the iron horse said:
Like C.S. Lewis wrote, he was either a lunatic or he was telling us the truth.
What do you think?
starsgoblue said:But in talking about OT prophecies...how do we know that the writers of the NT, who were assuredly well versed in OT literature, didn't fashion the Gospels around that?
I can find many parallel accounts in the NT that are exactly like an OT story except with Jesus inserted instead of another character....the feeding of the 5000 for example mirrors a part from Kings I.
Not arguing...just trying to get a viewpoint....
NotAnEasyThing said:
Yup, I understand your viewpoint starsgoblue. It's been a common suggestion by those who have wondered about the claims of Jesus.
a)It is an accurate record of what was originally written in the 1st Century. This is verified by the amazing volume and age of the fragments and whole versions of copies in existance today which can be compared- nothing even comes close in terms of ancient near east documents.
Yes this is true. But how does this answer my question?Christians in the first couple of hundred years of the church (or "The Way" as it was refered to) were persecuted heavily and in many instances killed for their claims about Jesus.
These first followers of Jesus had a very immediate way to verify the claims about Jesus- go find his body, or talk to those who claimed he had risen again. The authorities at the time who had placed guards at the tomb of Jesus had every reason to produce his body if these claims were bogus.
Those who had claimed to have seen him after the resurrection (more than 500) certainly believed it to be real- real enough to die for what they believed.
For me the greatest evidence for the claims of christianity in the New Testament is the impact this ragtag group of early believers had on their world. These were unschooled, ordinary people - some were fisherman others reformed prostitutes. Just average people- yet they turned the world "upside down" with their message.
The two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written more than 400 years after his death in 323 B.C., yet they are considered trustworthy documents.
Then I thought I did address it. You are basically saying how do we know that the NT writers didn't just fashion a gospel around an OT themed messiah of their own making. Arn't you?
But in talking about OT prophecies...how do we know that the writers of the NT, who were assuredly well versed in OT literature, didn't fashion the Gospels around that?
I can find many parallel accounts in the NT that are exactly like an OT story except with Jesus inserted instead of another character....the feeding of the 5000 for example mirrors a part from Kings I.
These things you mention are not what you would call central components of the Jesus story. As far as the nativity scene is concerned, I'm sure a good deal of what goes on in churches today is sentiment and owes it's origin to hallmark cards as much as anything else. For one thing, the Magi were not even present at Jesus birth. You can however find the reference in the NT to Jesus being laid in a manger soon after his birth, because there was no room at the inn (Luke 2:7) and of course the shepherds come to see him there too (Luke 2:16). Whether the correct translation for Jesus profession is Craftsman or scholar is not really important either. He may well have been described as both of those things. The family trade was certainly the former, and he no doubt spent time working with his father. He also knew the OT well too, as a good Jewish boy makes sense. But this has no bearing on the overall thrust of the gospel narratives.
the story of the whole Nativity scene that churches all reenact this time of year.....can't find that anywhere in the NT, where did that come from? And even the supposed occupation of Jesus as a carpenter. The Greek word used, "ho tekton" is trying to render of word of Semitic origin....in the old Jewish writings the Aramaic word 'naggar' could either mean a craftsman or a scholar.
Jesus proposed himself as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets as you have said yourself. I agree with you that he was very much operating within the Jewish tradition- but that has always had a mission beyond itself. The israelites were to be God's people bringing his light to the gentiles. Jesus certainly did claim a special place, that of messiah, son of man (see Dan 7:13). The Jewish leaders of his day certainly understood who Jesus was claiming to be, and they saw it as a threat.
Also, Jesus never presented himself as a religious alternative to Judiasim. And none of his followers after his Crucifixion thought of themselves as anything other than Jews who believed in Jesus' message. The word "Christian" is only used twice in the NT compared to the hundreds of other times the word "disciple" or "follower of Christ" is and even then the title Christian seems to have come from people on the outside. In the history of Jewish thought there has been some dissension and disagreement but it was tolerated and allowed... The whole distinction of Jesus' followers from Jewish relgion makes me wonder since even Jesus said He came not to abolish the Torah and The Law but rather fullfill it. He never proprosed people worship him or create a new religious movement outside the faith of Judiasm--that was only done after his supposed Ascension.
