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

[Garrette]

Thanks for that, Simon. I've done a bit more digging, too. I have found reference that Clement of Alexandria quoted a fair amount of the Apocrypha as well as Homer and the Greek Mythologies in addition to the New Testament. Also that he made several mistakes in his quotations.

Interesting what is down the rabbit hole.

 

[pizzadeliveryninja]

Interesting post Simon - many thanks.

 

[Agatha]

Merry belated birthday, Oh Pharaoh. May you celebrate many thousands more.

Roger_pearse, I don't know if you've gone back to the beginning of this thread, but if you have, you'll note that DOC has claimed that the death of Simon the Zealot and other 'martyrs' is evidence for the veracity of the NT. He has also contended that the varied accounts of what happened at Jesus' tomb, the empty tomb itself, purported eyewitness accounts of the resurrection and of miracles are all evidence for the NT's veracity.

Given that using a source (such as the NT) to prove the veracity of that same source is fallacious, it's not unreasonable for participants in the thread to request extra-biblical evidence to support these contentions, hence the list of questions to DOC. Questions, I might add, which have been asked and dodged many times.

If the OP brings the death of Simon the Zealot to the thread, and presents this martyrdom as evidence for his OP, it is not unreasonable for people to ask just what form this martyrdom took.

May I respectfully suggest that had you had a little more knowledge of the preceding 461 pages, you might have posted slightly differently.

 

[Xero]

Nope. Your post demonstrates the contrary.

Let me put it into baby-talk for you. If you make a crap argument, it's a crap argument.

It doesn't matter how much you NEED it to be true, itr's a crap argument.

It doesn't matter how much you parrotted from someone else, it's a crap argument.

It doesn't matter how often you say it, it's a crap argument.

It doesn't matter how much you scream and shout and troll and hurl insults, it's a crap argument.

OK?

The ONLY way to avoid criticism for making crap arguments is to make good arguments. Which is where I came in. Curious how threatening that point seems to posters here.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Yes indeed. Now perhaps you should apply this to yourself, and then you'll understand why you're making a complete ass out of yourself.

 

[Xero]

If you don't know how to think for yourself, it's probably best not to demonstrate it quite that crassly.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

And yet, you continue to do just this.

 

[ddt]

Nice! I was thinking of something simple, like citing Sir Jakob Flinders Petrie Grimm's Law which states that the ancient Egyptian voiceless dental stop ("t") generally became voiced and fricatized ("ð") in Old Norse. Or, to put it another way, "Odin" and "Aten" kind of almost sound a little bit alike.

Are you claiming that Germanic languages are a creole with Ancient Egyptian as substratum?

I'm interested in your ideas; can I subscribe to your newsletter?

@Simon39759: great post!

 

[welshdean]

Roger, you have been welcomed into this thread, advised to read [at the least] 10-20 pages to get a 'feeling' for it and repeatedly asked if you are the Roger Pearse of http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=1929). Yet you choose to wipe your feet on the welcome, refuse to read any of the preceding pages, refuse to confirm or deny if you are the Roger Pearse and worst of all, in every post you've made you've denigrated or insulted the contributions of posters that have at least taken the time and effort to have followed the thread if not from the beginning, then certainly for some time.
You cannot simply open a door at a dinner party and shout that all the guests are talking bollocks when you haven't the faintest what their conversation was about. Yet you seem to think that to do the exact same thing here is deemed to be a contribution to the thread. To make matters worse, you've kept your foot in the house party door and insulted the wives and pissed in the punch.
Please, I'm asking really nicely, before you make any more dispariging comments, please, read through at least the first 10 pages of this thread and the 10 pages prior to your first 'contribution'. Then feel free to do as you please. If you still feel that you have no need to do so, then please, go and troll elsewhere.

 

[John Jones]

You're quite right of course. Some threads in various fora continue long past the point at which anyone is listening, and anything said is just crap, intended to inflict pain or demonstrate contempt or whatever. One can't help feeling that moderators should generally close such a thread at that point.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

DOC (the OP himself) has had at least one of his threads closed for such reasons.

You can learn a lot when you actually read threads.

Cheers,

John Jones.

 

[joobz]

Roger, you have been welcomed into this thread, advised to read [at the least] 10-20 pages to get a 'feeling' for it and repeatedly asked if you are the Roger Pearse of http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=1929). Yet you choose to wipe your feet on the welcome, refuse to read any of the preceding pages, refuse to confirm or deny if you are the Roger Pearse and worst of all, in every post you've made you've denigrated or insulted the contributions of posters that have at least taken the time and effort to have followed the thread if not from the beginning, then certainly for some time.
You cannot simply open a door at a dinner party and shout that all the guests are talking bollocks when you haven't the faintest what their conversation was about. Yet you seem to think that to do the exact same thing here is deemed to be a contribution to the thread. To make matters worse, you've kept your foot in the house party door and insulted the wives and pissed in the punch.
Please, I'm asking really nicely, before you make any more dispariging comments, please, read through at least the first 10 pages of this thread and the 10 pages prior to your first 'contribution'. Then feel free to do as you please. If you still feel that you have no need to do so, then please, go and troll elsewhere.

Quoted for truth.

 

[Lucian]

Are you claiming that Germanic languages are a creole with Ancient Egyptian as substratum?

I'm interested in your ideas; can I subscribe to your newsletter?

It's JEGP, The Journal of Egyptian and Germanic Philology.

Oh damn! I may have read that wrong.

@Simon39759: great post!

Ditto.

