my favorite contradiction in the bible is about the color of the cloth Jesus wore when he was crucified.
one account tells us that its purple, another one is crimson.
in the quran, one account says that to GOD, a day is a thousand to us
another says that it was fifty thousand.
crazy "holy" books huh?
reb00table
redhakaw wrote:
in the quran, one account says that to GOD, a day is a thousand to us
another says that it was fifty thousand.
Where did you read that?
If you're making reference to the Creation, that's irrelevant, because the notion of "day" didn't exist (no Sun, no day/night)
liljp617
Contrary to popular belief, men are error and mistake prone
loyal
redhakaw wrote:
my favorite contradiction in the bible is about the color of the cloth Jesus wore when he was crucified.
one account tells us that its purple, another one is crimson.
in the quran, one account says that to GOD, a day is a thousand to us
another says that it was fifty thousand.
crazy "holy" books huh?
Peace.
I'll let the Christians answer the contradiction directed against them.
You say that the Quran says that to God a day is a thousand and also says fifty thousand.
You're referring to these verses:
Glorious Quran [22:47]: And they will bid thee hasten on the Doom, and Allah faileth not His promise, but lo! a Day with Allah is as a thousand years of what ye reckon.
Glorious Quran [70:4]: the angels and the Spirit ascend unto Him in a Day whereof the span is fifty thousand years.
You will notice that the first verse talks about a day with God. The second talks about a day that measures to fifty thousand years. One says being with God is like a thousand years. Another says the angels ascend in fifty thousand years. So they are not talking about the same thing.
It is worth noting that "yawm" which is translated "day" obviously does not refer to the meaning of a 24 hour day, but to the other meaning 'period of time'.
I hope my quick answer has been of some help.
deanhills
Perhaps this has to do with the quality of translations? Some words may have been wrongly translated over the centuries. Probably better not to take the books literally with the mind, but to feel your way through with the heart. Otherwise it could be the equivalent of putting your hand in a thorn bush.
Klaw 2
Errors are possible but since the bible was written by so many authors in the first place it HAS to contain some stuff that contradicts each other.
liljp617
Could have something to do with it being a big imaginary story.
loyal
Klaw 2 wrote:
Errors are possible but since the bible was written by so many authors in the first place it HAS to contain some stuff that contradicts each other.
Not necessarily. Two different authors can write for one volume, and it's possible they could not contradict each other. Besides, the Christian belief is that the authors are inspired by God in what they write. Hence, they would write perfect stuff.
(Unless they changed an inspired sentence or added more or deleted...but that's another issue)
Peace.
bilalrana786
redhakaw wrote:
my favorite contradiction in the bible is about the color of the cloth Jesus wore when he was crucified.
one account tells us that its purple, another one is crimson.
in the quran, one account says that to GOD, a day is a thousand to us
another says that it was fifty thousand.
crazy "holy" books huh?
With both books, it may be the translations that confuse people, especially when the Old English translation doesn't work with people today. Other than that, the Bible (respectfully) and admitably was written by multiple authors, so there is a possiblity of a differ of a story or happening, but with the Quran one thing is referring to a day with God another referring to the time span of angels, two seperate things, easily confused.
Peace with all
goutha
I think that we should look at similar facts in the Bible and Quran more than at contradictions.
Bluedoll
It is possible, that the bible does not contain contradictions but rather gives different accounts on different things.
It is also possible that authors, that post on the internet can not agree on what side their bread is buttered.
However, a question, we might ask when we read posts that have different perspectives is - should we automatically assume that it is a crazy forum huh?
No, think not!
liljp617
Bluedoll wrote:
It is possible, that the bible does not contain contradictions but rather gives different accounts on different things.
err different accounts on certain events that...wait for it.............give completely different details of how the event happened. Making it a contradiction. I think that's the point
Twotone
I don't think the difference in colour between purple and crimson is a contradiction really, just something seen from a different perspective.
The two colours in different shades can be very similar and seen from different angles could be the same to different people.
Each persons eye reflects differently (some people are colour blind)
Also I think a writer with a more poetic style would chose crimson as a description over purple.
Sorry i can't comment on the Koran as I havn't read it.
farmerdave
redhakaw wrote:
my favorite contradiction in the bible is about the color of the cloth Jesus wore when he was crucified.
one account tells us that its purple, another one is crimson.
in the quran, one account says that to GOD, a day is a thousand to us
another says that it was fifty thousand.
crazy "holy" books huh?
Mike Wasowski (redhakaw),
That seems like pretty weak attempts to attack either the Bible or the Q'ran, though I make no attempt to argue for the Q'ran. Yesterday I happened to sit down with a box of RoseArt crayons and color some similar colors onto a sheet of paper. I was amazed at how a few colors were indistinguishable. It made me think how they are ripping us off by advertising 24 colors, when in reality it is more like 20 colors. Of course, I think it was a Wal-Mart special for $0.20, so how can I complain? Next time I will have to get Crayola. But the real point I would like to make is that a lot of the time people view colors differently. I am tired of having the argument over whether something is fluorescent green or yellow (for the record it is almost always fluorescent yellow!). A lot of other colors are the same (burghundy and maroon come to mind). Many people have a hard time seeing color well when it comes to two similar colors. Lighting comes into play as well. Depending on the type of lighting (fluorescent vs. incandescent vs. natural, etc.) and the intensity of the light colors appear to change as well. For the sake of being informed I have pasted the verses in the Bible which make mention of the color of the robe below. When we are dealing with eyewitnesses, which is what we have in the Bible, we are dealing with the eyes of the eyewitnesses. If an eyewitness says it is purple, then he sees purple. If an eyewitness says it is crimson, then he sees crimson. They aren't contradictions, but differences in perspective. The difference between crimson and purple is not necessarily so great, especially when you consider that they probably didn't have as well defined colors in 1st century Palestine as we do today with our Crayola crayons. If you say the pizza is hot and I say it is warm, we could have easily both tried the same pizza at the same temperature, but your mouth said it was hot and mine only said it was warm. This is not a contradiction, but a difference in perspective.
As promised:
28And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" 30And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. 31And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. - Matthew 27:28-31
17And they clothed him in a [b]purple[b] cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. 18And they began to salute him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" 19And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. 20And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the [b]purple[b] cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. - Mark 15:17-20
I couldn't find any mention in the Gospel of Luke of the cloak or its color.
1Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3They came up to him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and struck him with their hands. - John 19:1-3
-David
Klaw 2
loyal wrote:
Klaw 2 wrote:
Errors are possible but since the bible was written by so many authors in the first place it HAS to contain some stuff that contradicts each other.
Not necessarily. Two different authors can write for one volume, and it's possible they could not contradict each other. Besides, the Christian belief is that the authors are inspired by God in what they write. Hence, they would write perfect stuff.
(Unless they changed an inspired sentence or added more or deleted...but that's another issue)
Peace.
I doubt any god has anything to do with the bible, and to write a really big book flawlessly is not impossible but well just very very hard (near to impossible).
farmerdave
Klaw 2 wrote:
I doubt any god has anything to do with the bible, and to write a really big book flawlessly is not impossible but well just very very hard (near to impossible).
Klaw 2,
You're almost right. It wasn't any god that was involved with writing the Bible. It was GOD, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Lord Most High. Some have called Him Jehovah, some Adonai, others El Shaddai, El Elyoni, even Jehovah Jireh. He is the Almighty, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnibenevolent Lord over all. He alone is God. All the other "gods" of the nations are delusions of the ones who believe in them. There is but one God. He stands alone, is in need of nothing and no one, is perfectly satisfied in and of Himself, and dwells in unapproachable light.
Whether you like it or not doesn't affect the issue. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant. Whether you doubt it or not doesn't change a thing.
It wasn't just any god that was involved in writing the Bible. It was the God.
David
liljp617
farmerdave wrote:
Klaw 2 wrote:
I doubt any god has anything to do with the bible, and to write a really big book flawlessly is not impossible but well just very very hard (near to impossible).
Whether you like it or not doesn't affect the issue. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant. Whether you doubt it or not doesn't change a thing.
I direct this comment back at you as well.
Klaw 2
farmerdave wrote:
Klaw 2 wrote:
I doubt any god has anything to do with the bible, and to write a really big book flawlessly is not impossible but well just very very hard (near to impossible).
Klaw 2,
You're almost right. It wasn't any god that was involved with writing the Bible. It was GOD, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Lord Most High. Some have called Him Jehovah, some Adonai, others El Shaddai, El Elyoni, even Jehovah Jireh. He is the Almighty, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnibenevolent Lord over all. He alone is God. All the other "gods" of the nations are delusions of the ones who believe in them. There is but one God. He stands alone, is in need of nothing and no one, is perfectly satisfied in and of Himself, and dwells in unapproachable light.
That's not what i meant and you know it i don't believe in god an i think that some guy(s) and gal(s) made it up.
And frankly I don't care ho many names god has.
farmerdave wrote:
Whether you like it or not doesn't affect the issue. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant. Whether you doubt it or not doesn't change a thing.
It wasn't just any god that was involved in writing the Bible. It was the God.
David
I don't exept it and wel whether you like it or not doesn't affect the issue. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant. Whether you doubt it or not doesn't change a thing.
It wasn't just any god that was involved in writing the Bible. It was man who wrote it
deanhills
Klaw 2 wrote:
farmerdave wrote:
Klaw 2 wrote:
I doubt any god has anything to do with the bible, and to write a really big book flawlessly is not impossible but well just very very hard (near to impossible).
Klaw 2,
You're almost right. It wasn't any god that was involved with writing the Bible. It was GOD, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Lord Most High. Some have called Him Jehovah, some Adonai, others El Shaddai, El Elyoni, even Jehovah Jireh. He is the Almighty, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnibenevolent Lord over all. He alone is God. All the other "gods" of the nations are delusions of the ones who believe in them. There is but one God. He stands alone, is in need of nothing and no one, is perfectly satisfied in and of Himself, and dwells in unapproachable light.
That's not what i meant and you know it i don't believe in god an i think that some guy(s) and gal(s) made it up.
And frankly I don't care ho many names god has.
farmerdave wrote:
Whether you like it or not doesn't affect the issue. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant. Whether you doubt it or not doesn't change a thing.
It wasn't just any god that was involved in writing the Bible. It was the God.
David
I don't exept it and wel whether you like it or not doesn't affect the issue. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant. Whether you doubt it or not doesn't change a thing.
It wasn't just any god that was involved in writing the Bible. It was man who wrote it
I have to agree with Klaw. Not only did man write the Bible, but he translated it as he wished over the many centuries, adding and subtracting to suit different purposes. The closest I can get to farmerdave is that man was inspired by God when he wrote the Bible. But it is impossible that God could have written it. Almost blasphemous to say that, as the Bible is not a perfect reference book, there are a number of inconsistencies in it. The best use of the Bible is for motivation and inspiration. Once you start to quote from it in defence of arguments, it is almost the equivalent of sticking your hand into a thorn bush.
farmerdave
deanhills wrote:
I have to agree with Klaw. Not only did man write the Bible, but he translated it as he wished over the many centuries, adding and subtracting to suit different purposes. The closest I can get to farmerdave is that man was inspired by God when he wrote the Bible. But it is impossible that God could have written it. Almost blasphemous to say that, as the Bible is not a perfect reference book, there are a number of inconsistencies in it. The best use of the Bible is for motivation and inspiration. Once you start to quote from it in defence of arguments, it is almost the equivalent of sticking your hand into a thorn bush.
deanhills,
I appreciate you making the effort to say that the closest you can get to my position is that man was inspired by God as he wrote the Bible. I think the word "inspired" is central to the discussion. I would assume (and feel quite safe in my assuming) that the Bible is the source for this term. In the King James Version 2 Timothy 3:16 reads "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness..."
A lot of people use the word "inspired" when talking of the Bible like they would when they describe a song writer as he has an "Aha!" moment and writes a new song. This is not at all what the Bible is saying. It is unfortunate that it was translated that way because of the confusion surrounding the word "inspired." The Greek term transliterated as theopneustos means God-breathed. It deals with where Scripture comes from and not of its nature or effects. The verse doesn't mean that either Scriptures inspire people to go out and do certain things or think a certain way (even though these are legitimate effects the Bible has on people) nor does it mean that as a whole Scriptures are inspiring (though they are). This verse (which is where we get the phrase "inspired by God" or "divine inspiration" from) is saying that all Scripture comes from God breathing it out. It is similar to when Jesus says "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (quoting Deuteronomy 8:3). Another verse quite related is 2 Peter 1:21-22 which reads, "For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."
My point here is simple. Men were not sitting down at a desk waiting for inspiration to strike them. Al contrario, God grabbed hold of these men (symbolically) and their pens formed the words that God was communicating to them (and, at the moment, through them). The words came "from the mouth of God" and were, therefore, "God-breathed." It was as the Holy Spirit moved these men to write that they wrote. This is what the Bible states and what I am arguing for.
