Enlightenment. However, today there's a remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic, although there may be some interpolations. (That is, early Christian copyists inserted some phrases that a Jewish write like Josephus wouldn't have written.) For example, the first line says, "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man." That is likely authentic, as it isn't normally the way Christians would speak about Jesus, The next phrase says "if indeed one ought to call him a man.", implying Jesus is more than human, and therefore likely an interpolation. The other two points that are likely interpolations would be the two unambiguous statements "He was the Christ", and "On the third day he appeared to them restored to life." Considering how elsewhere Josephus doesn't make these sort of absolute "Christianity is TRUE" sort of statements, you can see how they were likely added later. However, even when you take those out, you end up with the info that Jesus was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem, and that he was a wise teacher who managed to make a large and long-lasting following despite his crucifixion at the hands of Pilate and the request of the Jewish leaders.

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).

Anyway, despite these and other writings, we still have the question, "Why isn't there more backing outside of the gospels?". However, the answer is fairly simple, and has to deal with the persecution of the first-century church.

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.

Let me start with a quote from Tacitus, a Roman historian.

"Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome.... Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."

This was written like 100 years after the fact.

You see, there was immense persecution of anyone who called themselves a Christian back then. Therefore, people would obviously be either for Christ, against him, or be very careful to have nothing to do with Christianity! In the first case, any significant testimony would count as Christian (and possibly added to the Bible), which we're ignoring for the moment. In the other two cases, would you write significant testimony supporting a figure whose cause was under intense persecution? You might as well put a "Crucify me" sign on your back.

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.

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.

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).

Additionally, Jesus gives people very few options with his claims to divinity. You either have to dismiss him as a lunatic (As C.S. Lewis put it, "On the level of a man who claims he's a poached egg"), condemn him as a liar, or worship him as Lord. Therefore, any testimony about him by it's very nature, would have to either confine itself to the bare facts (and be strictly historical, such as the one by Josephus), condemn him (as the Talmud does, an important work by the Jewish community), or confirm him as Lord (which would therefore be Christian, which we're ignoring for the moment.)

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

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.

Finally, the same exact question can be applied to any other significant event in ancient history, and time and time again, it turns out that the events of Jesus's lifetime have far more backing then most.

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

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.

3: The New Testament itself. I claim that this gives an accurate representation of Jesus's life and teachings.

Proof of 3:
Firstly, in all likelihood the authors of the New Testament (not to mention the thousands of other Christians from that time) suffered intense persecution and death for their beliefs. Let me quote another historical source, Pliny the Younger. (This is from a letter he sent to Emperor Trajan.)

"I have asked them if they are Christians, and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second and third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished...."

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.

Secondly, with all the persecution of Christianity going on back then, if the whole thing was a lie, don't you think that the Jewish and Roman governments would have attacked it on that basis? But we have no recordings of any such thing. For example, in the Talmud, a collection of Jewish teachings from the second to fifth centuries, Jesus is regarded as a magician who tried to lead Israel astray. If the miracles never happened, that would have been the perfect opportunity to go "Look, the Christians claim he did miracles, but we're here to tell you that he didn't."

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.

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).

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...

Thirdly, some who were previously extremely skeptical converted to Christianity. Paul is the case in point here, who was murdering Christians before Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Now, in his letters, he occasionally referenced his pharisee background in his arguments. If that was a lie (that is, if he never was anti-Christian like that), it was practically begging his enemies to expose it, and ruin his credibility. But again, that didn't happen. So, you have someone with no motive to convert to Christianity (The religion is being persecuted, he hates it himself, he's already highly regarded by virtue of being a pharisee, and he'd lose all of that by converting), who claims he saw Christ, and became a Christian. How else do you explain that?

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

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

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.

Fourthly, the gospels paint a pretty unflattering portrait of the disciples. (Matthew and John were disciples, and Mark got most of his info from Peter, Luke got his from Paul.) If they made the whole thing up, wouldn't they have painted a better picture of themselves? But no, they tend to bumble through the story, not understanding Jesus's true purpose until right before the Crucifixion, swearing to die with him, and then deserting him a few scant hours later. (Peter denied Jesus 3 times, even calling curses down on himself if he lied the last time!)

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).

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

Finally, what reason is there to doubt the testimony of the disciples and early church? There was no monetary or political gain involved, so the only reason I can think of would be because they reported miracles. However, considering that this is testimony about the Son of God, is that a valid reason to simply toss out their testimony altogether? I don't think so.

They were trying to spread their religion.

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

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

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.