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

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DOC said:
More wasting space attacking the messenger, it must be because of my post 11054. And that post was a response to a newbie who implied there was no evidence in this thread. I don't always assume people have read all 11,000 posts when they are new -- in fact it is probably highly unlikely.
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RedHerring.jpg
 
ouch

DOC said:
PhD. in astrophysics Dr. Hugh Ross claims there are about 2000 fulfilled prophecies in the Bible.
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Boy, oh, boy. I just did some reading on this guy. Tell me if any of this (bad Hebrew translation by "expert" on bible) sounds familiar:

A considerable part of Ross's argumentation is based on his interpretation of various phrases in the Hebrew text of the Bible. For example, on page 46 of his book Creation and Time Ross discusses the Hebrew words for day, evening and morning in order to prove that in the Biblical story about the creation of the world in six days the above three words had been used metaphorically rather than literally. The Hebrew word for "day" is "yom" (which Ross for unexplained reasons transliterates with a caret (^) over o - yôm). The Hebrew word for "evening" which is "erev," Ross, also for unknown reasons, transliterates as "ereb." In his earlier book, The Fingerprint of God, [2] Ross for unfathomable reasons used another equally odd transliteration of the Hebrew words. Ross converted the word "yom" (in Hebrew three letters, yud, vav, mem) into the four letter word "yowm" with a letter "w" mysteriously appearing out of thin air. The word "adam" (in Hebrew three letters, alef, dalet, mem) meaning "man," in Ross's creative transliteration becomes, oddly, "adham."

Of course, the mentioned odd transliterations are not very important in themselves, but they give rise to a suspicion that Ross's cognizance of the Hebrew language is not much better than his understanding of thermodynamics. This suspicion becomes even stronger when the reader encounters a statement Ross repeats more than once, asserting that the Hebrew language has only three grammatical forms corresponding to English tenses. This assertion is made, for example, in the footnote on page 165 of The Fingerprint of God and repeated elsewhere. Ross seems not to know about the seven forms of the Hebrew verbs, such as Paal, Piel, Hitpael, etc. each having variations for expressing past, present and future, serving for completed as well as for incomplete actions, in the transitive as well as in the intransitive form, in the active as well as in the passive form, etc. While the readers not familiar with Hebrew grammar and vocabulary may be impressed by Ross's use of several Hebrew words, any average Hebrew speaker would immediately recognize that Ross possesses, at best, a very rudimentary knowledge of that language.

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One example of Ross's less than convincing attempt to reconcile the story about the six days of creation with modern scientific estimates of the age of the universe is found on pages 145-146 of his book Creation and Time. He writes: "I was beginning to discern that the original language of the Old Testament (Hebrew) had fewer nouns than English." Ross's opinion, expressed on that page, is that the word "yom" in the Book of Genesis was used to mean different time intervals in different verses because the Hebrew language, unlike English, lacks words describing such different time intervals.
Any Israeli second grader would be able to tell Ross that the Hebrew language has enough words to denote any time interval, and even sometimes more than one word to express subtle differences in regard to the same time interval. Ross apparently is not familiar with such words. In particular, the word epoch has more than one synonym in Hebrew. The most common Hebrew word for epoch is tkufa. A less common synonyms for this word are sfira and idan (the later is of the Aramaic origin but was used in the biblical Hebrew as well). There also other expressions in Hebrew which can be used for epoch. Since author of the Book of Genesis had all those and many other words at his disposal, the notion of the shortage of Hebrew words for denoting various time intervals is simply ludicrous. (Note that according to Christian beliefs the real author of the Book of Genesis was God Himself. Does Ross's explanation mean that God knew fewer Hebrew words than an average Hebrew-speaking kid does?)
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DOC, I just want to re-iterate what a bad example for Christianity you really are, in case my earlier posts left you with any doubt. Any person of faith, anywhere, would just say "it's a matter of faith," and leave it at that. There is no reason to "prove" any of this. You are simply wrong. I am going to ask a priest about this soon, and will report back.
 