NotAnEasyThing said:Ah....but how can you pay any attention to a crazy man who thinks he's god? Or if he was not crazy and just decietful, then how can you say his teachings are good? You see you can't really have it both ways. Either you reject him or accept him as who he claimed to be.
datatyme said:
I don't think Jesus thought he was God. The New Testament was written by people who never met Jesus, many years after his death. Unless of course you believe the Apostle Paul who says Jesus left heaven for a minute to temporarily blind him so that he might believe. So it's impossible to know where some of these divinity claims about Jesus came from, although Jesus' divinity was voted on about 400 years after he died, and the church tried to destroy any texts which showed Jesus as a common, hardworking man with great ideas, although some of those texts survived.
Jesus was born out of wedlock, had problems with some of the dogmatic teachings of the Jewish faith, and spoke out against them. He also spoke out against the corrupt government of the time. They killed him for that, and that was wrong. It's ironic that 40-100 years after his death, dogmatic teachings were created in his name. Where did these authors get their wild ideas then, quite possibly from Mithraism. It was fairly popular but died out when Christianity became more popular. Vatican City is even built on top of Mithraic temples.
If you look at the son of god, Mithra (which predates Christianity by hundreds of years), there are too many similarities to be coincidental i.e. virgin birth on December 25, magi bearing gifts in a manger, miracles, celibacy, 12 disciples, resurrection on the third day, went to heaven to be with his heavenly father, bread and wine in rememberance of his body and blood, Sunday was his holy day (unlike Judaism where Saturday is the Sabbath). Mithra was called "the light of the world", "the way, the truth, and the light", "messiah", "savior", "son of man". Mithra is supposed to come back again someday and it will be the end of the world and God will resurrect all people for a final judgment day where you go to heaven or hell.
Are Christians really modern-day Mithra worshippers, and don't even know it?
datatyme said:
I don't think Jesus thought he was God. The New Testament was written by people who never met Jesus, many years after his death. Unless of course you believe the Apostle Paul who says Jesus left heaven for a minute to temporarily blind him so that he might believe. So it's impossible to know where some of these divinity claims about Jesus came from, although Jesus' divinity was voted on about 400 years after he died, and the church tried to destroy any texts which showed Jesus as a common, hardworking man with great ideas, although some of those texts survived.
Jesus was born out of wedlock, had problems with some of the dogmatic teachings of the Jewish faith, and spoke out against them. He also spoke out against the corrupt government of the time. They killed him for that, and that was wrong. It's ironic that 40-100 years after his death, dogmatic teachings were created in his name. [
Please datatyme, if you are going to make these kinds of claims, can you at least back it with some evidence.
We'll the whole of Christian spirituality stands or falls on one particular historical event. Or more specifically on one particular person - Jesus. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that our evidence for Jesus is contained for the most part within the bible. Although not just within the bible, there are many extra-biblical accounts of the life, teaching and actions of this remarkable man. But there are a number of objections people tend to make about the bible, many of them before even having read it, let alone studied it's reliability.
Firstly people assume the message has been lost in the translation. The fact is that most bibles available today are taken directly from the original languages- Hebrew, Aramaic and Ancient Greek. Our knowledge of these languages is getting more and more precise which means that translations are actually getting more acurate.
The next objection some people raise is that it's been changed. In this arguement people claim that the scribes who copied and passed on the ancient bible documents decided to change the stories to suit themselves. But again this is just hopelessly ignorant. We have in our possesion hundreds of ancient copies of the gospel of mark (for example) found in many different places all over the ancient world. If it had been deliberately embelished there would be an abundance of ways to demonstrate this- I mean it's not like the Athenian scribe could fax his chnages through to his mates in Jerusalem, Rome and Corinth and get them to make the changes too. Of course there is also the issue of motive- scribes believed they were dealing with God's word- something sacred.
Others argue it contains accidental mistakes. The fact is mistakes were made, here's an example:
"They (Jesus and his disciples) went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes." (Mark 5:1) So what? The problem is, the various ancient copies (remember we've found heaps) differ on the spelling of this region. Some have it "Gardarenes" others "Gergesenes". Obviously some scribe somewhere stuffed up. As a result scholars now have to sift through the many ancient copies and work out which is the most likely spelling. Of course this is not the only 'mistake' in the ancient copies of the Bible but the others are only about as life-changing as this one.
I'm sorry if I am going over stuff you are already aware of but the reason for this brief biblical examination is so we can get to the crux of the issue. Sure you may say, the bible is a reliable account, but it's an account of some religious wackos who were trying to pass off a bunch of crap about a guy they decided to make a messiah. Maybe the bible is just a well preserved lie.
