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

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amb said:
Just checked the UFO/alien thread. it's 164 pages compared to this 272.
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Did you count the pages in AAH? That would add somewhat to the total.


Lothian said:
Isn't that strange; the longest threads. The ones in humor aren't funny and this has no evidence.
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It warms the cockles of my heart to hear someone else say that. I thought it was just me.
 
Stop being so OT guys, this is about the NT! :D

ETA: Akhenaten, you cracked me up :)
 
laca said:
Stop being so OT guys, this is about the NT! :D

ETA: Akhenaten, you cracked me up :)
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Depending on how you read the whole bible for that matter, not just the N/T.
It's just one laugh after another. There is sex, murder, incest, rape and of course miracles, or the coming back to life of zombies, it's all there for a person with a little sense of humor to have a good belly laugh over. :p
 
DOC said:
OK here is evidence Matthew wrote his gospel:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=4099592#post4099592

and someone above said it was refuted by more info on the same site which didn't make much sense to me. You don't devote a website to argue for something and then try to show it has been disproved.
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That's not "evidence" that Matthew was written by that person. It refers to what it is traditionally called, hearsay, and simply claiming that it is.

You clearly have no idea of what the word "evidence" means.
 
DOC said:
Here is the conclusion of the site:

From the article "the gospel of Matthew":

The authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is something of a puzzle. It is unlikely that the canonical Matthew represents a straightforward translation of an original Aramaic or Hebrew version composed by the apostle Matthew, since the author of the Gospel of Matthew probably used the Gospel of Mark as a source. Nevertheless, it is probably safe to conclude that the apostle Matthew wrote something in Aramaic or Hebrew that has some connection to the canonical Gospel of Matthew. But what exactly that text was and its connection to the canonical Matthew is difficult to determine.

http://www.abu.nb.ca/Courses/NTIntro/Matt.htm

And it is always possible he wrote both the Aramaic and Greek versions. He was a tax collector who had to deal with a lot of different people who spoke different languages.
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How's your foot? Is that self-inflicted bullet hole any better?

ETA: X put it better than I did :D
 
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Toke said:
I found his blog, it does not work, except when it does????
Nobody is perfect.
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His "The Secret" ramble was at the end of one of his books. I'll see if I can find the title.


Her Dark Star said:
Thank you to those who provided an update, particularly Ankhenaten. Thanks for making me laugh too :)

As for the Gospel of, well anyone. Difficult to see how any of it can be of evidential quality considering that the document has been translated, edited, amended, re-translated etc for a rather long time. And with no version control. Even if the authorship wasn't in doubt and could be dated back to a time and place where someone might actually have witnessed some of these events there is little probability of the text, let alone any interpreted meaning, resembling what was originally written.

Many of the gospels contain conflicts between each other, or even in themselves. Many of these conflicts would certainly appear similar to the kind of errors you get in 'Chinese Whispers'. The slight changes in word use, tone and memory as a message is passed along eventually resulting in a change of the meaning of the message. Matthew is frequently telling the same story as Mark. But with differences. Is Matthew actually retelling the story that he heard? Matthew & Luke tell a story about John the Baptist that conflicts with what John says. Were they disagreeing with each other? Making a mistake when repeating a story? Differences between witnesses are certainly to be expected but what we know of the history of these texts means even finding the origins of the story is difficult, let alone expecting someone to believe that the text is sufficiently consistent and self verifying to be evidence of it's own truth?

Any given statement in the bible might be true. But some of it is clearly not. The articles in the NT, at best, tell us a little about human psychology, but in themselves they tell us nothing about the truth.
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Re: Highlighted portion - ah, but, you see, Doc says those inconsistencies make it more likely that the NT authors were telling the truth. If they agreed too closely, we might be justified in suspecting that the writers colluded to create a fiction, but the fact that they contradict each other just proves they're true!
 
Sadly, this really is the same as the UFO thread. Over there, Rramjet just used the same logic regarding UFO witnesses that we see here for the gospels. The fact that they disagreed with each other makes them more accurate. I have a haddock.
 
Got to love Mark Twain.......

The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes...The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession- and take the credit of the correction. During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.
Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.....There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.

- "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice," Europe and Elsewhere
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I know Thomas Jefferson did up-date the bible. A much smaller version.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Paulhoff said:
Got to love Mark Twain.......



I know Thomas Jefferson did up-date the bible. A much smaller version.

Paul

:) :) :)
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Well, not the whole bible. Just the NT, and mainly the gospels at that.

From The Font Of All Knowledge:
Using a razor, Jefferson cut and arranged selected verses from the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in chronological order, mingling excerpts from one text to those of another in order to create a single narrative. Thus he begins with Luke 2 and Luke 3, then follows with Mark 1 and Matthew 3. He provides a record of which verses he selected and of the order in which he arranged them in his “Table of the Texts from the Evangelists employed in this Narrative and of the order of their arrangement.”
The Jefferson Bible begins with an account of Jesus’s birth without references to angels, genealogy, or prophecy. Miracles, references to the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, and Jesus' resurrection are also absent from the Jefferson Bible.[5] The work ends with the words: “Now, in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus. And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” These words correspond to the ending of John 19 in the Bible.
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kmortis said:
Yup. My point was though, that he limited his source material to selected parts of the NT, not the entire bible. Just being pedantic, really. :D
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I guess there was way to much magic and crap in the OT for him too.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
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