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

[dafydd]

There was no lie. And anybody can say your post was discredited without giving an explanation.

God hates liars Doc.You are in big trouble.

 

[Rincewind]

DOC,

Is there any chance you'll be telling me/us where and when Simon the Zealot died?

you promised to give me "evidence".

 

[kmortis]

Well, it's not like DOC is strictly wrong about that tidbit. If we are to assume there was an empty tomb, then it is true a resurrection was slightly more likely than if the corpse of Jesus had been in that tomb. But of course there are still several equally or more likely explanations, including but not limited to:

-It being a different tomb

IF Joe Of Aramathea was as rich as they make him out to be, he could have many tombs. Plus, how many Josephs were there in Aramathea at the time? Maybe, in their greif, the went to the wrong one? It wasn't an angel after all, it was a pissed off undertaker.
"Oi! You dere! Get away from dat tomb. We gots a funeral comin' up today and we don' need ya sniffin' around."

-Someone taking the body away

I'd check the dance schools. A good partner is hard to find.

-People not looking very carefully around the tomb

Maybe their eyes were so tear-filled they couldn't see anything. This would play into the first idea too.

-The body never being there in the first place

Which could be because he never existed, he was never crucified, or even they got lost trying to find the right Joe of Aramathea's tomb.

-Alien body-disintegrating rays

This is the most likely, in my book. Simple, unadorned silliness.

-Grues

Pffft....couldn't be Grues, it was daytime. We all know that Grues are strictly nocternal.

-The visitors being very hungry, and massaging the truth a bit in the story

So, you're trying to convince me that the visitors were in a lifeboat?

With this evidence, the probability of all these possibilities is clearly increased. We should look into the Being Eaten By Grues of the Historical Character Jesus Christ. It will be very useful to let people to continue Learning Historical Evidence. (That could be applied in a Court Of Law. Honestly.)

 

[Akhenaten]

There was no lie. And anybody can say your post was discredited without giving an explanation.

The fact that everybody says your posts are discredited is a whole 'nother matter though, wouldn't you say?

How do you explain that you haven't been able to convince a single person that you're telling the truth in over two years and 2000 posts?

 

[Akhenaten]

You are wrong of course. I know you don't care about being factually wrong, and I strongly suspect you'll never read that post or acknowledge its existence, but, nevertheless, you are wrong and terribly ignorant of the history of your own sacred text...

Actually I am right and the evidence is your own words below. You are saying the gospels are too similar which was my point, whereas welshdean made a long post complaining how the gospels are too different. Skeptics need to say once and for all are they too different or are they too similar, you can't have it both ways.

You haven't been right since Post #1.

The answer to your dilemma is fairly simple DOC, and your dishonesty in pretending that it hasn't been explained to you is as shameful as it's obvious.

As Simon has explained - parts of some gospels are direct copies of other gospels

ie. Too similar.


And yet when it comes to testimony of what is probably the single most important alleged event in the whole Jeebus fairytale - the discovery of this empty tomb which you keep claiminmg as a trump card, we find that the gospels give four different accounts, including but not limited to:

1. the time the women visited the tomb,

2. the number and identities of the women,

3. the purpose of their visit,

4. the number and nature of the messengers – angelic or human,

5. what the messenger(s) said to the women,

6. how the women responded to who- or whatever was in the tomb.​

ie. Too different.


Are you really too poor a scholar to understand this criticism, or are you lying about not understanding it to avoid having to respond to it properly.?

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Here is the thing, have you heard about the documentary hypothesis? Basically, both Matthew and Luke contains many long stretches that are literally lifted from Mark, word for words. Let me be clear here, not just the overall story, but the exact wording.
To give you an idea, out of Mark's 673 verses, more than 380 are copied word for word by Luke. This is not a coincidence, both Luke and Matthew purposely copied Mark.

So what, I wouldn't be surprised if Luke had the gospel Mark right in front of him (along with many other sources) when he wrote his gospel, that's what historians and journalists do, they gather as many written sources as they can and then "add" to it what they learned or witnessed on their own.