carlitos said:
DOC, I just want to re-iterate what a bad example for Christianity you really are, in case my earlier posts left you with any doubt. Any person of faith, anywhere, would just say "it's a matter of faith," and leave it at that. There is no reason to "prove" any of this. You are simply wrong. I am going to ask a priest about this soon, and will report back.
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I'd say he's a bad example for humanity... :(
 
carlitos said:
Boy, oh, boy. I just did some reading on this guy. Tell me if any of this (bad Hebrew translation by "expert" on bible) sounds familiar:

DOC, I just want to re-iterate what a bad example for Christianity you really are, in case my earlier posts left you with any doubt. Any person of faith, anywhere, would just say "it's a matter of faith," and leave it at that. There is no reason to "prove" any of this. You are simply wrong. I am going to ask a priest about this soon, and will report back.
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That actually was quite interesting. Hugh Ross is a quack (and a liar), but not as much as other creationists.
Of course, the one truth he has already decided is true happens to be closer from the actual facts than the one from other brands of creationism, so he does not have to lie as much...
 
One common theme is that of false etymology. (Who was the other guy that mis-attributed 'uni-verse?' ) Lots of snake oil salesmen seem to do this. I remember hearing minister Farrakhan doing both etymology and numerology at the million man march.
 
carlitos said:
One common theme is that of false etymology. (Who was the other guy that mis-attributed 'uni-verse?' ) Lots of snake oil salesmen seem to do this. I remember hearing minister Farrakhan doing both etymology and numerology at the million man march.
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False etymology, a weird combination of anti-intellectualism and appeal to authority, some conspiracy theory and false scholarliness. The false impression of scholarliness is helped if you are talking about a subject most people don't know that much about. How many people know enough Hebrew to know Ross doesn't know much about Hebrew?

I have an unhealthy interest in a creationist book called After the Flood by Bill Cooper. I wrote an article about it (still waiting for a response from the magazine where I sent it). I broke down and actually bought a copy of the book at The Creation Museum because the online version doesn't have page numbers. The girl behind the counter said it was "really good, but kind of technical." I mentally sniggered, but then realized I was being unfair to her. He's talking about obscure works written in archaic languages: Latin, medieval Welsh, Old English and Old Norse. He gives the impression that he actually understands Old English, but he soooooo doesn't. The thing is, how many people who read that book do know Old English and realize that he doesn't know what he's talking about?
 
Lucian said:
False etymology, a weird combination of anti-intellectualism and appeal to authority, some conspiracy theory and false scholarliness. The false impression of scholarliness is helped if you are talking about a subject most people don't know that much about. How many people know enough Hebrew to know Ross doesn't know much about Hebrew?

I have an unhealthy interest in a creationist book called After the Flood by Bill Cooper. I wrote an article about it (still waiting for a response from the magazine where I sent it). I broke down and actually bought a copy of the book at The Creation Museum because the online version doesn't have page numbers. The girl behind the counter said it was "really good, but kind of technical." I mentally sniggered, but then realized I was being unfair to her. He's talking about obscure works written in archaic languages: Latin, medieval Welsh, Old English and Old Norse. He gives the impression that he actually understands Old English, but he soooooo doesn't. The thing is, how many people who read that book do know Old English and realize that he doesn't know what he's talking about?
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You say you bought it at the creation museum? Were you one of the zergers?
 
Simon39759 said:
You say you bought it at the creation museum? Were you one of the zergers?
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My roommate and I went on our way back from visiting our families at Christmas. We kept referring to it as "on the way back from St. Louis to Atlanta," but in fact, it's not really "on the way" at all.
 
Which part of Kentucky is it in? I guess you'd be taking the intestate 24... so it's probably a few hundred miles out... Quite a bit of dedication...
 
Simon39759 said:
Which part of Kentucky is it in? I guess you'd be taking the intestate 24... so it's probably a few hundred miles out... Quite a bit of dedication...
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It's right outside Cincinnati, OH. I don't remember what highways we traveled on. I do remember that on the Creation Museum to Atlanta leg of the journey, we discovered that Kentucky has a grossly insufficient supply of rest stops.
 
Yep; that'd make a couple hundred miles out of your way, I'd think, so quite an effort.

Did you at least see the light?
 
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