Evidence for why we know the New Testament writers told the truth.

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DOC said:
So then I assume you agree anyone who started preaching publicly about ending the deeply ingrained system of slavery would have quickly been executed as a trouble maker.
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Jesus never condemned slavery. In fact he may have endorsed it. :p
 
I've only gotten to page 26 of this thread and I've amused myself by coming to the latest posts to see if DOC has learned any new tricks.
Also to repost a snippet of one of paximperium's post 1008 or there abouts, on p 26
paximperium said:
(snipped for space)Well, I will confess that your post have added significantly to this thread in offering up an example of a dishonest deluded Christian apologist. I've actually printed up several of your weaseling posts for theistic friends and family to read. Even to most pious among them refuse to defend you. Keep it up.
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I've done the same and had the same reaction.
Curious.
 
Simon39759 said:
Well; he arrived and preached his own version of Judaism, expecting the world to end any time soon.

He got arrested; killed; by and large, the Jews rejected his message and Hod his time-table.

At this point, where the first Christian standed, this was a failure on par with Jim Jones or David Koresh.
Hence the re-invention of Jesus into the Christ and his message of a new Judaism into a whole new Religion. A religion that was to be quite successful.
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Did he really preach an "end times" message? I thought he was a bit more revolutionary than that. Saying that you don't have to go to the Temple (and thus pay money to make the rich richer) in order to talk to God. He also seemed to want to level the playing field, for some of the same reasons, between the average Yeshua and the priest classes.

But yes, immediately following Jesus' death, he could be considered something of a failure. However, I was looking at the overall history of Christianity, which is a rather impressive "local boy goes big" story.
 
amb said:
Jesus never condemned slavery. In fact he may have endorsed it. :p
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Funny thing here is that for at least 1500 years, Jesus' view on slavery was never a problem. People accepted it as people also accepted the idea that god made kings and surfs to be kings and surfs. People weren't born "equal".

It's only a problem now that we view such ideas as immoral.
 
joobz said:
Funny thing here is that for at least 1500 years, Jesus' view on slavery was never a problem. People accepted it as people also accepted the idea that god made kings and surfs to be kings and surfs. People weren't born "equal".

It's only a problem now that we view such ideas as immoral.
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So how do you view that in terms of Jesus and his message? By which I mean that if we agree that Jesus existed, and that he had a message, can we demote him from a purely divine being down to a divinely inspired being? Or was he just a religious revolutionary who had a couple of good ideas, but missed the boat on others?
 
joobz said:
Funny thing here is that for at least 1500 years, Jesus' view on slavery was never a problem. People accepted it as people also accepted the idea that god made kings and surfs to be kings and surfs. People weren't born "equal".

It's only a problem now that we view such ideas as immoral.
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But did God provide boards for the kings to ride the surfs?
 
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RobRoy said:
Did he really preach an "end times" message? I thought he was a bit more revolutionary than that. Saying that you don't have to go to the Temple (and thus pay money to make the rich richer) in order to talk to God. He also seemed to want to level the playing field, for some of the same reasons, between the average Yeshua and the priest classes.

But yes, immediately following Jesus' death, he could be considered something of a failure. However, I was looking at the overall history of Christianity, which is a rather impressive "local boy goes big" story.
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I was focussing on the view point around the time of the first/second generation of Christians when contemporary of Jesus started to die of of old age and the new generation that had never met the guy (a few of them never having been Jewish) started to arrive.
That's when the theory of the bodily resurrection seems to have gained traction although it is somewhat difficult to know.

As for him being apocalyptic... he did, or so it is reported, mention that the end of the world would arrive within the generation. A big part of Paul's feeling about marriage and such can be viewed as a testimony to the feeling of imminence and of the sense of emergency he was feeling.
 
Simon39759 said:
I was focussing on the view point around the time of the first/second generation of Christians when contemporary of Jesus started to die of of old age and the new generation that had never met the guy (a few of them never having been Jewish) started to arrive.
That's when the theory of the bodily resurrection seems to have gained traction although it is somewhat difficult to know.
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Right. I think you'll see that I actually agreed with you in regards to that point of view. You're absolutely right that Jesus, in that regards, was an immediate failure.

As for him being apocalyptic... he did, or so it is reported, mention that the end of the world would arrive within the generation. A big part of Paul's feeling about marriage and such can be viewed as a testimony to the feeling of imminence and of the sense of emergency he was feeling.
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But was this actually a part of Jesus' initial message (as far as we can know what that message really was)? I suppose I'm pushing to hard on this specific point, as it's difficult at best to know what those planks actually were seperated from those added by his followers who had a specific agenda to forward.
 
There is evidence that John the Baptist was also a firm apocalyptic believer, and the gospels do make every effort to tie Jesus to John. At one point, it is claimed that Herod asked if Jesus is John resurrected.

Apocalypsism seemed pretty rampant in the area at the time, so I doubt any later follwers would have had to add that bit in.
 
