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

Status
Not open for further replies.
joobz said:
If people believe that it is "likely" that the tomb was there, fine. I have no problem accepting that. It doesn't change the fact that the resurrection story is still impossible and that the biblical accounts are fully contradictory.
Click to expand...

Some posts back you did have a problem with it and said this regarding my link to the tomb website:

It's simply links to assertions and logical fallacies.
Click to expand...
 
paximperium said:
No DOC. You don't know what a Non-sequitur is.
Click to expand...

You are thinking of one definition of non sequitur whereas there are a couple:

What he said about using the bible to prove the bible did not follow from what I said in my quote.

Here is the definition of non sequitur I used from the MW website:

2 : a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/non+sequitur

My quote was the thing that was previously said.

You should look up all the definitions of a word before you assume your definition is the only one.
 
DOC said:
Some posts back you did have a problem with it and said this regarding my link to the tomb website:
Click to expand...
I didn't remember your posts from before. After reading the arguments, I have no problem accepting the idea that people think they have found the cave.


Similarly, I have no problem accepting the idea that Luke was willing to make stories up to justify his beliefs.
 
DOC said:
You are thinking of one definition of non sequitur whereas there are a couple:

What he said about using the bible to prove the bible did not follow from what I said in my quote.

Here is the definition of non sequitur I used from the MW website:

2 : a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/non+sequitur

My quote was the thing that was previously said.

You should look up all the definitions of a word before you assume your definition is the only one.
Click to expand...


Stocks in Irony Meters have just skyrocketed owing to the widespread destruction caused by this post.
 
amb said:
Only the members of the upper class of rich Jewish people were buried in tombs. Criminals and trouble makers were usually buried in a common grave which were sometimes dug up by hungry wild life and the contents consumed. Jesus was crucified, therefore more than likely buried in such a common grave. His immediate followers found this very unpalatable so this tale of some rich man allowing him to be buried in his family tomb was made up.
Click to expand...

This could have easily been proved by the Jewish clergy if it was made up because the tomb owner was a member of the Sanhedrin. There is no record of anyone contesting that Joseph of Arimithaea was not a real person or that he let Jesus be buried in his tomb.
 
If that is so, what happened to the body? Who stole it. Or perhaps Jesus wasn't dead?
Perhaps the women went to the wrong tomb?
There are too many assumptions. No assumptions at all if as I say he was buried in a common grave with other criminals and troublsome felons.
 
DOC said:
This could have easily been proved by the Jewish clergy if it was made up because the tomb owner was a member of the Sanhedrin. There is no record of anyone contesting that Joseph of Arimithaea was not a real person or that he let Jesus be buried in his tomb.
Click to expand...
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

One must be willing to beleive ressurections are possible in order to believe the Jesus story. UNfortunately, there is no evidence for such an event. We can dismiss the divinity of Jesus on that one simple fact.
 
DOC said:
Well there is several pieces of evidence that Luke could have very easily been correct about the census (one piece according to Sir Ramsay):

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html
Click to expand...

paximperium said:
Who cares? What a cowardly dodge.
Click to expand...

This is a weird response. Your use of shock words and appeal to emotion tactics are getting old...

I was giving you info as to why O'Conner's supposed questioning of the census account of Luke has been questioned by others and reasons he could be wrong. Also I asked for a link -- not a link that talks about a video that can't be seen -- but a link that tells why O'Conner doesn't believe in Luke's census account and I didn't get one.


Why are you accepting THIS specific claim by O'Connor and rejecting his conclusions about Luke? Nobody cares...
Click to expand...
I am rejecting his supposed claims about Luke because Luke has been shown to be a world class historian (at least according to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay) and Luke should be given the benefit of any doubt as long as there is evidence (which I have shown) that shows that what Luke said about the census could very well be true.
 
Last edited:
RoboTimbo said:
I'm not sure what this is referring to.

Does this mean that you will continue to use the Bible to prove the Bible is true?

Or that you don't want to participate in the slavery thread?
Click to expand...

I'll save DOC the time here and answer you for him: Non sequitur.