As for your other points, I'm not sure that your usage of the word "translated" is appropriate to what it is that you think you are describing. The Bible used today is based on the original languages of Greek and Hebrew and a little Aramaic, not other languages. So, translation is not the issue as if it had been translated from Greek to Egyption to Mongolian to French to English. The parts written in Greek are translated directly from Greek into English, and likewise for Hebrew and Aramaic. Addition and subtraction has happened in very small amounts of the extant (existing) manuscripts. Due to differences between the MANY manuscripts (thousands), we have been able to decipher and catalog these differences as well as having been able to determine what changes were actually made to the text. It is easy to get confused in the process here if you are not quite familiar with it already. Suffice it to say that we know what has been added (not in very many manuscripts) and what has been subtracted (not in very many manuscripts) and what is original (contained in the vast majority of manuscripts). In fact, no major doctrine of Scripture is called into question by these differences. So, the adding and subtracting argument you presented is not very factual and is not considering much more than the popular notion that the Bible was written, then changed by man, and is full of errors. The sad part is most people making this statement know next to nothing about that which they describe and think that somehow if even one thing was added to or subtracted from the Bible in one manuscript that that somehow disproves God's authorship in the Bible. This simply is not the case. God has preserved the original text of the Bible, which is what we have in our Bibles today. I would disagree further by saying that the Bible has been used with very accute accuracy as a textbook leading archaeologists to discover otherwise lost and forgotten ancient civilizations. Archaeology has confirmed again and again the trustworthiness of many a passage in the Bible. There has yet to be anything significant that would contradict the Bible from the field of archaeology. Frequently skeptics read the Bible and say, "That's impossible... that didn't even exist!" Then, a few archaeologists dig it up and the skeptics have to go look for something else to reject.
I believe Jesus to be 100% correct when he said, "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), which of course would contradict your last point. The Bible is a very trustworthy book.
God bless,
David
Bikerman
farmerdave wrote:
As for your other points, I'm not sure that your usage of the word "translated" is appropriate to what it is that you think you are describing. The Bible used today is based on the original languages of Greek and Hebrew and a little Aramaic, not other languages. So, translation is not the issue as if it had been translated from Greek to Egyption to Mongolian to French to English. The parts written in Greek are translated directly from Greek into English, and likewise for Hebrew and Aramaic. Addition and subtraction has happened in very small amounts of the extant (existing) manuscripts.
OK - let's examine this claim and, for simplicity, we'll stick to the NT.
a) Translation is certainly the right word. Koine Greek (a dialect version) is the most likely language for the NT 'books' but some bible scholars think that some of the original texts may have been written in Arameic (though this is a minority view). The simple fact is that most bibles in use are translations of other translations. The KJV, for example, is a 3rd or 4th generation copy.
b) We don't know how much was added/removed/changed since there are only scraps of parchment that could be considered 'original' (and even those are contentious). Most manuscripts used in compiling the modern NT date from the 10th century or even later. If you compare different manuscripts from the earliest fragments (2nd century) to the KJV, you find over 200,000 textual differences (more than the entire number of words in the NT).
c) We certainly DO know that the canonical NT is a construct. It was put together mostly at the Council of Nicea (325CE). We know that many alternative gospels were rejected as heretical. The message contained in some of these alternatives - particularly Judas and Mary - is very different from that contained in the 4 canonical gospels. There were several early sects of Christianity and the Pauline sect was not the largest. Other sects interpreted 'Jesus' entirely differently. We have, for example, the Gnostics who didn't believe that Jesus was 'God'. The fact is that the Pauline sect won-out in the end and we are left with that particular interpretation and tradition.
farmerdave wrote:
Due to differences between the MANY manuscripts (thousands), we have been able to decipher and catalog these differences as well as having been able to determine what changes were actually made to the text. It is easy to get confused in the process here if you are not quite familiar with it already. Suffice it to say that we know what has been added (not in very many manuscripts) and what has been subtracted (not in very many manuscripts) and what is original (contained in the vast majority of manuscripts).
Err, no this is untrue. We don't know what has been added/subtracted. The best we can do is examine the extant parchments (most of which, as I said, come from post 10th Century CE) and look for differences. There are many - though most are transcription errors (scribes having a bad day at work).
farmerdave wrote:
In fact, no major doctrine of Scripture is called into question by these differences. So, the adding and subtracting argument you presented is not very factual and is not considering much more than the popular notion that the Bible was written, then changed by man, and is full of errors. The sad part is most people making this statement know next to nothing about that which they describe and think that somehow if even one thing was added to or subtracted from the Bible in one manuscript that that somehow disproves God's authorship in the Bible. This simply is not the case. God has preserved the original text of the Bible, which is what we have in our Bibles today.
Which one? KJV? I repeat - we don't have the originals. We have a few scraps of parchment (7Q5) which some (mainly O'Callaghan) claim dates from around 70CE and is an original fragment of Mark. Many/most bible scholars take issue with this.
The KJV is mostly taken from the Bishop's Bible, which is itself a translation of the Latin Vulgate which dates from the 5th Century.
The notion that it represents an accurate copy of the original first and second century accounts is rather daft - we know it doesn't.
farmerdave wrote:
I would disagree further by saying that the Bible has been used with very accute accuracy as a textbook leading archaeologists to discover otherwise lost and forgotten ancient civilizations. Archaeology has confirmed again and again the trustworthiness of many a passage in the Bible.
Examples please?
farmerdave wrote:
There has yet to be anything significant that would contradict the Bible from the field of archaeology. Frequently skeptics read the Bible and say, "That's impossible... that didn't even exist!" Then, a few archaeologists dig it up and the skeptics have to go look for something else to reject.
This is pure fantasy.
Let's start with the Exodus story. Here's what Herzog (Director of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University) has to say about it:
Prof. Ze'ev Herzog wrote:
This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel.... The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the exodus.
If you want to move on and look at the NT accounts, then you run into even more problems. Where was Jesus born? Nazareth? Bethlehem? What about the story in Luke?- the notion of a census forcing Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem? Pure fantasy - no Roman census was conducted like that - the whole notion is silly.
What does the archaeology show? It shows that Bethlehem in Judea did not exist as a functioning community at the time when Jesus was supposedly born. So how come Matthew and Luke say Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Judea? The reason is obvious. The authors of the gospels (at least the author of Matthew and Luke) did what they so often did - they looked to the Old Testament (Micah 5:3), found a 'prediction' that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem, Judea, and that is what they wrote for Jesus' birthplace in order to 'fulfil the prophecy'. The clincher is the fact that Jesus could well have been born in Bethlehem in Galilee (a small settlement on the coast). But, since Micah 5;3 identifies Bethlehem in Judea as the birthplace - this is then slavishly followed by the author(s) of Luke and Matthew. Mark and John tell a completely different story, of course.
I could go on and give many other examples if you really insist....
Of course there are some things in the bible which are historically accurate. There are things in Moby Dick which are historically accurate. That doesn't mean that there are no contradictions - there are - and it doesn't mean that the central narrative is factual - it often is not.
deanhills
farmerdave wrote:
I believe Jesus to be 100% correct when he said, "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), which of course would contradict your last point. The Bible is a very trustworthy book.
God bless,
David
What does the above mean, i.e. "Scripture cannot be broken"? And who actually wrote that, as that would be hearsay, wouldn't it? I'm also not quite clear what you mean by "trustworthy". Can you explain what you mean by this?
SonLight
farmerdave wrote:
28And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" 30And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. 31And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. - Matthew 27:28-31
17And they clothed him in a [b]purple[b] cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. 18And they began to salute him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" 19And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. 20And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the [b]purple[b] cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. - Mark 15:17-20
I couldn't find any mention in the Gospel of Luke of the cloak or its color.
1Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. 3They came up to him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and struck him with their hands. - John 19:1-3
-David
Here's what appears to be the same event in Luke. The difference is that Herod's soldiers put the robe on Jesus in this telling.
Quote:
Luk 23:9 Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.
Luk 23:10 And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.
Luk 23:11 And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate.
The color of the robe is not mentioned. If I wanted to find an inconsistency in Jesus' story, I would prefer this variation to worrying about the color of the robe. Nevertheless, the difference is well within the range you would expect from competent eyewitnesses. The execution of Jesus is clearly shown to be a historical fact, by the independence of the sources, secular literary references, and agreement among divergent Christian communities.
Bikerman
SonLight wrote:
The execution of Jesus is clearly shown to be a historical fact, by the independence of the sources, secular literary references, and agreement among divergent Christian communities.
Err...what?
a) What independence of sources? Nobody even knows who wrote the Gospels.
b) Divergent christians of the time certainly did NOT all believe in the crucifixion and resurrection. Check the Gnostics, for example.
c) I am not aware of ANY secular references to the crucifixion. Perhaps you can provide some sources? Certainly there are non-contemporaneous documents much later - centuries later - but that hardly counts. The simple fact is that there are no records of that period that show any such crucifixion, let alone a resurrection.
SonLight
Bikerman wrote:
SonLight wrote:
The execution of Jesus is clearly shown to be a historical fact, by the independence of the sources, secular literary references, and agreement among divergent Christian communities.
Err...what?
a) What independence of sources? Nobody even knows who wrote the Gospels.
The identity of the author is important for reliability, but not for independence. The variations among the separate gospel accounts strongly suggest that each author reported the facts as known by different eyewitnesses. Josephus is generally considered an honest historian, and is in any case completely independent of any Christian source. Jewish sources declare Jesus worthy of death.
Quote:
b) Divergent christians of the time certainly did NOT all believe in the crucifixion and resurrection. Check the Gnostics, for example.
The gnostics needed for Jesus NOT to have died for our sins and resurrected, in order for their "do-it-yourself" version of salvation to make any sense.
Quote:
c) I am not aware of ANY secular references to the crucifixion. Perhaps you can provide some sources? Certainly there are non-contemporaneous documents much later - centuries later - but that hardly counts. The simple fact is that there are no records of that period that show any such crucifixion, let alone a resurrection.
Josephus is basically a disinterested party, which is what I think you want in seeking a "secular" source. He may have been opposed to the gospel stories, but he was surely not an advocate.
Bikerman
SonLight wrote:
Bikerman wrote:
SonLight wrote:
The execution of Jesus is clearly shown to be a historical fact, by the independence of the sources, secular literary references, and agreement among divergent Christian communities.
Err...what?
a) What independence of sources? Nobody even knows who wrote the Gospels.
The identity of the author is important for reliability, but not for independence. The variations among the separate gospel accounts strongly suggest that each author reported the facts as known by different eyewitnesses.
Not at all. It also suggests that at least 2, possibly all 4 of the gospels are different versions of an earlier written account (the 'Q' gospel). It says nothing at all about the historicity of events. As I said previously, there are glaring inconsistencies between the 4 canonical gospels (and remember that these 4 were chosen specifically for their agreement/support of a particular 'theology'). There are also things in them which we KNOW are just plain lies. The birthplace of Jesus is just one example. Do you want a list?
Quote:
Josephus is generally considered an honest historian, and is in any case completely independent of any Christian source. Jewish sources declare Jesus worthy of death.
There are two refences in Josephus. The first, in the 'testimonium flavianum', has always been suspect, and the modern consensus is that it is a forgery. The only other mention is of 'Jesus, brother of James the Just'.
What 'Jewish Sources' are you referring to?
Quote:
Bikerman wrote:
b) Divergent christians of the time certainly did NOT all believe in the crucifixion and resurrection. Check the Gnostics, for example.
The gnostics needed for Jesus NOT to have died for our sins and resurrected, in order for their "do-it-yourself" version of salvation to make any sense.
Just as the Paulines needed him to have died and been resurrected for THEIR version of salvation to make any sense. The victorious end up writing the history and the fact is that, for whatever reasons, Pauline Christianity won out and that is the version of 'history' we have.
SonLight
Bikerman,
History, like science, produces a mixture of evidence which is hard to interpret. Unfortunately we can't repeat the experiments in history, so we have to do the best we can with limited evidence.
Suppose we want to estimate whether Socrates really died of poisoning. The main evidences we have of Socrates' character and actions are Plato's dialogues, backed up somewhat by Aristotle's writing. But both Plato and Aristotle are advocates of the philosophical views we associate with Socrates. We could choose to believe that Socrates never even existed, and might do so if we doubted the character of Plato and Aristotle.
Unlike the situation with Socrates, we have a huge number of manuscripts of the Bible, perhaps 24,000 if you count all the "scraps of parchment" you mentioned. More importantly, we have early copies from all over the Middle East, including perhaps hundreds of complete or near-complete copies. There is no way I can imagine a conspiracy to control the content of these prior to the time of Constantine, because until then no group of Christians held political control over all these countries.
The Gospel of John does not appear to use much of the same material that the synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) do. The synoptics are built around a common source. However, each author freely adds material that was not in the common source. The slight inconsistencies among them show that they did not get together to agree how to tell the story.