The first thing to remember is that the gospels are based on eye-witness accounts, two of them were written by men who personally knew or interviewed eye witnesses, the other two were men who travelled and worked with Jesus for over 3 years. The second thing to remember is many of the eye witnesses were either imprisoned or executed for proclaiming what they'd seen.
What caused these people to really believe they'd seen Jesus teach, heal, die and then rise again? There were hundreds who saw Jesus after the resurrection, many had been with him for over three years. Could it have been that they were all just seeing a very extended optical illusion? If they had simply made the whole thing up, why did they bother dying for a lie? It certainly wasn't for power, prestige or wealth- they were often despised and destitute. Even those who wern't killed for their claims, still had to endure family ridicule, loss of jobs and much persecution.
The authorities had every reason to want to discredit this zealous jewish sect (as they would have viewed it)- it posed a threat to their authority because Jesus had made claims about his deity and authority and this movement of early christians was making it's presence felt. Jesus' resurrection was falsifiable in that all the critics had to do was produce the body, but they did not.
starsgoblue said:What really makes me wonder is about Paul and his literature....I mean did he ever meet Jesus while he was alive? Besides the vision I mean....and yet Pauline literature makes a huge bulk to the NT and Paul institutes much dramatic change in theology, ie. the Gentile/non Gentile issues of food and worship.....
starsgoblue said:NOtAnEasyThing...you aren't telling me anything that I already don't know. I know of the whole background of the Primevil (sp)Prolouge and OT narrative and all that is presented about Saul (Paul).....that's not the question I was asking though.
What really makes me wonder is about Paul and his literature....and yet Pauline literature makes a huge bulk to the NT and Paul institutes much dramatic change in theology, ie. the Gentile/non Gentile issues of food and worship.....
NotAnEasyThing said:
datatyme, I'm just wondering where exactly you get your data from? Because it certainly doesn't have much of a basis in widely accepted historical or archaelogical fact.
[B}The Mithra myth is a one of those often quoted pieces of misinformation gleaned from some fringe psuedo-academics. In actual fact Mirthra was a secondary created god in the persian pantheon and also later held an intermediate position in the Zoroastrian pantheon. Many of the so called "similarities" you have suggested are either recent fabrications or spin, or just plain irrelevent. For instance, christians don't claim december 25 as Jesus' birthday anyway, that was a later development as a choice to celebrate christmas- something that the bible doesn't even suggest. I won't even bother with this except to suggest that you read a bit more widely.[/B]
[B}But this is particularly erroneous
"The NT was written by people who never met Jesus" Um...all I can say is have you ever researched this? There is not a credible scholar alive who would maintain such a glaring inacuracy. Amazingly we have in existance today one of the oldest fragments of the NT ever found dated around 50 AD, just 17 years after Jesus' death. Two of the gospel writers lived and travelled with Jesus for over 3 years. Have a read of this post that I made in the atheist thread:
Please datatyme, if you are going to make these kinds of claims, can you at least back it with some evidence. [/B]
datatyme, are you just saying this for the sake of an arguement? Surely you don't really believe this crap? The Bible is one of the best tested and most used sources of ancient history we have. Time and again archaelogical discoveries have authenticated it's references to historic events.datatyme said:
The Bible also has little basis in accepted historical or archaelogical fact. For example, the Jews were never slaves to the Egyptians or the Babylonians. Just because the Bible mentions cities which were known to exist doesn't make the stories true.
datatyme said:
Mithra or Mithras goes way deeper than a Persian or Zoroastrian mythology. Mithras belief evolved over the centuries in multiple cultures, and died out with Christianity's rising popularity, coincidence? Or perhaps you believe the devil created a Jesus-like figure in mythology before Jesus' existence to throw people off?
datatyme said:
Jesus was born between 4-5 BC, and died around 28-29 AD, so if fragments of the New Testament from 50 AD were found, that would make them 21-22 years after Jesus died. The earliest fragments of a few verses from the New Testament I've seen date to about 68 AD, which would be 39-40 years after Jesus was murdered, which is what I was going off of.