Well of course; we get an upsurge in believers in the apocalypse at significant dates, so is it any wonder that there was the same when we switched from BC to AD?


























;)
 
Hokulele said:
There is evidence that John the Baptist was also a firm apocalyptic believer, and the gospels do make every effort to tie Jesus to John. At one point, it is claimed that Herod asked if Jesus is John resurrected.

Apocalypsism seemed pretty rampant in the area at the time, so I doubt any later follwers would have had to add that bit in.
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But again (and I acknowledge the limitations of scholarship here) this seems to me to be more on the part of the gospel writers, rather than Jesus' actual message. Not that an apocolyptic bent doesn't help garner adherents . . . just that what I've read on Jesus' actual message doesn't jive when the gospel writers have him go all apocolyptic.
 
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RobRoy said:
But again (and I acknowledge the limitations of scholarship here) this seems to me to be more on the part of the gospel writers, rather than Jesus' actual message.
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I know I wrote gospels (oopsie), but it is also the main point in many of the epistles, from Paul as well as others. You may want to give one of Bart Ehrman's books a looksee (Lost Christianities or Lost Gospels would be a good place to start). The case for an historical Jesus being an apocalytpic is pretty well supported. The case for an historical Jesus that died and was resurrected, not so much.


ETA: How do you know what was Jesus' actual message? Other than the gospels, there aren't any other records of what he may or may not have said.
 
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Hokulele said:
I know I wrote gospels (oopsie), but it is also the main point in many of the epistles, from Paul as well as others. You may want to give one of Bart Ehrman's books a looksee (Lost Christianities or Lost Gospels would be a good place to start). The case for an historical Jesus being an apocalytpic is pretty well supported.
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I haven't read Ehrman, but I appreciate the suggestion. There are a number of Biblical scholars who hold the view that a historical Jesus was a religious revolutionary rather than apocolyptic. John Crossan's The Essential Jesus and Robert Funk's The Five Gospels hold to this view.

I'll admit that I'm probably biased toward this view, not from a religious standpoint, but just because I like the idea that a major figure in world history (if he existed) was not preaching the end of the world, but rather individual change in how we view ourselves and our relationship to God. But I'll readily admit that this is my own preference for viewing Jesus, and while there is some scholarship to back it up, as you point out there is other scholarship which refutes this.

The case for an historical Jesus that died and was resurrected, not so much.
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Oh, no arguments from me here. When the first mentions are nearly a century post events, the subject is immediately open to question. When the subject includes the paranormal, then things get even more sketchy.

ETA: How do you know what was Jesus' actual message? Other than the gospels, there aren't any other records of what he may or may not have said.
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Well, that's what I was saying. Scholarship in this area is limited by its very nature. There's also the Apocryphal Gospels and the like, but they suffer from the same limitations. So we're left with the agenda toting writers, the survival of various documents, the limits of historical inquiry and so forth. Even attempts like the Jesus Seminar have problems associated with their scholarship.
 
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DOC said:
You also might want to give this book a look:

Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus" by Timothy Paul Jones.
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Hmmm . . . thought you had me on ignore . . .

At any rate, thanks for the suggestion DOC, but I'm going to pass. Any book whose title claims to know the "Truth" of a subject makes me skeptical to from the begining.
 
Simon39759 said:
Well; he arrived and preached his own version of Judaism, expecting the world to end any time soon.
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But Christ told his small group of apostles to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and then the end would come. That doesn't sound like he expected the world to end soon considering people at that time knew about Ethiopia, Egypt, the Roman Empire, Spain, Greece, India, etc. and the most advanced form of transportation was horseback or donkeys.
 
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DOC said:
But Christ told his small group of apostles to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and then the end would come. That doesn't sound like he expected the world to end soon considering people at that time knew about Ethiopia, Egypt, the Roman Empire, Spain, Greece, India, etc. and the most advanced form of transportation was horseback or donkeys.
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In this regard, it does sound like he figured it would end within a generation. <shrug>
 
DOC said:
But Christ told his small group of apostles to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and then the end would come. That doesn't sound like he expected the world to end soon considering people at that time knew about Ethiopia, Egypt, the Roman Empire, Spain, Greece, India, etc. and the most advanced form of transportation was horseback or donkeys.
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And most of these destinations were, indeed, achieved withn their lifetime, or could have easily been.
A single year would be plenty enough for one to reach the furtherest confine of the empire at quite a leisurely pace. And that's not considering how a little, likely uneducated, itinerant preacher might have underestimated the vastness of the world.


Here is a link to the book.

Even without having read it in any detail, it seems pretty vacuous to me. Essentially, the author is not arguing any of Ehrman's scholarship, rather his (logical) conclusions: 'yes, the Bible was heavily altered, but it still is inherent'.
A significant part of the argument seems devoted to demonstrate that Ehrman's opinion is not that new or original, as if is made it less legitimate, somehow.

Essentially, it seems like the work of some apologetist not liking Ehrman's conclusion and trying to attack them somehow, but lacking any valid reasons to do so...
 
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