It is reasonable to doubt historical evidence, but it can scarcely be ignored unless there is strong reason to believe the authors made it all up. The "Err, no"'s and the "Not at all"'s are not appropriate where the evidence is mixed. The historical record cannot distinguish with confidence between a Jesus who was misrepresented and one who was God incarnate. The only reason I can see to dismiss the possibility of His crucifixion is because if He died as the book says, He might also have risen again as the book says, and that might result in the need to make some changes.
The KJV Bible, incidentally, was only translated once -- from Greek to English -- unless the original New Testament was in Aramaic, which is highly unlikely for all but the book of Matthew. The KJV translators used the Bishop's Bible, along with many other English and Latin versions as reference. However, their primary source was the published Greek New Testament. Their goal was not to write a Bible from scratch, but to find the most accurate English statements they could. Where they found the Bishop's Bible to be accurate, they kept the text from it. Where they felt it needed improvement, they replaced it either with a fresh translation or the text from another version.
Although Josephus' writings were probably edited by Christians to suggest Jesus was the Messiah, there is no good reason to think the sequence of events was dramatically changed. As for the Gnostics, each of us is free to choose whether to believe them or the quotes from the early church leaders.
My best to all.
loyal
SonLight wrote:
The execution of Jesus is clearly shown to be a historical fact, by the independence of the sources, secular literary references, and agreement among divergent Christian communities...
Unlike the situation with Socrates, we have a huge number of manuscripts of the Bible, perhaps 24,000 if you count all the "scraps of parchment" you mentioned. More importantly, we have early copies from all over the Middle East, including perhaps hundreds of complete or near-complete copies. There is no way I can imagine a conspiracy to control the content of these prior to the time of Constantine, because until then no group of Christians held political control over all these countries.
These are all copies of earlier manuscripts which were copies of manuscripts of that were in circulation in the christian communities. There were plenty of letters and books in circulation, and the church later only approved the ones in the bible now. It tried to suppress other books and letters even going to such lengths as burning them.
The historical reliability of the NT is not much, despite the numerous manuscripts (24,000 you say) because these are simply copies of earlier manuscripts which are unreliable. Just because there are thousands of copies of an earlier manuscript doesn't mean the earlier manuscript is accurate. For example, the gospel according to Mark ends abruptly (if you remember the ending is actually an insertation). The real ending (unless you think Mark/the author intentionally ended his gospel abruptly) must have been lost in one of the earlier manuscripts. Yet the manuscripts we have, correct me if i'm wrong, do not have the lost ending. Which means all these manuscripts are not entirely reliable, because they differ from earlier manuscripts.
Numerous alterations and copying errors have been established, as well as the fact that only a selection of the books and letters in circulation made it into the NT; with all this in mind, we can doubt the crucifixion of Jesus. For one thing the earliest letters in the NT were written about two decades AFTER Jesus' ascension/disappearance. The latest books in the NT were written several decades after. Do you seriously expect us to believe that facts weren't distorted in these decades and the Christians' beliefs didn't change? We know that there were a few different groups of Christians such as the James group and the Pauline group. The power shifted from the James group to the Pauline group. The Pauline group believed different things to the James group. Obviously the Pauline group would want to promote their version of events and so include letters and books which support their theology, including the crucifixion.
There is no historical evidence to support the crucifixion. For example, there are no records in Pilate's trials of Jesus' trial. There is also no proper historical source of the crucifixion. Yes there are a few mentions of Jesus (some of which were edited by Christians to insert christian beliefs) and the mention of the belief that he was crucified. But these are simply mentions, not thorough research. A mention of a new group calling themselves Christians after their leader Christ who was supposedly crucified and risen again, is not historical evidence. It's only historical evidence that the Christians existed and that this is what these particular Christians believed.
Just some of my thoughts.
Peace.
Jintastic
"Contrary to popular belief, men are error and mistake prone Wink"
haha yep. this is what i believe.
Even those the bible and Quran are "holy books"
They are both written by MAN through God.
Also alot of stories are passed down before written down, and you all have played the telephone game and seen how it turned out.
SonLight
Loyal,
With such a low opinion of the New Testament's reliability, I wonder what you think about Socrates' supposed poisoning? Is it more likely that Socrates died of hemlock poisoning, or that Jesus died of crucifixion? I think the case is __much__ stronger for Jesus' death, yet Socrates' poisioning is generally assumed to be a __fact__, whereas you doubt Jesus' crucifixion.
You point out that letters were written (by Paul, I assume) within twenty years of Jesus' death. Most of Paul's letters strongly argue that Jesus was crucified. First Corinthians, one of the earlier ones, contains the following which most scholars think is an oral tradition, originally developed at least several years earlier:
Quote:
3) For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4) And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
5) And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:
6) After that, he was seen of above five hundred brothers at once; of whom the greater part remain to this present, but some are fallen asleep.
(1Cor 15:3-6, AKJV)
Early manuscripts of the gospels and epistles were widely dispersed into many countries, from Rome to Persia and perhaps beyond. No Christian group is accused of burning anyone's books, to my knowledge, prior to 300 AD. One possible exception: Nero accused Christians of burning Rome in 64 AD. The New Testament Canon was established, with a few books still questioned in some countries, by 200 AD. No substantial corruption could have occurred within this body of written material without leaving evidence among the different manuscripts and the quotes by the early Church leaders. Yet the variations we see today not only all agree that Jesus was crucified, but differ only in minor points of interpretation and a tiny number, perhaps three chapters in total, that have been left out in some manuscripts.
To my knowledge, none of the New Testament passages that scholars question deal with the crucifixion of Jesus, so a couple of possibly incomplete books do not alter the evidence. While there were early schisms within Chrisianity, Christians in Rome, Greece, and surrounding areas were clearly in general agreement and shared fellowship, as is shown by many letters from the early church leaders written between about 120 AD and 250 AD.
What about evidence from the Quran? Does it not acknowledge that the Romans believed they had crucified Jesus (Issa), and that Issa was a prophet of God? Did not the prophet Issa say, several times, that He was going to be crucified in Jerusalem?
Peace unto you.
Bikerman
But there is so much inaccuracy in the gospel version of events that one is certainly justified in casting some doubt.
Let's consider the arrest and trial.
The gospels deliberately setout to be nice to the Romans and nasty to the Jews. The reason is obvious - Pauline Christianity wanted to distance itself from Judaism.
Thus we are told that Pilate offers the crowd a choice to free a prisoner of the crowd's choosing, as part of the "custom of the Passover festival".
There was no such custom. Pilate, a Roman Governor/Procurator, would never bow to the pressure of a mob, would definitely not bother to wash his hands, and would certainly not kowtow to the Jews and allow a Roman criminal to get off scot free. The whole story is a fabrication.
There are many other inconsistencies, even in the 4 cannonical gospels. If we are to believe that all the gospel came from different witnesses (which I certainly do not believe) then there are still some really big and puzzling disrepancies.
1) What were Jesus' last words? You think that these might be important for any chronicler... Mark 15:34-37, Matthew 27:46-50 - Jesus says: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (but they use different Greek words for “God” — Matthew uses “Eli” and Mark uses “Eloi”)
Luke 23:46 - Jesus says: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.”
John 19:30 - Jesus says: “It is finished.” 2) Eathquake, not not? Matthew 27:51-53 - At the moment Jesus dies, a massive earth quake strikes and opens tombs where dead people rise again
Mark, Luke, John - No earthquake is mentioned. Actually no earthquake and no massive influx of formerly dead people, is mentioned in any historical records (which is strange given how monumental such an event would be). 3) What about the ascension? Mark 16:14-19 - Jesus ascends while he and his disciples are seated at a table in (or near) Jerusalem
Matthew 28:16-20 - Jesus’ ascension isn’t mentioned at all, but Matthew ends at a mountain in Galilee
Luke 24:50-51 - Jesus ascends outside, after dinner, and at Bethany and on the same day as the resurrection
John - Nothing about Jesus’ ascension is mentioned
Acts 1:9-12 - Jesus ascends at least 40 days after his resurrection, at Mt. Olivet
and so on.
As it happens I think that, on balance, there probably was a crucifiction. I don't, of course, believe in the later resurrection, and I don't think the gospels offer a particularly accurate historic account.
Indi
SonLight wrote:
Suppose we want to estimate whether Socrates really died of poisoning. The main evidences we have of Socrates' character and actions are Plato's dialogues, backed up somewhat by Aristotle's writing. But both Plato and Aristotle are advocates of the philosophical views we associate with Socrates. We could choose to believe that Socrates never even existed, and might do so if we doubted the character of Plato and Aristotle.
i gotta call you out on this, because no one else seems willing to, and because you're using it as a club to beat down the people objecting to the NT's legitimacy when, in fact, your claims are all a crock.
Let's start with Socrates: you're completely wrong.
We have tons of descriptions of Socrates, both by his students (Plato, Xenophanes, etc.), and by his critics (Aristotle). Most of those sources only mention Socrates in passing, so the main sources of Socrates are Plato and Xenophanes (not Aristotle, who didn't write much about Socrates - he just critiqued Socratic ideas while attributing them to Socrates)... but they are hardly the only sources.
But most importantly, we have writings made about Socrates that were done while Socrates was alive, and that were made by people critical of Socrates. We even have descriptions of the man: chubby and short. It is therefore patently absurd to imagine that Plato or Aristotle made him up, even if we had cause to mistrust them or their motives.
SonLight wrote:
Unlike the situation with Socrates, we have a huge number of manuscripts of the Bible, perhaps 24,000 if you count all the "scraps of parchment" you mentioned. More importantly, we have early copies from all over the Middle East, including perhaps hundreds of complete or near-complete copies. There is no way I can imagine a conspiracy to control the content of these prior to the time of Constantine, because until then no group of Christians held political control over all these countries.
And this is just dishonest.
First of all, you say we have 24,000 "scraps of parchment" that contain the Bible... true, but the vast majority of them date after the year 1000 CE. Here's the truth: by earliest possible date, this how many manuscripts we have of the New Testament from at least each century:
From the 9th century or before: 517
From the 8th century or before: 327
From the 7th century or before: 265
From the 6th century or before: 218
From the 5th century or before: 146
From the 4th century or before: 93
From the 3rd century or before: 48
From the 2nd century or before: 8
From the 1st century or before: 0
On top of that, the vast majority of those "scraps of parchment" don't even matter! Because you're looking for evidence of a historical Jesus, so Paul's letters won't help you, because he doesn't say anything at all about Jesus's life. If you want records of Jesus's life, you have to go to the gospels... and the only gospel fragment we have from the second century is a postcard-sized snippet from John.
So your entire "24,000" argument is bunk.
Furthermore:
Talking about the redaction of the writings is pointless - a complete red herring. It doesn't matter whether or not anyone thought to edit the writings about Jesus's life before the fourth century (but, by the way, they did... Mark 16:9, anyone?). If they were fiction when they were written, then they were no less fiction when they were distributed. Who cares if they were edited? The fact that they more or less agree with each other for the most part is uninteresting. i could dig up dozens of old parchments of the Iliad and say they all agree, more or less... but that doesn't make the Iliad a true story.
And the final nail in the coffin of this ridiculous Jesus-Socrates analogy is the fact that not one single word was written about Jesus while he was alive. Not one. Not by a supporter, and not by a critic. Not even in passing. Here is a man who allegedly walked around with thousands of followers, who led a triumphant parade into Jerusalem, and who had chats with both Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas. Not one blessed word... about any of it.
The earliest - earliest - writings about Jesus are all from at least half a century after his death... not his ministry, not his miracles, half a century after his death before someone thought to write something about Jesus. And all of the writings we have of Jesus are by supportive writers - not a single critical word about his life - and all can be traced back to one or two originating documents (probably Mark and Q). And all of those writings contradict each other! AND SOME EVEN CONTRADICT RECORDED HISTORY AND COMMON SENSE!!!
Bottom line: claiming that Jesus has even remotely as much claim to historicity as Socrates is stupid. Plain and simple.
loyal
Peace.
Note: I have written this hastily and have not checked over for mistakes. I hope the tone is not aggressive and I don't mean any disrespect.
SonLight wrote:
Loyal,
With such a low opinion of the New Testament's reliability, I wonder what you think about Socrates' supposed poisoning? Is it more likely that Socrates died of hemlock poisoning, or that Jesus died of crucifixion? I think the case is __much__ stronger for Jesus' death, yet Socrates' poisioning is generally assumed to be a __fact__, whereas you doubt Jesus' crucifixion.
I don't know about Socrates (Indi seems to), but if the case is stronger for Jesus' crucifixion than for Socrates' poisoning, than Socrates was never even poisoned.
It is not my "low" opinion but the facts which i pointed out which all undermine the reliability of the NT.
Quote:
You point out that letters were written (by Paul, I assume) within twenty years of Jesus' death.