You should now feel appropriately answered, and quit challenging him on things that are obviously true.
 
DOC said:
This could have easily been proved by the Jewish clergy if it was made up because the tomb owner was a member of the Sanhedrin. There is no record of anyone contesting that Joseph of Arimithaea was not a real person or that he let Jesus be buried in his tomb.
Click to expand...


No.
Once again, you do not realize the context of the time.


First of all, the Jewish clergy? They did not care about Christianity. It would be until at least 80 C.E. that Christians would be expelled from the Synagogues.
If they knew about Jesus at all, they probably considered him as a local folk hero that was killed by the Romans for his defiance against their occupation.


But really, NOBODY cared about Christians or knew much about them. At that time (until the end of the first/beginning of the 2nd century) they were considered a couple of handful of lower class nutties. They had a trouble making leader, he was dead, problem solved.
It would take decades and hundreds of miles until Christianity rise up to warrant making any sort of effort. Decades that were interrupted by a major civil war, the destruction of the temple and all the religious and sociological turmoil that came with it, and the exile and executions of thousands of Jews.

By that time, the only witnesses that cared enough to remember anything about Jesus were the Christians. And, even then, the contradictions between all the Gospels (and I am including the apocryphia) show well how hazy these memories were.

When the Christian started to be significant enough to warrant looking into them, the only people that had recollection of the events, kept note and transmitted memories, were the Christians and the Pagans, having nothing better to substitute, accepted most of these claims, unless they clashed enough with their own beliefs to arise scepticism.

Let me give you an example. Who founded Scientology? L. Ron Hubbard. What are the 'sacred texts' of Scientology? The books of dianetics. Who wrote them? L. Ron Hubbard.
How do I, and probably know that, because Scientologists, or people reporting Scientologists words, told us so. Did we investigate ourselves? Nope.
Now, the Scientologists also have claim about body Thetan and volcanoes and DC9 and such, and these we reject, because they clash enough with what we know of the world, but other believable facts, we do accept, they are credible enough.
And, that's us, leaving in a relatively rational and well informed society, with the actual information available somewhere and reasonably easy to find.
Imagine being in the context of the first century Eastern Mediterranean and being separated from the alleged events by several decades and a major local civil war. The siege and burning of the city, the execution of thousands of civilians and the displacement of thousands others. That'd make investigation extremely difficult and particularly not warranted in the social context of the time.
 
DOC said:
Well there is several pieces of evidence that Luke could have very easily been correct about the census (one piece according to Sir Ramsay):

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html

And I'm having trouble finding exactly what O'Connor said about the census. And please don't refer me to that article written on a business website where the author talks about what O'Connor said on video and the video is no longer available on the net according to joobz.
Click to expand...

This IS odd. It's been explained to DOC on several occasions the outdated academic he/she cites is Sir William, not Sir Ramsay. DOC's lack of courtesy to a principal source of information doesn't make his/her arguments very enticing, to say the least.
As DOC well knows, copies of Sir William's finds have been posted up and it is apparent Sir William's claims were ill founded, to say the least. Still, I daresay they earned him a chair at Cambridge.
 
DOC said:
I am rejecting his supposed claims about Luke because Luke has been shown to be a world class historian (at least according to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay) and Luke should be given the benefit of any doubt as long as there is evidence (which I have shown) that shows that what Luke said about the census could very well be true.
Click to expand...
I see.

So, you believe O'Connor when he agrees with your prejudices, but deny his arguments when he disagrees with your prejudices.

here's a full explanation for his statement of the census being complete nonsense:
Now let us turn to Luke. Mason recognizes (as do all scholars) that the census mentioned in Luke (2:1–2) took place in 6 A.D., which is far too late to be of any relevance to the birth of Jesus in the days of Herod the king (37–4 B.C.): In other words, Joseph and Mary could not have been traveling to Bethlehem for this census. Thus, the linchpin of Luke’s narrative slips out, and the story fragments into a number of individual, unrelated elements. But the fact that Luke is wrong on X (the census) does not necessarily mean that he is wrong on Y (the location of Jesus’ birth).
Click to expand...
http://www.bib-arch.org/online-exclusives/nativity-03.asp
I find it funny that your "grand" argument against this is
from that site which says
The census was due in 8-7 BC, and Augustus could easily have ordered his trusted Quirinius (fresh from subduing the Pisidian highlanders) to assist in this volatile project. Herod I had recently lost favor of the emperor and was probably dragging his feet on taking the census--a process with always enraged the difficult Jews! This would have pushed the timeframe into the 5 BC mark, which fits the general data.
Click to expand...
It is not clear that a census was actually due, as it was an independant state.
Also, arguments such as "Could have" and "was probably" are speculations, not evidence.