 

[DOC]

You post critiquing the argument style in this thread would be valid IF this were the beginning of the thread or even inthe first 10 pages. However well reasoned and well argued counters to the suggested evidence were made pointing out specific logical falacies numerous times and the vast majority of them are ignored. Perhaps if the reply was particualy convincing the topic would go ignored for 3 to 6 months then resurface as if it was never countered. After several of those cycles the thread has devolved to a lot of short hand referring back to previous unresolved arguments...

So then you already knew the new information in this thread that someone who has written 60+ books devoted to religion {Norman Geisler} and another person Ralph Muncaster who has written several books devoted to religion both say writers in the second and third centuries quoted the NT so much they mentioned all the NT verses (except for 10 or 11 of them).

You don't have to believe the above if you don't want to but do you think that the above new information (assuming it is true) might be important info to know if you are trying to establish the integrity of the NT verses as being authentic to the original NT writings?

 

[Akhenaten]

So then you already knew the new information in this thread that someone who has written 60+ books devoted to religion {Norman Geisler} and another person Ralph Muncaster who has written several books devoted to religion both say writers in the second and third centuries quoted the NT so much they mentioned all the NT the verses (except for 10 or 11 of them).

You don't have to believe the above if you don't want to but do you think that the above new information (assuming it is true) might be important info to know if you are trying to establish the integrity of the NT verses as being authentic to the original NT writings?

What in the name of Dog are you talking about?

 

[DOC]

What in the name of Dog are you talking about?

New important information given in this thread.

ETA: Or can you at least admit it might be important information if it is even close to being true.

 

[Akhenaten]

New important information given in this thread.

ETA: Or can you at least admit it might be important information if it is even close to being true.

What is this "new important information"?

And don't just make some vague reference to that lying idiot Geisler. Post the actual, referenced "important new information" and we'll have a look at it.

And take my word for it, if you just repost some piece of dross that's been refuted before I'll be only too happy to let you know all about it.

 

[zooterkin]

New important information given in this thread.

ETA: Or can you at least admit it might be important information if it is even close to being true.

Did you read Simon39759's excellent post, above? If not, please do so, then come back when you have some actual evidence for the claim you relayed. Not that it would make a lot of difference if it was true, but if you were to understand what evidence means, it would be a start. Unsupported anecdotes don't count.

 

[Lucian]

So then you already knew the new information in this thread that someone who has written 60+ books devoted to religion {Norman Geisler} and another person Ralph Muncaster who has written several books devoted to religion both say writers in the second and third centuries quoted the NT so much they mentioned all the NT verses (except for 10 or 11 of them).

You don't have to believe the above if you don't want to but do you think that the above new information (assuming it is true) might be important info to know if you are trying to establish the integrity of the NT verses as being authentic to the original NT writings?

You mean the groundbreaking revelation that the church fathers were interested in the bible and quoted it extensively? Who'da thunk it? And that's ignoring for the moment the extremely dubious nature of your/Geisler's/Muncaster's overly specific estimation of how much of the NT had been quoted (just in case you missed it, you might want to take a looksy at Simon39759's post on the subject). Oh, and keep in mind, the church fathers also quoted "heretical" works as well. In some cases, all we know of certain works comes from extensive quotations.

 

[roger_pearse]

Roger, you <insults>

And all I did was point out that, whatever the subject, the type of argument being made was fallacious...

I sort of thought people would prefer to make valid arguments.

 

[Akhenaten]

And all I did was point out that, whatever the subject, the type of argument being made was fallacious...

I sort of thought people would prefer to make valid arguments.

We sort of have, but you don't seem to want to know about it.

 

[Lothian]

New important information given in this thread.

ETA: Or can you at least admit it might be important information if it is even close to being true.

Other authors quoting text does not make that text true. However it does suggest your claim that people spreading the word would be killed and people were too scared to use real names are bollocks

 

[roger_pearse]

Indeed, looking even a bit deeper into this I found where the story appear to have originated, in "The Life, Times, And Missionary Enterprises, Of The Rev. John Campbell" where it is attributed to a a scottish judge from the XVIIIth century, named David Dalrymple (who bore the title of Lord Hailes).

The problem with that is obvious, it is an unsupported anecdote. We have no way of confirming that Dalrymple's findings were correct or that, even, he did truly say that. The "Life and Time", after all, was not published until almost 50 years after the death of Lord Hailes and, from what I read, immediately arose suspicions.

The whole affair is detailled in quite a lot of detail here but, in my opinion, what we have is an unsupported annecdote (I suspect, an example of a pious lie) that has been cheerfully and uncritically discovered by some apologetist and has then been uncritically copied in the apologetist community (in, to use Rincewind bon-mot, quite an incestuous manner) without any serious regard as to its correctness.

As far as I am concerned, it is an urban legend propagated by confirmation seeking believers...

Now, I have been wrong before (once, in 1982) but I'd need to be pointed out at some actual scholarly work rather than a second-hand quote about a doubtful anecdote...

I too have heard this story, as originating with Dr Johnson's friend Lord Hailes, and I have seen the quote too. The Islamic Awareness site has clearly spent an enormous amount of time on this -- good to see all that Saudi money being used productively, if that's who fund that site.

But I suspect the basic premise is true -- that a very large proportion of the NT is preserved in the Fathers. The Ante-Nicene fathers alone in the Edinburgh translation run to 5,000 pages, and exclude the homilies of Origen. I suspect people need to look further, but it would not surprise me a bit if it was indeed so.

Not sure what this idea is produced as evidence of -- that the NT is transmitted OK? if so, it's unnecessary now the papyri are known -- but just showing that we do have a text does not show that its contents are accurate. The two issues are not connected.

All the best,

Roger Pearse