I was referring to all the books and letters in the NT. Some of which were written decades after Jesus' disappearance/ascension. This is quite a long time especially for facts to become distorted.
Quote:
Most of Paul's letters strongly argue that Jesus was crucified. First Corinthians, one of the earlier ones, contains the following which most scholars think is an oral tradition, originally developed at least several years earlier:
Well of course Paul's letters argue for Jesus' crucifixion. They wouldn't have made it into the Bible, if they hadn't. They would have been burned by the church as the church did with some other books and letters.
But it's all irrelevant, because the power shifted from one group to another, who believed different things. Paul's whole teachings were based on Jesus' crucifixion. Therefore to say "We have evidence for Jesus' crucifixion and this is Paul" is circular ("the Bible says Jesus was crucified. How do we know this is true? Because the Bible says"), since Paul was teaching the crucifixion even though he had never met Jesus and wasn't there at the crucifixion. And indeed, one might say Paul was partially the inventor of this belief. Paul's group later gained power and they spread their views that Jesus was crucified.
Quote:
Early manuscripts of the gospels and epistles were widely dispersed into many countries, from Rome to Persia and perhaps beyond.
So what? Our earliest manuscripts of the gospels are at least 100 years AFTER Jesus' ascension. In which time, power shifted from one group to another. How do we know the Paul group preached the right things? They were the victors so they wrote the history (or something like that according to a common saying). There were several different groups. Paul even mentions them in a letter or two calling them false teachings. Each group claimed to have the truth. If another group had won, we might have heard that Jesus was entirely human and not god and that he was never even crucified, and this would be fact according to these christians.
Quote:
No Christian group is accused of burning anyone's books, to my knowledge, prior to 300 AD. One possible exception: Nero accused Christians of burning Rome in 64 AD. The New Testament Canon was established, with a few books still questioned in some countries, by 200 AD.
Since most of manuscripts date after 300ad (or ce), then it is important that Christians burned certain books and letters. They left out books and letters out of the canon which they did not like (because they preached differing beliefs). They burnt some to suppress some. So these books and letters have been forever lost to us. They could easily have things which oppose many christian beliefs, such as the crucifixion.
Quote:
No substantial corruption could have occurred within this body of written material without leaving evidence among the different manuscripts and the quotes by the early Church leaders.
And yet there IS evidence of corruption, both accidental and on purpose. For example, 1 john 5:7 is an insertation. I think i remember reading john 1:1 should be read as "the word was god" not "the word was God", but a deliberate distortion occured, which can still be seen in an early manuscript.
Quote:
Yet the variations we see today not only all agree that Jesus was crucified, but differ only in minor points of interpretation and a tiny number, perhaps three chapters in total, that have been left out in some manuscripts.
Lol. They differ greatly with many details to the crucifixion. Since there are so many contradicting details with regards to the crucifixion, then it is likely it never even occurred. Liars who lie about the same thing contradict each other (because they don't know what the other liars have said).
"The Bible says the crucifixion happened. How do we know the crucifixion really happened? Because the Bible said so". <- This argument just isn't convincing. There is NO evidence whatsoever of Jesus' crucifixion outside of the Bible. Bring just one piece of evidence. And by the way, don't bother bringing a historian just mentioning that there's new group of Christians who say Jesus was crucified, because that's not evidence. That's just mentioning the Christians and their beliefs.
We can't trust the NT because of its unreliability. For example, no records of Jesus' trial in Pilate's trials, as i mentioned before.
Quote:
To my knowledge, none of the New Testament passages that scholars question deal with the crucifixion of Jesus,
Of course they wouldn't. One group had won and they were the ones who chose the books and letters going into the canon. They were the ones whose beliefs were now the "mainstream" of christians. These scholars are of this group.
The argument "the Bible says the crucifixion happened. We know this is true because Christian scholars a hundred years later didn't question it" just isn't valid. They BELIEVE in it, so of course they wouldn't question in it. But they weren't there. They are simply relying on the previous generations, who were of the group that won and gained power permanently.
[qupte]
so a couple of possibly incomplete books do not alter the evidence. While there were early schisms within Chrisianity, Christians in Rome, Greece, and surrounding areas were clearly in general agreement and shared fellowship, as is shown by many letters from the early church leaders written between about 120 AD and 250 AD.
[/quote]
The illustrious Irenaeus (b. ca. A.D. 130), for example, considered the Shepherd of Hennas to be inspired, but rejected Hebrews, Jude, James, 2 Peter, and 3 John. Clement of Alexandria (ca. A.D. 150-213) included the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas in his Bible. Tertullian (b. ca. A.D. 160) — best remembered for his dictum, Certum est, quia impossibile est ("I believe it because it's impossible") — threw out all the New Testament books except the four gospels, Acts, thirteen "Pauline" epistles, Revelation, and 1 John.
http://www.atheists.org/christianity/realbible.html
Quote:
What about evidence from the Quran? Does it not acknowledge that the Romans believed they had crucified Jesus (Issa), and that Issa was a prophet of God? Did not the prophet Issa say, several times, that He was going to be crucified in Jerusalem?
Huh? Have you even read the Quran? The Quran very clearly denies the crucifixion.
(4:157/158) and their boast, "Behold, we have slain the Christ Jesus, son of Mary, [who claimed to be] an apostle of God!" However, they did not slay him, and neither did they crucify him, but it only seemed to them [as if it had been] so; and, verily, those who hold conflicting views thereon are indeed confused, having no [real] knowledge thereof, and following mere conjecture. For, of a certainty, they did not slay him:
Asad (one of the best translators) writes:
Asad wrote:
Thus, the Qur'an categorically denies the story of the crucifixion of Jesus. There exist, among Muslims, many fanciful legends telling us that at the last moment God substituted for Jesus a person closely resembling him (according to some accounts, that person was Judas), who was subsequently crucified in his place. However, none of these legends finds the slightest support in the Qur'an or in authentic Traditions, and the stories produced in this connection by the classical commentators must be summarily rejected. They represent no more than confused attempts at "harmonizing" the Qur'anic statement that Jesus was not crucified with the graphic description, in the Gospels, of his crucifixion. The story of the crucifixion as such has been succinctly explained in the Qur'anic phrase wa-lakin shubbiha lahum, which I render as "but it only appeared to them as if it had been so" - implying that in the course of time, long after the time of Jesus, a legend had somehow grown up (possibly under the then-powerful influence of Mithraistic beliefs) to the effect that he had died on the cross in order to atone for the "original sin" with which mankind is allegedly burdened; and this legend became so firmly established among the latter-day followers of Jesus that even his enemies, the Jews, began to believe it - albeit in a derogatory sense (for crucifixion was, in those times, a heinous form of death-penalty reserved for the lowest of criminals). This, to my mind, is the only satisfactory explanation of the phrase wa-lakin shubbiha lahum, the more so as the expression shubbiha li is idiomatically synonymous with khuyyila 1i, "[a thing] became a fancied image to me", i.e., "in my mind" - in other words, "[it] seemed to me" (see Qamus, art. khayala, as well as Lane II, 833, and IV, 1500).
may God bless you.
SonLight
Indi,
I am not __completely__ wrong wrong about Socrates. There is evidence that he was poisoned. Apparently a few more people wrote about it than I had thought, and it is near-certain that the poisoning actually happened.
Several people wrote about both Socrates and Christ based on first-hand knowledge. The major question is whether we have access to reliable copies of the writings.
How many manuscripts do we have of each event? In the case of Christ, you give the figures:
Quote:
From the 9th century or before: 517
From the 8th century or before: 327
From the 7th century or before: 265
From the 6th century or before: 218
From the 5th century or before: 146
From the 4th century or before: 93
From the 3rd century or before: 48
From the 2nd century or before: 8
From the 1st century or before: 0
I don't know how many of these are complete manuscripts, or how many contain a substantial portion of a book including a description of Jesus' death, but I know there is a gospel of John from about 125 AD and a number of complete manuscripts from the fourth. Ideally, we should count only those clearly describing the death of either Jesus or Socrates. In Jesus' case, Paul's works (about 20 years after Jesus' death) are among the earliest to record Jesus' crucifixion, along with the gospels and several other letters.
How about Socrates? How many manuscripts or substantial portions are available from the first few centuries after his death?
The only way you can conclude that the writings of Jesus are seriously in error is if you think all the people who wrote them were liars. Yet most of them gave their life in support of Jesus' message, and they agree in general with each other and with the facts of history. The variations are consistent with what you would expect when eyewitnesses report an event.
Loyal,
Thank you for sharing the idea that "it only appeared to them as if it had been so" is commonly interpreted as meaning simply that many came to believe Jesus had died. I had only heard the view that it referred to the ones present at the time.
loyal
SonLight wrote:
In Jesus' case, Paul's works (about 20 years after Jesus' death) are among the earliest to record Jesus' crucifixion, along with the gospels and several other letters.
But does it matter if Paul wrote that Jesus was crucified? Paul never met Jesus. He wasn't there at the crucifixion. So how does Paul know Jesus was crucified? Because the Christians were saying so.
Quote:
Thank you for sharing the idea that "it only appeared to them as if it had been so" is commonly interpreted as meaning simply that many came to believe Jesus had died. I had only heard the view
that it referred to the ones present at the time.
Your welcome. Some Muslims thanks to the ideas from Yusuf Ali and others think someone was substituted in Jesus' place. But as Muhammad Asad says there is no evidence for this in Islam (correct me if i'm wrong).
Peace.
SonLight
loyal wrote:
SonLight wrote:
In Jesus' case, Paul's works (about 20 years after Jesus' death) are among the earliest to record Jesus' crucifixion, along with the gospels and several other letters.
But does it matter if Paul wrote that Jesus was crucified? Paul never met Jesus. He wasn't there at the crucifixion. So how does Paul know Jesus was crucified? Because the Christians were saying so.
It matters because it shows that a group of Christians believed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as early as twenty years after His death. If literary scholars are right about 1Cor 15 containing a confession of faith that was part of the oral tradition, then at least some Christians believed that much earlier.
Remember, Paul was violently opposed to the Christian belief earlier. Something dramatic must have happened to convince Paul that he too should put his faith in Jesus. It is doubtful if a man of Paul's intellect would have been hoodwinked into believing a false story at a time when it should have been easy to verify whether Jesus was crucified or not. He could have asked members of the Sanhedrin, of which he may well have been a part. Paul might have had first-hand knowledge of Jesus' crucifixion, but we do not know if he did or not.
Bikerman
SonLight wrote:
It matters because it shows that a group of Christians believed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as early as twenty years after His death. If literary scholars are right about 1Cor 15 containing a confession of faith that was part of the oral tradition, then at least some Christians believed that much earlier.
And this proves what, exactly? Do you wish a list of various cults with outrageous beliefs? Look around - you will see large numbers of people who believe that ridiculous things have happened over the last 20 years - it adds no credibility to the actual historicity. It seems clear that Paul never met Jesus and didn't witness any crucifixion - the rest is second-hand speculation.
Quote:
Remember, Paul was violently opposed to the Christian belief earlier. Something dramatic must have happened to convince Paul that he too should put his faith in Jesus. It is doubtful if a man of Paul's intellect would have been hoodwinked into believing a false story at a time when it should have been easy to verify whether Jesus was crucified or not. He could have asked members of the Sanhedrin, of which he may well have been a part. Paul might have had first-hand knowledge of Jesus' crucifixion, but we do not know if he did or not.
The only information we have about Paul is his own writings and the 'book of acts' - which are often in contradiction with each other. We don't know what sort of character he was - he could well have been a Walter-Mitty character, or a power-hungry opportunist.
loyal
Peace.
SonLight wrote:
It matters because it shows that a group of Christians believed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as early as twenty years after His death. If literary scholars are right about 1Cor 15 containing a confession of faith that was part of the oral tradition, then at least some Christians believed that much earlier.
There was more than one group of Christians and they had different beliefs. Maybe Paul believed the wrong group of Christians. Maybe he should have believed the group of Christians who didn't believe Jesus was crucified.
Quote:
Remember, Paul was violently opposed to the Christian belief earlier. Something dramatic must have happened to convince Paul that he too should put his faith in Jesus. It is doubtful if a man of Paul's intellect would have been hoodwinked into believing a false story at a time when it should have been easy to verify whether Jesus was crucified or not.
Something dramatic? Why yes, he saw the light. Literally too. That sort of experience would convert anyone. (Unless you believe you and your companions think you've just had a mass hallucination).
On the other hand, you're forgetting another alternative. Paul was a liar. A christian hater who persecutes christians, It would be the ultimate act/attack against Christians: To corrupt their religion hugely. So he goes around telling the disciples and other close followers of Jesus, that HE had authority, not them, and that he had been given instructions by Jesus.
Paul's mission was to win as many people to Christianity as possible. It make sense that he wants to give everyone the truth. But it also makes sense if he's a liar, trying to spread the corruption as far as possible, until the new Christians out number the real followers of Jesus.
Paul's three accounts of conversion in the NT contradict each other. This would make sense if he's a liar. It wouldn't make sense if he's telling the truth. Would you forget the details of your amazing spiritual experience so much that you'd directly contradict yourself on the details? http://www.pathofislam.net/2008/interfaith/bible/contradictions-in-story-of-paul/
I think I remember reading Paul had a engagement with Popea, a Christian. It was broken off, and this may have been Paul's reason for his hatred against Christians.
Islam says the true message of Jesus was corrupted. It turned from a religion OF Jesus to a religion ABOUT Jesus. A perfectly possible theory, especially when we there were also groups who didn't believe in Jesus' divinity or his crucifixion. Also Paul did more to formulate and organise the Christians, than Jesus did, which is why Paul is sometimes credited as the main founder of Christianity. All Jesus seemed to do was preach the "good news", and then he was crucified supposedly for calling the hypocrites "hypocrites".
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He could have asked members of the Sanhedrin, of which he may well have been a part. Paul might have had first-hand knowledge of Jesus' crucifixion, but we do not know if he did or not.
Read the NT. Does it sound like Paul did a thorough investigation? On the contrary, in Paul's three accounts of conversion, he gives his experience as the reason for conversion. He doesn't mention any research or checking.
spinout
The holy books are written by man and not through God.
loyal
spinout wrote:
The holy books are written by man and not through God.
How thoughtful.
Indi
SonLight wrote:
Several people wrote about both Socrates and Christ based on first-hand knowledge. The major question is whether we have access to reliable copies of the writings.
There is not one single iota of evidence to even imply that anyone who wrote anything about Jesus had first-hand knowledge of him. In fact, there is tons of evidence that they did not. In point of fact, there is nothing in any of the Gospels or Paul's writings that says "i was there." Paul explicitly denies being a first-hand witness, so that leaves the Gospels. None of the Gospels say they were written by the people they are traditionally held to be written by - all of them don't name their authors at all. So what would make anyone think that these are eye-witness accounts is frankly beyond me. They could just as well have been written by historians a generation or two later.
By contrast, we have tons of evidence that people who wrote about Socrates not only knew him personally, they knew each other. Both supporters of Socrates and his enemies.
Now, in the case of Jesus, let's suppose that we were to believe the claim that the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all knew each other, and Paul as well. Why, then, don't they refer to each other's writings? When they contradict, why doesn't Luke say, "Well, I know Mark said that Jesus said such-and-such, but what he actually said was more like _____." Why doesn't John say, "Matthew says Jesus was crucified before Passover, but I remember it being the day after." Or take Paul: he writes letters and letters talking about the beliefs of Jesus... but never once quotes Jesus. Not even indirectly. He doesn't even say something like, "Jesus said something like that during his sermon on the mount," not even when it would lend enormous strength and authority to his claims.
It doesn't matter whether the writings are "reliable" or not. ^_^; They don't say anything worth reading. They aren't supported by extant writings, they aren't supported by common sense (they violate a lot of what we know about the period and the people involved) and they don't even support each other.
And before you go off on a claim that i accept the writings on Socrates because i trust the writers of those documents, whereas i don't trust the writers of the Gospels... don't be ridiculous. ^_^; i didn't know Xenophanes - the man could be a pathological liar for all i know, while Mark may have been the most honest man who ever lived. i couldn't tell Aristophanes from Luke from a hole in the ground. This has nothing to do with trusting the writers.
And don't even try to claim that i accept Socrates's existence because i find his expliots more believable than Jesus's... because aside from the mystical nonsense attributed to Jesus (and the absurd dialogues with kings), Jesus makes far more sense to me than Socrates. Socrates was probably - in my estimation - a nutter. He was a bum, walking the streets of Athens despite being a celebrity. The story of his death strikes me a the height of mythological fantasy - like Jesus he was accused of corruption, but unlike Jesus he had the chance to get away and didn't take it. Absurd. (It's my opinion that Plato did far more to make Socrates's philosophy rational than Socrates ever did.)
No, the reason i think Socrates's existence is beyond reasonable question is based only on the textual evidence. Even the case of being able to escape but choosing not to... that's not only attested to in different sources, they all disagree about it because they all think he did it for different reasons. That means they all discussed it, and all agreed it happened, but argued about Socrates's motivations... and we know they must have discussed it because they all reference each other. (By contrast, even when the Gospels discuss the same incident, they never reference each other, whether they agree or not.) And this is CRUCIAL: even though they differ about Socrates's reason for not escaping, they don't differ about the facts. By contrast, the Gospels differ right on the bald facts.
SonLight wrote:
I don't know how many of these are complete manuscripts, or how many contain a substantial portion of a book including a description of Jesus' death, but I know there is a gospel of John from about 125 AD and a number of complete manuscripts from the fourth. Ideally, we should count only those clearly describing the death of either Jesus or Socrates. In Jesus' case, Paul's works (about 20 years after Jesus' death) are among the earliest to record Jesus' crucifixion, along with the gospels and several other letters.
The fragment of John you're talking about is not "a gospel of John from about 125 AD", it is a post-it note sized fragment of the Gospel of John that amounts to maybe 20 or 30 words. That's literally it.
And Paul's letters say Jesus was crucified, but they never mention when or where. And, in fact, Paul goes out of his way to say he got the information about Jesus only through divine revelation... not word-of-mouth, and not by witnessing it himself. So, in other words, Paul's letters imply that if Jesus existed and was crucified, it almost certainly didn't happen in the previous fifty years to Paul's letters at least - otherwise Paul could have simply asked a witness for the details.
SonLight wrote:
How about Socrates? How many manuscripts or substantial portions are available from the first few centuries after his death?
Oh my goodness, are you serious? ^_^; i honestly can't even begin to answer that. i know from studying Plato that the earliest full copy of Plato is from the 9th century or so... but he was quoted and studied in bulk way before that.
You have to understand the scale of what you're asking for. With Jesus, the only document that testifies to his existence is the New Testament - and not even all of that. That's... a cup of water. For Socrates, we have the detailed writings of Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes to start, then... thousands of passing mentions by other writers and commentators, either during his life or shortly after. But not just text, we also have images of Socrates - the first statue done immediately following Socrates's death, and a more famous one done a few decades later, commissioned by Plato (who, obviously, should have known what Socrates looked like). Paintings, coins, inscriptions... etc. etc. etc. That's an ocean.
Now, what you're asking me to do is to take all of these tens of thousands of bits of evidence, and in the case of each one, find the earliest surviving one's date. Ha! Hardly. ^_^;
i can track down the earliest dates of four short books and a handful of letters... but i can't possibly begin to even catalogue the vast body of evidence for Socrates, even if i were to limit it to things created while he was alive. This is why the comparison between the evidence for Jesus and Socrates is so laughable. The comparison between the two bodies of evidence is aptly modelled as the difference bewteen a cup of water and an ocean. All evidence we have for the existence of Jesus - everything we know about Jesus at all - derives from... literally two short books (Mark and Q) and maybe 10 or so letters (not all of which even discuss Jesus). By contrast, the evidence we have for Socrates amounts to dozens of books (none of which derive from each other), hundreds of passing commentaries, images, sculptures, plays, etc. etc. etc.
It's just too much for me to begin to list for you. Ask a Socrates scholar, and you might get an answer... but just as likely not, because who really cares whether or not we have texts that date back to the day Socrates died or shortly after? Good grief, even without a carbon-dated copy of Republic from the 300 BCE, there is no rational reason to doubt that it was written around then given the mountains of corroborative evidence. To claim that there was a conspiracy to manufacture a historical Socrates when none existed would be absurd in the highest - as i said, thousands of commentaries and items of art... the scale of the conspiracy would be mind-boggling - and who would bother? Who would have cared so much about whether or not Socrates actually existed? It's an entirely different situation from Jesus, who had armies of scribes manipulating historical documents to provide evidence for Jesus... and still the best they can do is two short books and a handful of letters.
Unlike Jesus, Socrates didn't have an international cult of fanatics religiously preserving anything that even might be related to Jesus. It's not really surprising that we have 1500 year-old fragments of the Bible - even today we have people enshrining images of Jesus that appear on grilled-cheese sandwiches. Socrates's "followers" didn't "worship" him, and they had no motivation to preserve Socratic relics. Socrates's "followers" were philosophers who were more interested in his ideas than the clothes he was wearing when he was buried.
On top of that, Jesus was never the victim of an organized attempt to erase him from history. One of the early Christian Emperors of Rome started a crusade against the old, "heretical" beliefs, and tried to destroy all evidence of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle... if it hadn't been for the fact that Muslims in the East (centred mostly in Baghdad) preserved the knowledge, we wouldn't even know Socrates existed. So it would be no great surprise if no original documents survived.
However, i'd bet that hundreds and hundreds of artifacts did survive. i just can't say for sure, because there are too many thousands of things to check.
SonLight wrote:
The only way you can conclude that the writings of Jesus are seriously in error is if you think all the people who wrote them were liars.
Absolutely false.
We can conclude any one of six things:
The writings are true, the writers wanted to tell the truth, and they wanted people to believe they were telling the truth. (Good documentation.)
The writings are true, the writers wanted to lie, and they wanted people to believe they were telling the truth. (Lucky fluke.)
The writings are true, the writers wanted to lie, and they wanted people to believe they were lying. (Accidental non-fiction.)
The writings are false, the writers wanted to tell the truth, and they wanted people to believe they were telling the truth. (Bad research.)
The writings are false, the writers wanted to tell lie, and they wanted people to believe they were telling the truth. (Liars.)
The writings are false, the writers wanted to tell lie, and they wanted people to believe they were lying. (Fiction writers.)
And this is just the beginning. The idea that the Gospels are either truth or the writers were liars is a false dilemma.
SonLight wrote:
Yet most of them gave their life in support of Jesus' message, and they agree in general with each other and with the facts of history.
The first part of this is an oft-repeated fallacy, and it's completely wrong. It is the idea that the disciples wouldn't have died for Jesus if they didn't believe Jesus actually lived. But that's hogwash. Do you know who John Mark Karr is? Look it up. Or, if you want an example of someone who not only intended to suffer for a lie, but actually die (and succeeded at it), consider the case of Robert Hubert (look up the 1666 Fire of London). People die for things they know are lies all the time.
(And, incidentally, that's even presuming that the writers of the Gospels suffered at all. How do you know they gave their lives in support of Jesus's message? You don't even know who wrote the Gospels.)
Second, no they don't agree with each other. There are hundreds of websites devoted to pointing out the contradictions between the Gospels.
And finally, no, they most certainly do not agree with what we know of history. In fact, there was an earlier thread right here where we discussed the dating of the birth of Jesus, and showed that it was impossible. But there are tons of other departures from history.
SonLight wrote:
The variations are consistent with what you would expect when eyewitnesses report an event.
Complete rubbish. There is no such thing as "consistent variation" in eyewitness reports - that's entirely made up.
Yes, eyewitness reports do often vary - especially in traumatic circumstances. But if you get two contradictory eyewitness reports of a single event, you don't assume they were both eyewitness and are both trying to be honest... you assume that at least one of them is lying. That's how it actually works in the police world: they separate "witnesses", get statements, compare and contrast, and when there are differences they try to use to them trip up the witness to catch who might be lying. It is only when they have other evidence to show that both witnesses were there that they might conclude they are just confused. They don't just assume that out of whole cloth because their stories are different - that's just ridiculous.
SonLight
Indi wrote:
There is not one single iota of evidence to even imply that anyone who wrote anything about Jesus had first-hand knowledge of him.
...
The fragment of John you're talking about is not "a gospel of John from about 125 AD", it is a post-it note sized fragment of the Gospel of John that amounts to maybe 20 or 30 words. That's literally it.
...
Oh my goodness, are you serious?
...
Absolutely false.
...
The first part of this is an oft-repeated fallacy, and it's completely wrong.
...
Complete rubbish. There is no such thing as "consistent variation" in eyewitness reports - that's entirely made up.
...
Indi, I know that none of my arguments impress you, but really, does that justify the "no value -- no way" comments you have made about each of my points?
First-hand knowledge:
Peter was surely an eyewitness. He explicitly states, "he [God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3)
James and Jude, relatives if not brothers of Jesus, also wrote but did not, to my knowledge, explicitly say that Jesus was resurrected.
Of course, not all accurate knowledge is necessarily eyewitness knowledge. Luke likely interviewed Mary, the mother of Jesus, among many others. Mark apparently wrote to preserve the testimony of Peter. The gospel of Matthew was believed to be by the apostle, according to traditions which can be documented in the second century, but his authorship can legitimately be questioned.
Paul wrote about 20 years after Jesus' death according to most scholars, even skeptical ones. He must have known about the crucifixion; if his knowledge was not first hand, he surely investigated the matter both before and after his conversion to Christianity.