One final point, Matthew and Luke have different accounts for the birth.

Matthew has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem and Luke has them going there for the census.

Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
 
1. In the early 1st century AD the site was a disused quarry outside the city walls. Tombs dated to the 1st centuries BC and AD had been cut into the vertical west wall left by the quarrymen
Click to expand...
.

I think that priest is having one on the casual reader. Who can really imagine a rich family having a tomb scrabbled out of a disused quarry? Also, the dating for these tombs was based on the techniques used in their excavation, one compatible with the 1st century, but also the 2nd or 3rd.


2. The topographical elements of the church's site are compatible with the Gospel descriptions, which say that Jesus was crucified on rock that looked like a skull outside the city (John 19:17) and there was a grave nearby (John 19:41-2). Windblown earth and seeds watered by winter rains would have created the green covering on the rock that John calls a "garden."
Click to expand...
I'd like to know what John would have smoked for breakfast to confuse that 'green covering on the rock' with a garden.
On this whole vexatious affair, I suspect amb is likely to be right.
 
DOC said:
This is a weird response. Your use of shock words and appeal to emotion tactics are getting old...

I was giving you info as to why O'Conner's supposed questioning of the census account of Luke has been questioned by others and reasons he could be wrong. Also I asked for a link -- not a link that talks about a video that can't be seen -- but a link that tells why O'Conner doesn't believe in Luke's census account and I didn't get one.


I am rejecting his supposed claims about Luke because Luke has been shown to be a world class historian (at least according to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay) and Luke should be given the benefit of any doubt as long as there is evidence (which I have shown) that shows that what Luke said about the census could very well be true.
Click to expand...

If the census could be true, then so could the slaughter of the innocents. Such an event would surely be recorded outside of the N/T.
Please provide proof of this event. :rolleyes:
 
DOC said:
....I was giving you info as to why O'Conner's supposed questioning of the census account of Luke has been questioned by others and reasons he could be wrong. Also I asked for a link -- not a link that talks about a video that can't be seen -- but a link that tells why O'Conner doesn't believe in Luke's census account and I didn't get one.
Click to expand...

This has been explained several times, with links.
But no worries, I'm happy to repeat this information.
The bottom line is that Sir William Ramsay's findings, those stone fragments with Roman inscriptions, were misinterpreted. They do NOT identify Quirinius as governor of any province before 7 AD.
I'm posting the link to the actual text here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/quirinius.html#Antioch
Frankly, DOC, I've given this subject some thought- why would a Scottish academic go along with a fraud?
I can only think think of the "Lying for the Messiah" or "Saul" Syndrome.
It's a mystery.

I am rejecting his supposed claims about Luke because Luke has been shown to be a world class historian (at least according to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay) and Luke should be given the benefit of any doubt as long as there is evidence (which I have shown) that shows that what Luke said about the census could very well be true.
Click to expand...
Hey, DOC, thanks for citing the man's name correctly. It's a little point, especially in the face of the emerging picture of that fallacious identification of Quirinius, but I appreciate it.
The problem is, we've yet to find a direct quote from that Scottish academic actually saying such a thing about Luke, but rather a broken backed citation by another author which quite frankly looks dodgey to me, in additition to a direct quote from Sir William Ramsay warning against taking Luke's accuracy for details too far from the realm of science.
I think Luke's historical accuracy, if it depends on on fudged archeological findings, is questionable, though I respect your desire to defend the NT's accuracy.
Off to post the quote on the stone inscriptions.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom