coemgen said:
It does when you have it set up with the OT and the NT. When you have tons of prophecies, some as detailed as to include Christ being killed with his hands and feet pierced and his side -- and this is hundreds of years before the cross was used for the death penalty. And, it’s not necessarily something to be copied just to fulfill a prophecy either. It totally validates itself. The book of Mormon doesn't even have any historical value to it. You can't compare the two.
And where, pray tell, do you think many of these prophesies came from? They're not all that original. Even C.S. Lewis, the well-read Christian lover of mythology, admitted as much:
"If God chooses to be mythopoeic [literature that involves the creation of fictional myths] — and is not the sky itself a myth — shall we refuse to be mythopathic?"
"The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens--at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder [Norse "life-death-rebirth" god compared to Jesus] or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle."
This is completely false. You need to have an understanding of the times and how things were communicated. Yes, there was no mass communication. So what. That doesn’t mean people didn’t communicate effectively and accurately. These were a people who memorized the entire Torah by the age of 14 or so. Keeping things accurate in their minds was nothing.
So you're trying to tell me that oral tradition maintained the entirety of the Bible unchanged through thousands of years? Then how do you explain away the Dead Sea Scrolls and their differences with the Masoretic OT that's been commonly used for the last millennium? They're certainly not identical.
For your information, I have a great understanding of how things were communicated back then, along with the evolution of the Bible. I hate to break it to you, but it was never as romantic as you've depicted here. The Bible was an evolution, just as Judaism evolved from a tribal Semitic religion to a complex syncretism of Semitic beliefs with Indo-Iranian and Hellenic textures.
Plus, when you have all these people who were alive during the time of Christ and/or followers of his disciples, errors wouldn’t fly. People were dying for their faith, they weren’t about to let it be misinterpreted.
Early Christianity was not orderly and did not have a centralized authority to stamp its imprimatur on authorized texts. This becomes all the more evident three centuries later when the Biblical canon was finalized and the church fathers had to sort through the wide number of books that early Christians from many widely culturally different communities revered and had to decide which ones were "divine." Even then, those who decided on the divinity were not superhuman nor divine themselves, so their theological prejudices were obviously going to determine which books were worthy of including in the Biblical canon.
So your point here, frankly, is completely baseless and romanticized.
Also, Matthew, Mark and Luke were written in the 50 to 65 A.D. range, so now we're talking 20 or 30 years. Whatever the case, it's still in the lifetime of those who were alive during Christ's time. They were written by people who walked and talked with Christ. Again, there would’ve been plenty of objection if things weren’t accurate. Plus, there was no need to write it until later because it was still in the same generation.
The dates that you have listed are the traditional dates, which are not accepted by modern scholarship. Modern scholarship believes that none of the gospels were written before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Since Mark may have been written around the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, around 70, Luke probably would not have been written before 70. These scholars have suggested dates for Luke from 75 to as late as 100, and Acts shortly thereafter, between 80 and 100. Support for a later date comes from a number of reasons. The universalization of the message of Luke is believed to reflect a theology that took time to develop. Furthermore, Acts is believed to present a significantly different picture of Paul than that which is seen in the undisputed Pauline Epistles. Differences of chronology, "style", and theology suggest that the author of Luke-Acts was not familiar with Paul's distinctive theology but instead was writing a decade or more after his death, by which point significant harmonization between different traditions within early Christianity had occurred. However, Luke makes use of many words and phrases that are used by Paul, suggesting Luke may have been familiar with Paul's theology and/or letters.
That said, the Gospels were written and copied much quicker than anyone else of note. For Plato, there was 1,200 years between the earliest manuscript and the copy of it. Plus, there were only seven copies made. Ceasar was about the same, with 1,000 years between and 10 copies made. With Aristotle, 1,400 years sparates the original and the earliest copy and 49 copies were made. Yet, all of these are considered reliable.
Then you have the New Testament, which was written between 50 and 100 A.D. The earliest copies of it are around 130 A.D. That’s less than 100 years. Plus, a staggering 5,600 copies were made. There clearly was something important going on that people wanted to preserve.
The trouble with this comparison is that when it comes to classical literature, like that of Plato and Aristotle, we're dealing with strong state entities with a strong sense of preservation. The New Testament was not written in that environment, which, in contrast, was highly grassroots-based and disorganized.
And, again, as I've noted, this becomes all the more evident when, three centuries later, the church fathers have to sort through a myriad of books that various Christian communities had adored.
As far as the mix of Jewish and Gentile influences on Matthew, do you have examples? Christ himself said he was the fulfillment of the law.
Sure. Here's an example of the Jewish Christian origins of the Gospel of Matthew:
"
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven." - Matthew 5:17-19
This is in line with Jewish Christian theology that believed that observance of the entirety of Mosaic Law was required to be a Christian.
There's a later passage that shows signs of Gentile Christian editing:
"Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.
This is the law and the prophets." - Matthew 7:1
It has been long noted (even in the footnotes of my Bible) that the bold line in Matthew 7:1 is a later addition added to the original text by an unknown "evangelist," likely meant to negate even the implication of Jewish Christian theology behind Matthew 5.
Considering the OT validates the NT, this is irrelevant. Again, Christianity doesn’t need outside faiths to draw from.
That's certainly quite the solipsism, if I had ever heard one.
"So what?" You did state that outside cults were trying to "emulate Christianity" as if Judeo-Christianity was wholly original. On the contrary, the early OT, in particular, absorbed Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian mythology and customs, while the later OT is strongly influenced by the Zoroastrian religious beliefs of the Persian Empire.
I wouldn't doubt that outside religions and cults did borrow from the Judaic pantheon. The Greek god, Adonis, was borrowed from the Hebrew "Adonai," for instance. It is, however, unreasonable to assume that Judeo-Christian beliefs are completely self-constructed and completely free of outside religious beliefs. It is not only uncharacteristic of religions from those days, but it's also illogical.
Well, again Ormus, considering there’s no historical evidence of any of the cities in the Book of Mormon, and the fact that many of the people’s names were just a mix up of letters from OT names, to make this claim against the Bible, which has been proven historically accurate with its people and places, would be pretty silly.
I'm not a fan of Mormonism, as I stated before. I'm just also not a fan of what I perceive to be double standards. Your overly critical view of Mormonism, coupled with your totally non-critical view of Christianity comes across as quite self-serving and biased.
I can accept the fact that people of other faiths are doing the best they can. I don’t discredit diamond as a person at all. I’m sure he sincerely believes his faith. That doesn’t mean he’s not mislead. At the very least, Mormonism says it’s Christianity, and any minor look at the faiths proves otherwise. And if it’s close minded to say someone’s wrong when all the evidence points to it, so be it. It’s not me that one should get upset with, rather the evidence. Also, I’m not ignoring evidence that plants seeds of doubt in my faith, I just haven’t been presented with any yet. If you go back to when all the talk about the tomb of Jesus came out, I was very open-minded to it being true. Go read my posts. However, they too proved to be discounted by historians and the documentary is seen as a complete stretch of the truth.
And who decides who's being misled or not? I'm sure Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") thinks you're the one being misled (in addition to "diamond"), and it certainly hasn't made you lose any sleep.