Fragment of John's gospel:
I stand corrected. I should have said "a fragment of" John's gospel, or that a copy of John's gospel existed about 125 AD. The point is that the book must have been written, copied, and carried to Egypt by that time. See: http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/specialcollections/collections/stjohnfragment/ for a pictures of each side and a brief explanation. The text in English is:
Wikipedia wrote:
... said to him
the Jews, "To us it is lawful to kill no one," so that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he said signifying by what sort of death he was about to die. Entered again into the Praetorium Pilate and called Jesus and said to him, "Are you king of the Jews? ...
... a King I am. I for this have been born
and (for this) I have come into the world so that I should testify to the truth. Everyone being of the truth hears my voice. Says to him Pilate, "What is truth?" and this saying, again he went out to the Jews and says to them, "I nothing find in him a case."
Am I serious:
Not really. I don't expect anyone to thoroughly study the manuscript evidence in order to post in the forum. The point is there's a lot more manuscript evidence for the New Testament than for almost any event or book in history. The quality of the evidence is quite subjective and hard to evaluate however.
You say "only" the New Testament provides evidence of Jesus. But remember, the contents of the New Testament originally circulated as twenty-seven separate books, each with some manuscript history of its own. When combined with the writings of the early church leaders in the second and third centuries, I find the evidence quite strong.
Absolutely false:
My statement is based on my examination of the evidence. Of course there remains a logical possibility that the writings were false, but I don't think the evidence supports it. I conclude that case number one is likely for the main facts. I don't know of a logical category called "absolutely" -- simply suggesting that my conclusion was false would be sufficient to indicate you evaluate the evidence differently than I do and/or wish to point out that the statement is my opinion, not a logical necessity.
Oft-repeated fallacy:
No doubt there are deranged persons whose motivation is based on obsession or cannot be explained. At a minimum, there would be eleven apostles plus Paul who were so affected, or we have to assign the second-century writings to pure fiction, to justify the records we have of their persecution and martrydom.
Complete rubbish:
As you say, eyewitness accounts do vary. Even if my claim that Biblical accounts can vary somewhat and still be good history is rubbish, surely it is not __complete__ rubbish. Crime investigation where the witnesses are cross-examined is a completely different situation than someone writing history as he remembers it.
Bikerman
SonLight wrote:
Indi, I know that none of my arguments impress you, but really, does that justify the "no value -- no way" comments you have made about each of my points?
Yes, I'm afraid it does. many of the things you have claimed to date are either completely untrue or such distortions of the truth that they may as well be.
I'll let Indi deal with this posting in detail, but I'll just make a couple of obvious points so that you have time to prepare...
1) Peter almost certainly was NOT an eyewitness. It is virtually inconceivable that he actually every met Jesus. Your quote means nothing - it is the sort of rhetoric any potential leader would use to rally the troops. Paul mentions almost NOTHING about the historical Jesus - what he does write is second, third or fourth hand and is primarily aimed at showing Jesus fullfilled the prophesies of the OT.
2) Nobody really has much clue who wrote the James epistle. It could be James the Just, James the Great, Apostle James (son of Alphaeus), or one of many more potential candidates. James never claims any kinship with Jesus and doesn't really tell us much about his actual life.
3) Luke was almost certainly written by either a Greek or a Syrian, and I'm fairly sure that it is from after 75CE. Some scholars want to place it earler - around 50CE - but that is more wishful thinking than firm hypothesis, since there is no real evidence for Luke being in circulation until about the middle of the second century.
4) Citing Paul isn't really much use - the only real mentions he makes of Jesus are revealed in visions and dreams to him. He possibly knew Jesus second hand, but that is about as far as we can sensibly go.
5) You keep repeating this lie that there is 'more manuscript evidence' for Jesus than for other historical characters. it just isn't true. Not only is it not true, it is ridiculously and laughably untrue. Repeating it simply indicates that you have a problem with the actual facts...
6) The New Testament was NOT originally circulated as 27 books. You are confusing the modern NT with the pre-Nicene books. The CURRENT NT is 27 books (give or take, depending on the sect). There were certainly MORE than 27 individual 'books' around in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. We know that many didn't make it into the cannon - Philip, Thomas etc. Now, we don't know how early these accounts go back. Christian traditionalists naturally wish to maintain they are 2nd century and not part of the 'original' cannon, but we simply don't know.
I'll let Indi deal with the details of what we know and what we don't know, but what we don't know is a huge amount, and what we 'know' is a mixture of scant evidence (VERY scant indeed), faith, political manouvering, and centuries of disinformation.
deanhills
Indi wrote:
And before you go off on a claim that i accept the writings on Socrates because i trust the writers of those documents, whereas i don't trust the writers of the Gospels... don't be ridiculous. ^_^; i didn't know Xenophanes - the man could be a pathological liar for all i know, while Mark may have been the most honest man who ever lived. i couldn't tell Aristophanes from Luke from a hole in the ground. This has nothing to do with trusting the writers.
And don't even try to claim that i accept Socrates's existence because i find his expliots more believable than Jesus's... because aside from the mystical nonsense attributed to Jesus (and the absurd dialogues with kings), Jesus makes far more sense to me than Socrates. Socrates was probably - in my estimation - a nutter. He was a bum, walking the streets of Athens despite being a celebrity. The story of his death strikes me a the height of mythological fantasy - like Jesus he was accused of corruption, but unlike Jesus he had the chance to get away and didn't take it. Absurd. (It's my opinion that Plato did far more to make Socrates's philosophy rational than Socrates ever did.)
History is subjective and quite a lot of the factual information that is available to us is interpreted by what we know (or think we know) in the present. The way we analyze information today, is completely different from the period BC and after BC. In another thread people were condemning the McCarthy era in the United States as being extremist and incomprehensible, but at the time when all of that was happening, people were shivering in the anticipation of communist spies lurking everywhere and especially in the US Government. It had been the era of cold war, etc. etc. people had thought completely different then, and had also interpreted things differently THEN than today.
What I am trying to get here is that one probably needs to be able to relate back to the times of Jesus and Socrates to be able to make sense of the presence or absence of documentary reports to prove their existence. Jesus moved mostly among illiterate people who passed on information orally, whereas Socrates moved among literate people who were documenting their thoughts. With regard to the latter documenting of thoughts, these must have been completely particular to the moment when the thoughts had been written down and circumstances that are completely different to our pure scientific evaluation of the facts circumstances of today. For example, Plato's thoughts could have been very idealistic about Socrates as he had loved him dearly as a protege.
I am not surprised there is no "scientific" proof for the existence of Jesus. But then there are millions of us who do believe in His existence. And that is what counts for me. In a hundred years from now someone would be able to get documentation from this time that says, people believed in Jesus. And these are the Chapters of the Bible that they studied in depth. Whether Jesus was born out of a rumour is irrelevant. Whether there is no proof that he was crucified or not, whether His story was just a story and nothing more is also irrelevant. He does exist for Christians today.
liljp617
deanhills wrote:
Whether Jesus was born out of a rumour is irrelevant. Whether there is no proof that he was crucified or not, whether His story was just a story and nothing more is also irrelevant. He does exist for Christians today.
The core principles of Christianity surely depend entirely upon Jesus -- his existence, his actions, his 'legacy,' and his promises. How could it not matter? Everything in modern Christianity is centered around nothing but Jesus as the savior. If he didn't exist as it's "reported," if things like the resurrection didn't happen, etc., how can that possibly not undercut Christianity as a faith system?
The fact that many people believe something doesn't make it any more true. That is a fallacy in the purest form.
deanhills
liljp617 wrote:
deanhills wrote:
Whether Jesus was born out of a rumour is irrelevant. Whether there is no proof that he was crucified or not, whether His story was just a story and nothing more is also irrelevant. He does exist for Christians today.
The core principles of Christianity surely depend entirely upon Jesus -- his existence, his actions, his 'legacy,' and his promises. How could it not matter? Everything in modern Christianity is centered around nothing but Jesus as the savior. If he didn't exist as it's "reported," if things like the resurrection didn't happen, etc., how can that possibly not undercut Christianity as a faith system?
The fact that many people believe something doesn't make it any more true. That is a fallacy in the purest form.
In your "rational" perception "yes". But other people may have perceptions that differ from yours in that Jesus is real and does exist (without proof). I respect your choice to have a different opinion, and in this case I respect your opinion too. As through my mind I can understand that for you there is no "rational" proof for the existence of Jesus. My "proof" comes through faith not through reason. In this situation I really believe our rational minds are in the way and we can argue in a million directions and we would never get to the "truth".
liljp617
deanhills wrote:
liljp617 wrote:
deanhills wrote:
Whether Jesus was born out of a rumour is irrelevant. Whether there is no proof that he was crucified or not, whether His story was just a story and nothing more is also irrelevant. He does exist for Christians today.
The core principles of Christianity surely depend entirely upon Jesus -- his existence, his actions, his 'legacy,' and his promises. How could it not matter? Everything in modern Christianity is centered around nothing but Jesus as the savior. If he didn't exist as it's "reported," if things like the resurrection didn't happen, etc., how can that possibly not undercut Christianity as a faith system?
The fact that many people believe something doesn't make it any more true. That is a fallacy in the purest form.
In your "rational" perception "yes". But other people may have perceptions that differ from yours in that Jesus is real and does exist (without proof). I respect your choice to have a different opinion, and in this case I respect your opinion too. As through my mind I can understand that for you there is no "rational" proof for the existence of Jesus. My "proof" comes through faith not through reason. In this situation I really believe our rational minds are in the way and we can argue in a million directions and we would never get to the "truth".
What does faith have to do with an individual physically existing on this planet or not? Either he did or did not -- what does faith have to do with that? Is it a matter of faith that you and I exist as well (realistically)?
deanhills
liljp617 wrote:
What does faith have to do with an individual physically existing on this planet or not? Either he did or did not -- what does faith have to do with that? Is it a matter of faith that you and I exist as well (realistically)?
I am almost certain any one of us can exist physically without faith. But on a spiritual level we need to have faith in something (theist or non-theist), otherwise life would probably be a bit of a drag.
liljp617
deanhills wrote:
liljp617 wrote:
What does faith have to do with an individual physically existing on this planet or not? Either he did or did not -- what does faith have to do with that? Is it a matter of faith that you and I exist as well (realistically)?
I am almost certain any one of us can exist physically without faith. But on a spiritual level we need to have faith in something (theist or non-theist), otherwise life would probably be a bit of a drag.
I'm not having much success in finding what part of this post answered my question. Could you elaborate or maybe explain it differently?
deanhills
liljp617 wrote:
deanhills wrote:
liljp617 wrote:
What does faith have to do with an individual physically existing on this planet or not? Either he did or did not -- what does faith have to do with that? Is it a matter of faith that you and I exist as well (realistically)?
I am almost certain any one of us can exist physically without faith. But on a spiritual level we need to have faith in something (theist or non-theist), otherwise life would probably be a bit of a drag.
I'm not having much success in finding what part of this post answered my question. Could you elaborate or maybe explain it differently?
You asked:
Quote:
What does faith have to do with an individual physically existing on this planet or not?
I answered that all of us are more than just physical beings. We are also spirit, and on the spiritual level we need "faith in something" in order to have a reason to live. It does not necessarily have to be faith in God (although for me as a theist that is what makes sense in my life), but it could be faith in anything, theist or non-theist. For example faith in living for the sake of living, or faith in working on scientific discoveries, or faith in working on making this a better life on earth, or faith in thinking the world has to be destroyed to earn a better life in heaven.
Indi
SonLight wrote:
Indi, I know that none of my arguments impress you, but really, does that justify the "no value -- no way" comments you have made about each of my points?
Of course it does. If your points have no value, and there is no way they can be correct, that is the answer you're going to get.
SonLight wrote:
First-hand knowledge:
Peter was surely an eyewitness. He explicitly states, "he [God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Peter 1:3)
James and Jude, relatives if not brothers of Jesus, also wrote but did not, to my knowledge, explicitly say that Jesus was resurrected.
For starters, i don't see how that quote from Peter in any way implies that he was an eyewitness. Good grief, people say stuff like that today... does that make them eyewitnesses? Hardly.
A real eyewitness statement would be "I WAS THERE when Jesus was resurrected". You see? That is an eyewitness statement. A random description of Christian theology is not.
Now, there is a statement in 2 Peter where the authore claims he was there... but most scholars don't believe that 1 Peter and 2 Peter were written by the same person.
As for James and Jude being relatives of Jesus... you would think that if they were, they would have mentioned it in their letters... again, unless their letters aren't written by who they are supposed to have been written by. James doesn't say a peep about Jesus's life. Jude's letter was almost certainly written by a Greek... which sure makes it unlikely that he was the brother of a Jewish carpenter, hm?