Journalists? What the hell are you talking about? It was pathetic enough when you were carrying on about Luke being an historian - now he and his mates have been promoted(?) to being journalists. I understand that you're just making this rubbish up as you go, but couldn't you at least have a bit of a read of it before you click on 'submit'. My sides are splitting.

Even Luke admitted he examined many sources in the opening verses of his gospel.

Piffle.

Luke 1

¹Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, ^2just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. ³Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, ⁴so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

That you have to lie about what's written in your own bible is pretty telling, DOC.

This is no secret you discovered, Luke admits it. But I notice you neglected to point out from your source that Luke had 520 verses in his gospel that were peculiar to Luke's gospel only -- that's what makes it different and unique from Mark. Luke is giving us 520 verses that you can't find in Mark.

Jesus Haploid Christ, DOC. Can't you get anything right?

Mark 2:17 (King James Version)

¹⁷When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, "They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance".

Luke 5:31-32 (King James Version)

³¹And Jesus answering said unto them, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick."

³²"I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

Different authors, eh? Writing independent accounts?

Hands up everybody who believes that crock.

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And yet, they are differences...
In some cases, the reasons are easy to see. For example, Mark eroneously calls Herod 'King' while Matthew, in some instances (such as Matthew 14:1, correct the verse and uses Herod's correct title of 'Tetrarch'.

Much ado about nothing.

"He hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how."​

Your feeble attempt to handwave away that for which you have no answer is noted. You'd lose crediblity by doing that, if you had any.

And leave the Shakespeare quotes to the English speakers.

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In other the correction is more fundamental. Matthew and Luke are not just correcting what they think is incorrect or clumsy wording, they are correcting what they see are factual mistakes or shortcoming.
For example, the Markian tradition makes no mention of Jesus' birth. But, the church tradition Matthew comes from had such a story. Either the story had grown locally, or it became popular after Mark's writing.
At any rate, when Matthew sits down to copy Mark's gospel, the story seems to him to lack the beginning he is now familiar with, and so, he adds it...

Being an apostle, I'm sure he does have things to add, so what.

Despite ample time and opportunity you have so far failed to provide an iota of evidence for any such thing as 'apostles'. You have no right, therefore, to speak of them as though theie existance was an established fact. To do so at this stage, haviong had this lack of evidence pointed out to you countless times is lying - nothing more and nothing less.

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Similarly, the story, at some point, Mark does not seem aware of Jesus' apparition to Mary Magdalena or to the eleven apostles... So, he complete the text...
And Mark also seem unaware of many saying of Jesus (from the so-called Q hypothesis) so Matthew put these in...

So what, being an apostle Matthew probably would know whether or not what Q wrote is accurate.

On the other hand just because Matthew was an apostle, that doesn't mean he heard every word Christ ever said or saw every miracle Christ performed, or new everything about Christ's life before Christ started his public ministry. And you neglected to say in your post that there are 300 verses in Matthew that are not in any of the other gospels.

What's an apostle. DOC? Something you read about in the bible?

You wouldn't be trying to present mythical characters as though they were real again would you?

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Later again, it is Luke's turn to gather both of the previous Gospels...

Once again, so what, Luke told us he studied many accounts, and remember there are 520 verses peculiar to Luke only.

O rly? I think we've established that it just ain't so, DOC. Bummer.

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By then, the tradition has evolved even a little bit further... Or he learned it from just a little bit different version of the church.
Matthew seems a bit closer from what Luke remembers, so he mostly uses this account, but still, there are part where he too seems mistaken, so Luke corrects these too...

This is not very clear as to what exactly you are talking about.

Jeremiah 5:21 (King James Version)

²¹Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.

If I believed in things, DOC, then I'd believe that verse was somehow written for you.

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So, you see, the idea the the synoptic both copy and contradict each others is not, actually paradoxical at all...

Well I just think skeptics are making a big deal out of similarities when people like Luke are just being good historians or as in the case of Matthew possibly copying some things they know are accurate. And as I said before I think it is much ado about nothing to complain about differences like one writer calling Herod a King and one calling him a tetrarch.