It is a fact that the only author of the New Testament that is 100% certain is Paul, and he never met Jesus personally unless you count the time where Paul says Jesus left heaven for a moment to blind him so that he might have faith. No one knows for sure who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, although Luke may have been written by Paul's physician friend and travelling companion, Luke. As I'm sure you know if you've studied the early greek manuscripts half of the earliest of them leave out Jesus' divinity altogether, while others say he was a son of God not the son of God. Many leave out his virgin birth as evidenced by the geneology listed in the gospels tracing Jesus' father to Joseph not to God. Some early texts of Mark end with Jesus' tomb being empty, but with no explaination as to why it was empty. The earliest known nearly complete New Testament is from 200 AD, although it's certain that it was created before that time because some earlier known letters quoting these texts predate that time.
The question isn't whether a partial scroll with 5 verses from the New Testament was found to be from 50 AD, the question is, what do the other verses not available say. There was a lot of tampering in those days since there were literally dozens of gospels floating around, and there was much debate in the early church about whether Jesus was divine (as some texts said) or whether Jesus was a good moral teacher (as other texts said).
The fact is, Jesus said that the end of the world was going to happen before his generation passed away. That's probably why believers didn't write down these texts until a whole generation after his death. He said he was coming back in their lifetime, and they believed him. Preachers still say this today, and people still believe them.
NotAnEasyThing said:
And incidently, Jesus did not say the end of the world was going to happen before his generation passed away- that was an interpretation of what he said. (see John 21:21-23)
NotAnEasyThing said:datatyme, are you just saying this for the sake of an arguement? Surely you don't really believe this crap? The Bible is one of the best tested and most used sources of ancient history we have. Time and again archaelogical discoveries have authenticated it's references to historic events.
Archaeologists and historians rely on it heavily for their understanding of ancient history, and for good reason. As compared to your wild claims that the Jews were never slaves to the Egyptians or the Babylonians - for which you provide NO evidence.
Jesus' birth and death are placed within a range of about 7 years at each end. However even by your standard of 20 or up to 40 years gap between Jesus' death and the Gospels being written doesn't change for a moment one of the strongest arguements for the resurrection of Jesus. Anyone trying to 'doctor' the account of Jesus life would have instantly run into the huge problem of those who had known Jesus, and anyone who wanted to check the credibility of the claims just had to check with eyewitnesses to his death and resurrection. Of course his resurrection was being proclaimed within days and thousands were joining the early believers daily.
What evidence do you even have that an early manuscripts of the gospels described Jesus only as a good moral teacher? And please don't just suggest the so-called gospel of Thomas which had been well and truely discredited.
If the early church (1st century) was having a debate about if Jesus was even God, how the hell do you explain all those willing to die for that belief- if it was all so wishy-washy as you suggest. I certainly wouldn't die for a wishy-washy half-baked idea.
Frankly there is overwhelming evidence for the message of the gospels being exactly the same today to what the early church believed. Of the four Gospels, there are 19,368 citations by the church fathers from the late first century on. Even if we had no manuscripts, virtually the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from these quotations. This argues powerfully that the Gospels were in existence before the end of the first century, while some eyewitnesses (including John) were still alive.
And incidently, Jesus did not say the end of the world was going to happen before his generation passed away- that was an interpretation of what he said. (see John 21:21-23)
coemgen said:Hey starsgoblue, I just wanted to get back to you. I know you still feel unsure about the authors of the Gospels writing them in a way that allowed Christ to fulfill the prophecies, and that's a valid concern to have. If they did write them in that way, than the whole faith is a sham. Maybe the best argument is to look at some of the prophecies again. Take the two about the crucifixion itself — his hands and feet will be pierced and his side pierced. Again, these were written hundreds of years before crucifixion was invented. (I know you know that already.) The thing to remember is that there are texts outside of the Bible that confirm the crucifixion. No historian would deny it happened. And they often pierced their sides to ensure that they were dead before the sabbath. So there we have two that we know he fulfilled, and we know that based on accounts outside of the Bible. So there we have two — two important ones — that we know he fulfilled! Some of the other prophecies aren't maybe as "important," such as the one about people shaking their heads. Even if they really did shake their heads, so what? They might've shaken their heads at every crucifixion, you know? That alone doesn't prove he's the Christ. The important ones, the ones about the crucifixion, are the very reason he came to Earth anyway — he came to die for our sins. And we know for a fact that he died by crucifixion, which fulfills the prophecy. That's the most important thing for me, and I know it's something the authors of the Gospels couldn't just write in there, you know?
And datatyme, you couldn't be more wrong about the Bible having little in historical or archeological fact! Archeologists actually use it as a guide to find stuff. Archeology has never proven it wrong!