SonLight wrote:
Of course, not all accurate knowledge is necessarily eyewitness knowledge. Luke likely interviewed Mary, the mother of Jesus, among many others. Mark apparently wrote to preserve the testimony of Peter. The gospel of Matthew was believed to be by the apostle, according to traditions which can be documented in the second century, but his authorship can legitimately be questioned.
i think i know what you're referring to that makes Matthew's authorship questionable. ^_^;
The only reason people believe that Mark wrote Peter's story is because Mark mentions Peter more often than anyone else. That's pretty weak evidence. It could just as easily be true that an early proto-Christian cult centered around Peter wrote their own version of the mythology down favouring Peter. (And we do know that such cults existed. There were proto-Christian cults that worshipped Mary Magdelene, John the Baptist, and more. You can even see residual evidence of this in the gospels.)
There is also no reason to believe that Luke spoke to anyone who even claimed to be an eyewitness. He just claims to be collecting "stories", and most scholars believe that means that he found an early copy of Mark, and combined it with other myths, and shuffled the story around to make it more plausible.
SonLight wrote:
Paul wrote about 20 years after Jesus' death according to most scholars, even skeptical ones. He must have known about the crucifixion; if his knowledge was not first hand, he surely investigated the matter both before and after his conversion to Christianity.
No no no! Paul wrote around 20 years after the supposed date of Jesus's execution. There is a difference. There is no evidence in any of Paul's writings that he believed that Jesus actually walked the Earth in his lifetime; Paul insists he knows of Jesus only from visions. Doesn't that strike you as strange? His GOD had walked around only a decade or two before... and Paul couldn't be bothered to ask anyone what he said? Come on.
So his knowledge was definitely not first-hand. He says so himself. He also says that he didn't investigate it. As you say, these would be reasonable things to presume that Paul would do... but he didn't. Very odd.
Ah, but things just get worse from there.
You see, Paul wrote only a couple decades after Jesus's alleged death... but he was converted pretty much immediately thereafter. No problem, right? Right after dying on the cross and ascending, Jesus appeared to Paul; problem solved. Only... there's another factor in play. By Paul's own admission, he violently persected Christians before his conversion. Kawha? But... how could this be possible if Christianity didn't exist until after Jesus's death? Unless he violently persecuted Christians while Jesus was alive... but at that point Christianity still surrounded Jesus, so Paul would have surely seen Jesus in person, which he never once mentions. Curiouser and curiouser.
i have always believed that if Jesus were an actual person, then he lived several decades (at least) before tradition holds. Why? Because the true history of Christianity - not the traditional Church version, or the obvious fabrications in Acts - suggests that it began as a scattered synthesis of several Hellenist cults (like Mithras) and Judaistic tradition. There was lots of bickering between these various cults, some of which believed in John the Baptist as the saviour, and others in Mary Magdelene, and others in Judas, etc. The Jesus cult eventually won out, which is why in the gospels and by tradition, it very carefully puts these other candidates at lesser levels in the pantheon (one of the gospels has John explicitly bowing out and saying "i'm not the Christ, Jesus is"; Christian tradition turned Mary Magdelene into a ******; and Judas became the villain). A lot of what Paul wrote about in his letters dealt with these other "churches", and how they disagreed; Paul was trying to create a unified religion out of the chaos (and he did).
deanhills wrote:
History is subjective...
No, it's really not. History, the academic field, is, in fact, the objective study of events in humanity's past, and how those events interrelate. History, the actual thing, is obviously objective, unless you believe in "multiple pasts", which is a bit of a stretch to say the least.
Academic history, when done poorly, can introduce subjectivity... but the same is true for any academic field, from history to physics. And, as in any academic field, the people in the field use controls and work hard to eliminate or minimize subjectivity that creeps into their work.
deanhills wrote:
What I am trying to get here is that one probably needs to be able to relate back to the times of Jesus and Socrates to be able to make sense of the presence or absence of documentary reports to prove their existence. Jesus moved mostly among illiterate people who passed on information orally, whereas Socrates moved among literate people who were documenting their thoughts. With regard to the latter documenting of thoughts, these must have been completely particular to the moment when the thoughts had been written down and circumstances that are completely different to our pure scientific evaluation of the facts circumstances of today. For example, Plato's thoughts could have been very idealistic about Socrates as he had loved him dearly as a protege.
There are several arguments to the speciousness of this line of thinking. The most obvious one is that your facts are wrong: Jesus did not move amoung mostly illiterate people. In fact, the Pharisees were quite literate, and Jesus supposedly was so famous that his fame spread to Rome. He allegedly spoke with kings for crying out loud! Furthermore, we have very good records of other events from that time; from the census of Quirnius right through to the destruction of the temple... but no Jesus.
And yes, Plato wrote quite favourably about Socrates. Aristophanes, however, did not. And that's another nail in the Jesus myth. You see, Jesus, if he existed, was certainly a rather controversial figure. It's more than a little suspicious that the only word we have of him (if that) comes from his fans. Why didn't any of the people persecuting Jesus (or persecuting early Christians, but had seen Jesus at some point) ever write nasty things about Jesus? Why don't we have mocking letters describing Jesus as ugly (like we have for Socrates)? Or dirty (as we have for Socrates)? Or whatever.
And remember, Jesus was from a couple hundred years after Socrates, and no one ever tried to erase Jesus from history while the early Christian church did try to erase Socrates (and almost succeeded). Artifacts of Jesus were religiously preserved by Christian fanatics... artifacts of Socrates were religiously destroyed by Christian fanatics... yet we have thousands of artifacts describing the minutae of Socrates's life, and not a word about Jesus's.
It just doesn't add up.
deanhills wrote:
I am not surprised there is no "scientific" proof for the existence of Jesus. But then there are millions of us who do believe in His existence. And that is what counts for me. In a hundred years from now someone would be able to get documentation from this time that says, people believed in Jesus. And these are the Chapters of the Bible that they studied in depth. Whether Jesus was born out of a rumour is irrelevant. Whether there is no proof that he was crucified or not, whether His story was just a story and nothing more is also irrelevant. He does exist for Christians today.
You're not surprised there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus? You should be.
If you don't care that Jesus may have been as real as Robin Hood, fine. But many people do care, and they deserve an honest assessment of the possibility. Furthermore, if Jesus didn't say or do any of the things ascribed to him, that does undermine the "divinity" of those things. For example, can you get to Heaven by good works alone, or is faith alone enough, or both? These are important questions, that should be answered.
SonLight
Indi,
Thanks for the response.
When several people who wrote within 50 years of an event all tell the same basic story, there is evidence that should be considered credible. I'm not saying they should automatically be believed, but neither should they be ignored.
Ok, the guy who wrote 2nd Peter says "I was there," so that's evidence he was an eyewitness. But the author of 1st Peter chose not to write about himself, so you think he's not, even though the evidence is much stronger identifying him with the apostle Peter who several others wrote about.
Paul's conversion to Christianity likely occured about 5 years after Jesus' death. According to the book of Acts, the authorities immediately began threatening Jesus' followers, and probably began open persecution about three years after Jesus' death. It is not surprising that Paul began persecuting them about that time, since he was connected to and may have been a member of the Sanhedrin.
Your premise that the Jesus movement may have begun some years earlier than generally believed is an interesting one and worthy of careful investigation. If true, it seems that there must have been a time when Jesus' followers had the political power to eliminate their opponents' version of events, and at least Luke would seem to be writing deliberate fiction when he gave the date of events.
Assuming Jesus really lived around BC 4 to AD 30, I find the claim He was crucified more probable than not according to the evidence. On the other hand I do not find evidence strong enough to support such an unlikely claim as His resurrection. Of course I strongly believe in His resurrection, but that requires faith. Others claimed that Jesus resurrected, and the evidence may support the idea that many early writers, perhaps even eyewitnesses, believed in His resurrection.
I believe I may have left the impression I thought the historical evidence supported the fact of Jesus' resurrection, and I want to correct that. I believe the reality of His resurrection is a matter for faith only. It is sometimes hard to separate evidence from faith when discussing strongly held beliefs. I do appreciate the chance to look at the situation from a different point of view.
catscratches
SonLight wrote:
When several people who wrote within 50 years of an event [...]
You're talking about the bible here?
And I disagree, evidence and faith are quite easily distinguishable and two completely seperate things.
Afaceinthematrix
SonLight wrote:
Assuming Jesus really lived around BC 4 to AD 30, I find the claim He was crucified more probable than not according to the evidence.
Really??? There's evidence? According to my research, the evidence is actually against a crucifixion. There's so many things wrong with the biblical account... Starting from the fact that crucifixion wasn't reserved for religious rebels and ending with the kind of man that Pilate was and what he really would have done about Jesus...
And then there's also the fact that very little evidence exists that Jesus even exists... All we have are the Gospels and I think that's what has been being discussed here... I don't see them as credible evidence for the existence of Jesus.
Not only do we have a lack of evidence, we also have other evidence against his existence. One interesting piece of evidence against his event is that the Bible mentions the Christmas star in the sky when Jesus was born... A comet, supernova, or conjunction of planets are the only three things that could have caused that... Yet how come no astronomer alive recorded any of those happening? It seems that if there was a star in Bethlehem (or Nazareth - wherever the Hell Jesus was born) then surely some astronomer would have recorded it.
I also just did a quick little google search about evidence against the existence of Jesus and came up with a decent page where you can read more... I just typed up some of my objections...
If you don't care that Jesus may have been as real as Robin Hood, fine. But many people do care, and they deserve an honest assessment of the possibility. Furthermore, if Jesus didn't say or do any of the things ascribed to him, that does undermine the "divinity" of those things. For example, can you get to Heaven by good works alone, or is faith alone enough, or both? These are important questions, that should be answered.
Catscratches has put it very simple for me as well. I believe in this:
catscratches wrote:
.... evidence and faith are quite easily distinguishable and two completely seperate things.
Evidence and faith are two separate things. "Lack of evidence" in something I have faith in cannot do anything to my faith. For me those who argue on the side of "facts" and those who argue on the side of "faith" are sometimes arguing on two different planets. It is not for me a question of "not caring about facts", I just sometimes see the debate about "facts" not going anywhere, when deep in my heart, I just have this "knowing". With regard to faith and good works I don't have any answer for that other than we seem to be arguing in "human" terms all the time, whereas possibly all of which is divine is much larger than us so much so that we can't really grasp it with our minds.
Indi
SonLight wrote:
When several people who wrote within 50 years of an event all tell the same basic story, there is evidence that should be considered credible.
Is that so? So... hypothetically speaking, if Erik and Lyle Menendez tell the same basic story about the murder of their parents, there is evidence that should be considered credible?
See, this is the thing that bothers me most about all the arguments that claim the gospels as evidence that Jesus existed: the standards of evidence they use for the gospels are standards they would not use anywhere else. Seriously, if you found your car egged, and there were a group of four suspicious kids, and they all had "alibis" that had "the same basic story" but the details all varied... you would definitely suspect those kids of lying. Any rational person would.
Hypothetically, suppose there were a rumour going around that something spectacular had occurred 20 years ago - a defining moment in history - but no official record of the event exists. Then, within a few years, four people step forward claiming they had been there, and wrote stories of what they saw. But while all four stories contain "the same basic story", they all contradict on details, and none confirm the others were there. No one else confirms the stories of the four. What person, in their right mind, would look at that evidence and say: "well, obviously they were all there."
Just consider the facts that we do know about human nature. Woodstock was a watershed event in American history. Millions of people claim they were at Woodstock, but only a couple hundred thousand actually were. Why? Because they wish they were there. Now, suppose that four people wrote books about their experiences at Woodstock; the four books tell the same basic story, but contradict each other and events as history has recorded them, and there is no way to confirm any of the stories. Would you seriously, with a straight face, try to tell anyone that it's likely that the four stories are true?
SonLight wrote:
Ok, the guy who wrote 2nd Peter says "I was there," so that's evidence he was an eyewitness.
Yeah, sure. And i was at Woodstock.
Let me see if i understand your claim. You recognize that the guy who wrote 2 Peter... wasn't Peter. Even though the author claims so in the letter. OK. So, you know that the author lies about who he is. But... despite that... you think that the fact that he claims to have been an eyewitness is evidence?
*facepalm* ^_^;
i am Jimi Hendrix, and i was at Woodstock. What's that? Oh, you know i'm not Jimi? Oh. OK.
Well at least you still believe i was at Woodstock.
SonLight wrote:
Paul's conversion to Christianity likely occured about 5 years after Jesus' death. According to the book of Acts, the authorities immediately began threatening Jesus' followers, and probably began open persecution about three years after Jesus' death. It is not surprising that Paul began persecuting them about that time, since he was connected to and may have been a member of the Sanhedrin.
Paul's conversion "likely occurred" five years after? By what definition of "likely"? The "this is the only way we can interpret the evidence while pre-assuming it is true" definition of "likely"?
Now, as for Acts... we already know Acts is fiction - especially with regards to Paul. It contradicts Paul!!!