More handwaving, DOC? Do you think your desperation isn't showing?

I have some really bad news for you.

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That's stupid. On two counts.
First of all, he, guess what, this sequence is not actually share by the Gospels.
The appearance of the angels and then of the risen Christ was not part of the original Markian tradition... The Gospel was modified later...

That's an opinion and other scholars have different opinions. Why are you talking like it is a fact?

No wonder this thread has been your downfall. You don't even know what evidence is, do you?

And the bottom line is that Mark does report that the tomb was empty and that is not contested.

What tomb?

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Should I make my posts a bit bigger for you, DOC? You seem to be having trouble seeing them.

 

[kmortis]

Should I make my posts a bit bigger for you, DOC? You seem to be having trouble seeing them.

Don't feel bad, he's stopped responding to mine since I stopped calling him "moron". At least you had the dubious honor of being "blocked".

 

[zooterkin]

Yes, in the case of the famous historical Christ who several times predicted he would rise from the dead. It is evidence because an empty tomb increases the likelihood he was right. An empty tomb is not proof but it is definitely evidence because it increases the probability of the resurrection being true over a situation where we had no historical information that the tomb was empty -- this is just common sense.

You seem to be suggesting that finding an empty tomb today would be some sort of evidence. Even if the resurrection happened as you believe, do you have any evidence that the tomb involved was left empty afterwards, and never re-used? Wouldn't Joseph of Arimethea have been buried in it? That being so, and there being many reasons why a tomb might be empty today, finding an empty tomb now with no other evidence would prove absolutely nothing.

 

[Akhenaten]

Don't feel bad, he's stopped responding to mine since I stopped calling him "moron". At least you had the dubious honor of being "blocked".

That Aberhaten fellow is to blame, I reckon. He's clouded DOC's mind or something.

 

[kmortis]

That Aberhaten fellow is to blame, I reckon. He's clouded DOC's mind or something.

That Aberhaten, what a character. You just couldn't make someone like him up, could you?

 

[Audible Click]

Aberhaten was an apostle.

 

[kmortis]

Aberhaten was an apostle.

I have it on Good Authority^{tm - 1} that he's actually apostate.











¹By "Good Authority" I of course mean that I made it up on the spot.

 

[Wolrab]

I heard he went a postal.

 

[bikerdruid]

Aberhaten was an apostle.

....and a great historian/journalist.

 

[Simon39759]

I was told that Aberhaten once travel back in time and saved mankind from a zombie plague.

I see no reason why somebody would make up something like that, especially considering he would be sued by the zombies for libel... So I have no choice than to believe that statement to be true...

 

[kmortis]

But, since he's an enlightened soul, he never advocated beating his slaves.














His servants, on the other hand, got the crap kicked out of them on a regular basis. Which is ok, because all that beating never hurt more than a sunburn.

 

[RoboTimbo]

It can't possibly be true unless there are embarrassing details.

 

[Akhenaten]

We've been over this before. We have no signature for Aberhaten (none, nada, zero) even though he supposedly wrote a book trashed kmortis' place, not to mention being the most powerful man on earth at one time.



ETA: Apparently Aberhaten didn't witness the Civil War either, so he couldn''t possibly have founded the Harvard Law School.

 

[Simon39759]

We've been over this before. We have no signature for Aberhaten (none, nada, zero) even though he supposedly wrote a book trashed kmortis' place, not to mention being the most powerful man on earth at one time.



ETA: Apparently Aberhaten didn't witness the Civil War either, so he couldn''t possibly have founded the Harvard Law School.

Actually, I think the lack of a signature constitute evidence that the ink rose from the dead page and walked away...

 

[Lucian]

We've been over this before. We have no signature for Aberhaten (none, nada, zero) even though he supposedly wrote a book trashed kmortis' place, not to mention being the most powerful man on earth at one time.



ETA: Apparently Aberhaten didn't witness the Civil War either, so he couldn''t possibly have founded the Harvard Law School.

Is there an Aberhatian oral tradition? 'Cuz that could be quite significant.

 

[Lothian]

Aberhaten was an apostle.