But even assuming that all of that is true, the original point remains. If Paul was tormenting Christians that soon after Jesus died, then Paul must have been tormenting people that actually met Jesus. Yet Paul asserts that he never got any information about Jesus from anyone (just his visions). Something is stinky there. If Paul really had been tormenting first-hand witnesses of Jesus, then logically he would have tried to get information about Jesus to use to better identify and torment other Christians (for example, if Jesus was ugly, he would have found that out easily enough, and then tormented other Christians by mocking Jesus for being ugly).
By Paul's own words, the implication is that he could not have been tormenting first-hand witnesses. (He also couldn't have chatted with Peter - or Peter wasn't a first-hand witness himself.) That would imply that he couldn't have been converted that soon after Jesus's death.
In fact, Paul seems blissfully ignorant of anything about Jesus's time on Earth... even when mentioning it would strengthen his arguments. He spends time trying to justify Christian principles by twisting prophetic interpretations of the Tanakh... when all he would have to say is, "which Jesus himself said at the Sermon on the Mount" (for example). Even if he didn't get the information first-hand, surely he would have heard second, third or fourth hand what Jesus said or did. Apparently not. Instead, what we have is a curious fact: the first writings of Christianity are by a man who appears to have had no idea that Jesus ever walked on Earth, followed decades later by other people writing stories of Jesus's life.
You can't make these facts mesh so long as you cling to the assumption that the gospels are an actual historical record of any kind. The only way you can make sense of them is to write the gospels off as being almost - if not entirely - fictitious; fan-fiction written decades after the legend was created (by Paul, and others) that some people took as literal.
SonLight wrote:
Your premise that the Jesus movement may have begun some years earlier than generally believed is an interesting one and worthy of careful investigation. If true, it seems that there must have been a time when Jesus' followers had the political power to eliminate their opponents' version of events, and at least Luke would seem to be writing deliberate fiction when he gave the date of events.
i don't follow your logic. Why must there have to have been a silencing of "opponents' versions of events"? Why even presume there were opponents' versions? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to say that the events happened - in a far less gradiose and flattering light as how they are described in the gospels - but no one cared? A few scattered cults maintained the mythology - and each cult twisted it slightly (which resulted in distortions like the John the Baptist and Mary Magdelene cults) - and then Paul, respected as a Roman and a Jew, came along and made the whole thing popular... followed shortly after by dozens of representatives from the various cults (Peter, Luke, etc.), although they eventually unified (albeit not smoothly).
That theory matches what we know historically, although i don't know if it's accurate.
Incidentally, Luke's dating of the events is certainly false. That was proven in another thread here.
SonLight wrote:
Assuming Jesus really lived around BC 4 to AD 30, I find the claim He was crucified more probable than not according to the evidence. On the other hand I do not find evidence strong enough to support such an unlikely claim as His resurrection. Of course I strongly believe in His resurrection, but that requires faith. Others claimed that Jesus resurrected, and the evidence may support the idea that many early writers, perhaps even eyewitnesses, believed in His resurrection.
I believe I may have left the impression I thought the historical evidence supported the fact of Jesus' resurrection, and I want to correct that. I believe the reality of His resurrection is a matter for faith only. It is sometimes hard to separate evidence from faith when discussing strongly held beliefs. I do appreciate the chance to look at the situation from a different point of view.
i dismiss the mystical claims out of hand, including the resurrection. Those aren't even worth my commenting on. There is no reasonable chance that they happened.
Maybe eventually that stuff can be objectively studied, but there's no point in bothering to try until we first determine whether Jesus was actually based on any real person at all.
Anyone who has studied mythology even as a lark knows how quickly and easily myths can pop into being. You've surely heard of the babysitter who gets obscene calls from the caller who the phone company insists is calling from inside the house. Or how about the story of how Einstein outsmarted a professor who was trying to prove that God doesn't exist? All fake. Often these stories get real people, places and times inserted into them to make them more credible (like Einstein). Still fake. Many times you hear these kinds of stories from people who insist they happened to people they know, or in their town, or something like that. Yup, still fake.
But if you want a truly graphic example, consider John Frum. In the space of ten years or so - from the time of the first modern ships arriving at Vanuatu during WW2 to the beginning of the cargo cults - John Frum came into being. That's it. Just ten short years, or less. That's all it took for this John Frum to become the messiah to the villagers of Tanna. John Frum may have been based on an actual person, or it may not have... no one could tell, even 30 short years after! Are you following the time scales here? Within ten years, "John Frum" became a messiah to these people, and just twenty years after that people tried to find out if he was real and were unable to. That is how quickly legends can be born. To this day, the people of Tanna await the return of John Frum, their messiah. If we were to use the same kind of reasoning you were applying to the gospels... then John Frum was real, and promised to help the natives of Tanna defeat the American who had their rightful cargo. Mmhm.
How about an example closer to home? Ever heard of the Philedelphia Experiment? Complete fantasy. But again, it was started around ten years after the facts it allegedly described (although it didn't become popular until 30 or so years later), it used real names, places and dates... and it was all lies. Yet people swear today that it's truth... and some people have even claimed they were there!!! Sound familiar? If we were to use the same kind of reasoning you were applying to the gospels... then the Philadelphia Experiment probably happened. Yeah, right.
To make matters worse, we know that the Jesus story clearly plagiarizes other mythological stories. The massacre of the innocents is from Egyptian mythology, the virgin birth is from Mithras, many of the teachings of Jesus are from Plato or Gautama Buddha... doesn't it make much more sense to presume that early Jesus cults took these stories and used them for their saviour? Rather than trying to explain why they don't agree with historical evidence?
deanhills wrote:
Evidence and faith are two separate things. "Lack of evidence" in something I have faith in cannot do anything to my faith. For me those who argue on the side of "facts" and those who argue on the side of "faith" are sometimes arguing on two different planets. It is not for me a question of "not caring about facts", I just sometimes see the debate about "facts" not going anywhere, when deep in my heart, I just have this "knowing".
All that is fine and good... but ultimately pointless.
Because if you have no interest in the facts because you have all the answers you need to get from your faith, then you have nothing of any interest to say to anyone here. You believe? Fine; good for you. That information does nothing for me, or anyone else.
You don't think we're accomplishing anything with discussion because your mind is made up? Well, OK, i don't know why you bothered to tell us, but fine. Our minds aren't made up; we are busy seeking truth by investigation. If you're not interested, then fine: you have nothing to add here (your opinion is useless to our search for truth), and you have nothing to gain here (your mind is made up). Why did you even bother to post a comment?
deanhills wrote:
... possibly all of which is divine is much larger than us so much so that we can't really grasp it with our minds.
There is nothing divine about physical evidence of a historical person.
Whether or not that person was divine is not relevant to the fact that if he or she existed on Earth, especially in human form, there should be some evidence.
naushad
Many words in arabic have multiple meanings when translated. They should then be translated in its proper context. The word "yawm" could mean “day” or “period of time”. When speaking about cosmology and God, it is more appropriate to use the meaning "period of time". Therefore substituting "day" for "period of time" clears up the supposed contradiction.
Bikerman
naushad wrote:
Many words in arabic have multiple meanings when translated. They should then be translated in its proper context. The word "yawm" could mean “day” or “period of time”. When speaking about cosmology and God, it is more appropriate to use the meaning "period of time". Therefore substituting "day" for "period of time" clears up the supposed contradiction.
No, it doesn't.
Please provide your source for the assertion that Yawm means 'period of time' when used in context of God/cosmology.
The word appears many times in the OT and everytime it appears with a number, it means literal day.
There were several other words available, if the author had wished to say 'eon', or 'age', or similar.
Dennise
Considering the OP's original question about religious contradictions, my answer is simple .... yes I know, many will say it is over simplified.
It's because all the religious claims are the written words, interpreted words and reinterpreted words of fallible and too powerful men. So far there has been no proven single unambiguous divine source. At best man's words suffer from the fallibility of man's mind and his memory. At worse, man's interpretations, or reinterpretations of some sacred tome are intended to further his own agenda. In between are ambiguity and other inherent weaknesses of language itself. As an example, just consider the many varied interpretations on the American constitution and it's amendments as a testimony to the frailties and limitations of human language.
There have been too many religious 'claims' proven false. The sun centric claim of the Catholic Church, debunked in the 16th century, being an instructive example. Many - perhaps most - religious axioms are wise and helpful to humanity. In it's time the directive against eating pigs was wise from a health perspective then. But those were the words of man, not some all-knowing single-source divine entity.
Bikerman
Indeed.
I am currently being 'challenged' to debate the Quran by a Muslim on youtube. (He obviously didn't like my videos .
His challenge was to prove that the Quran is unscientific - it is his position that the Quran predicted many scientific discoveries.* I was reluctant to do this, because it takes some effort to debate properly (fact checking alone can be very time consuming - especially when you have to check the other person's facts as well as your own). I knew where it would go, in advance.
However, he insisted, so I fired two scenarios at him - one involving Iblis (satan) and the other being simply the creation of Eve from Adam's rib. Completely impossible, couldn't happen etc etc.
The response? Exactly what I predicted.
'Well, some scholars think that this is not to be taken literally, and in fact refers to a spiritual.....blah blah blah.'
There, in a nutshell, is the main reason why I hold theology in contempt. The purpose of theology is to establish that the very unlikely and actually impossible are, in fact, not only possible but fact. This is generally done by reinterpreting - creating metaphorical universes where a particular reference fits just so and establishes the opposite of what the words actually said.
It is like some post-modernist teenage party with everyone being so ironic that nobody knows what the hell is meant when someone says they like Kylie Minogue. Do they mean that they really hate her? Or is it the double irony...they want us to think they hate her because they really like her....until everyone at the party disappears up their own backside, murmuring sentences that even they don't know whether to believe or not anymore.
It is unbelievable 'arse gravy' (to borrow one of S Fry's more pleasing phrases) and the fact that theologians are treated as academic scholars, instead a much more appropriate analogue - a second-hand car salesman for example - never ceases to amaze and annoy.
* This seems to be a common theme currently amongst Muslims. They are all shouting about how scientific the Quran is. The reason is, I think, pretty clear. The benefits of science are now beyond dispute (at least if you have an IQ greater than shoe-size). Islam is a religion in trouble. It is fundamentally incompatible with democratic western values, and there isn't a single example of an islamic state which can be held up as anything other than a warning. So about 20-30 years ago a lot of Muslims went to a lot of trouble to get partial quotes from leading scientists. These were then cobbled-together into videos to give the impression that a lot of leading scientists were 'amazed' at the accuracy of quranic predictions.
They go like this:
More arse-gravy of course.
One of the scientists featured explains the M.O.
menino
redhakaw wrote:
my favorite contradiction in the bible is about the color of the cloth Jesus wore when he was crucified.
one account tells us that its purple, another one is crimson.
Maybe one of the writers was color blind.
lrj945
Woodstock was a watershed event in American history. Millions of people claim they were at Woodstock, but only a couple hundred thousand actually were. Why? Because they wish they were there. Now, suppose that four people wrote books about their experiences at Woodstock; the four books tell the same basic story, but contradict each other and events as history has recorded them. By what definition of "likely"? The "this is the only way we can interpret the evidence while pre-assuming it is true" definition of "likely"?
If Paul was tormenting Christians that soon after Jesus died, then Paul must have been tormenting people that actually met Jesus. Yet Paul asserts that he never got any information about Jesus from anyone (just his visions). Something is stinky there. If Paul really had been tormenting first-hand witnesses of Jesus, then logically he would have tried to get information about Jesus to use to better identify and torment other Christians
Dennise
Because both were written by man; and man - together with his language - are both fallible.
deanhills
Dennise wrote:
Because both were written by man; and man - together with his language - are both fallible.
Well said. I completely agree with this one. I'm sure we won't be able to even relate to the guys who did the first version of either the Bible or the Koran. Most of the text must have been written from hear say stories given that the ability to write was not widely available either.
Bikerman
Which begs the question of the utility/applicability of either text. If we are so different to the authors that we would not be able to relate to them, then why would the same not be true of the texts they wrote? These texts, after all, set out to define 'righteous' behaviour - define ethical/moral values etc. If it is true that we now find many of the behaviours and moral values of 1st Century Palestine to be not only outdated but actually repugnant (and we surely do) then why do people still 'believe' that those same texts contain some transcendent truth?
The message of the Old Testament is clear - God is a tyrannical figure, to be worshipped and feared. This is the Jewish God Yaweh. Then we have the Gospels/NT which talk about the life of a 1st Century Jewish radical.
Just exactly what is the overall message of the two taken together? Mixed, to put it mildly.
We have rejected most of the moral message of the Old Testament and vastly improved on the best bit of the New Testament - the general 'love thy neighbour' version of the universal ethic, whilst thankfully rejecting (or at least ignoring) the morally repugnant idea that a higher power can forgive any action, even those which injure others*. In fact most actions which many people would now consider 'christian' have little to do with the bible.
* Fortunately most societies consider that it is the perrogative and right of the victim to forgive the offender, if they should so choose, not some faith-based non-physical entity.
