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

[Lothian]

So one Catholic academic voices the "opinion" that Luke "guessed" on a fact --

Can't believe you are criticizing the opinion of a single academic's opinion on Luke. What is the name of that bloke from the 19th century you quote ad nauseum ? Sir Ramsay Mitchell something Not to worry I am sure you will bring him up again soon.

by the way this opinion that Luke guessed was based on a writing of Josephus whom many in here don't believe was right about Moses living in Egypt -- and thus you are certain that Luke (who has been called a great historian regarding non-supernatural events) lied about more than one event???

There we go again. One academic apologist voices the "opinion" that Luke was a great historian regarding non-supernatural events and you churn it out again and again and again and again.

 

[zooterkin]

So one Catholic academic voices the "opinion" that Luke "guessed" on a fact -- by the way this opinion that Luke guessed was based on a writing of Josephus whom many in here don't believe was right about Moses living in Egypt -- and thus you are certain that Luke (who has been called a great historian regarding non-supernatural events) lied about more than one event???

Oh, but he didn't just say that Luke guessed, did he DOC?

From here.

‘‘Luke made a mistake’’ in inventing the census that took Jesus [of Nazareth] to Bethlehem, according to Fr Murphy O’Connor. ‘‘The census was nonsense. The census we’re told was for the Roman Empire. This wasn’t part of the Roman Empire, this was an independent Jewish kingdom. But Luke had to try and find a motive why a heavily pregnant woman would travel the length of the country.

‘‘He made a guess and he got it wrong . . . I think Bethlehem was an embarrassment to the early Christians. Because there was a messianic prophecy centred on Bethlehem, the prophecy of Micah, which promised a warrior king, and Jesus was anything but. He didn’t fulfil the messianic prophecy of Bethlehem."

(and in case this might seem familiar, we've been over this a couple of times before, at least, such as here.)

 

[Lothian]

Oh, but he didn't just say that Luke guessed, did he DOC?

From here.


(and in case this might seem familiar, we've been over this a couple of times before, at least, such as here.)

Interestingly on the subject of the Census I dug up some work by an obscure Historian called Willam Mitchell Ramsay. I don’t know if anyone has heard of him but the description in his biography outlines all you need to know.

The twentieth-century Ramsay suffered in his scholarly reputation because he allowed himself to be persuaded by Sir William Robertson Nicoll to don the mantle of a popular apologist. It is no disgrace for a scholar to obtain a reputation as a defender of the faith, but when this reputation is gained by covering reams of paper with apologetic material, spreading the factual content out as thin as possible to make it go farther, it is apt to be gained at the expense of his reputation for pure scholarship. The twentieth-century Ramsay tended to be dismissed as unworthy of serious attention by many Neutestamentler who never made themselves acquainted with the solid achievements of the nineteenth-century Ramsay.​

He wrote a book in 1914 well into his dubious twentieth-century phase called THE BEARING OF RECENT DISCOVERY ON THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Ramsay found no evidence of a census at the time of Jesus’ birth. The following text from the book is instructive.

Quirinius never governed Syria until A.D. 5-6, nine years after the death of Herod, and the census which he then made in Palestine was transferred by Luke's simple blundering to the reign of Herod, who died in 4 B.C.

Then, when this transference had been made in defiance of all historical truth, the circumstances and manner of a Roman census were manipulated and misrepresented by Luke so as to make it appear that Joseph of Nazareth came to Bethlehem to be counted, and that Mary also came to be counted. These fictions were concocted by Luke in order to explain why and how the son of persons who lived at Nazareth came to be born in Bethlehem. Then to give dignity to this whole series of inventions, Luke, added that the census was universal for the Roman world, and that the decree ordering a universal census was issued by the Emperor.​

 

[joobz]

So one Catholic academic voices the "opinion" that Luke "guessed" on a fact --

So, you've relied on only one opinion to call Luke a great historian.

by the way this opinion that Luke guessed was based on a writing of Josephus whom many in here don't believe was right about Moses living in Egypt --

Untrue. That is just one of the points of evidence we have. We also have logic. People don't force others to travel for censuses. That doesn't makes sense...us.

and thus you are certain that Luke (who has been called a great historian regarding non-supernatural events) lied about more than one event???

Yes. The rational view points towards that conclusion.

And by the way that same academic believes Jesus' tomb is most probably directly under the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. But I would assume you don't believe the academic was right about that -- just right about Luke.

His evidence for Luke's lie is more compelling than for the Tomb.

 

[catsmate]

And one of those stories/accounts was written by a great historian (Luke) regarding non-supernatural events (at least according to Sir William M. Mitchell.)

You're not still on the "great historian" garbage are you? Just because one C19 archaeologist said it does not make it true, as has been pointed out to you previously.

Not to mention Ramsey didn't credit the supernatural events described by "Luke"'

An would you please, at the very least get his name right It hardly helps your credibility (not that you have any) when you can't even get the name one of your supposed sources right.

But when you have several independent stories/accounts saying basically the same thing regarding the major events, that is historical evidence. And the more independent stories/accounts you have basically saying the same thing the better when it comes to history especially when there are people dying and going to jail for those stories/accounts.

Wow, excellent use of "basically" to try and wallpaper over the gaping holes in that argument, if such arrant nonsense can be so dignified. Even the carefully selected and edited "gospels" don't agree with each other, let alone with historical sources.

I've said you need faith all along, just like atheists need faith to say God doesn't exist without proof.

Untrue. Atheism is the default state, without indoctrination people don't believe in xianity. And even then it tends to fail if they start thinking for themselves, hence the disapproval churches have for such activity.

But Christians don't have blind faith because there is a lot of historical evidence out there regarding Christianity as I've presented in this thread.

When will you be presenting this evidence? You've shown none so far. Just repetitive lies, misquotes, distortions and evasions.

 

[catsmate]

• Who the hell is Sir William M. Mitchell?

I assume DOC's brain is so overloaded with nonsense he's forgotten the name of one of his principal sources for carefully mined quotes to distort. It show's how much attention he's paying to what he posts.

So, you've relied on only one opinion to call Luke a great historian.

The name of one archaeologist discredited by his descent into xian apologism. Who's name DOC can't even get right.........

 

[Elizabeth I]

But you didn't answer my question, why did you say this?

"he doesn't even seem to know that "last" means "nothing else afterward.""

believe it or not I know what last means. You might not like my answer but it doesn't make sense to say he doesn't seem to know what last means.

You postulated that several phrases were ALL Jesus' last words (and, no, I'm not going to play your passive-aggressive little game and quote the post where you said that. In your immortal words, "it's out there for all the world to see.") I pointed out that the word "last" carries the implication that only ONE set of words could be the LAST words.

Since you said that a number of phrases could ALL be Jesus' LAST words, I must conclude that you don't seem to know that "'last' means 'nothing else afterward.'"

 

[amb]

So, from a quick reading of the posts here, it has been established that this Ramsay Mitchell fellow has about the same credibility as that other great historian:Luke?

 

[kmortis]

DOC, after you cited AboveTopSecret.com, and StormFront.com, why should anyone follow your links?

If the information I posted is false say why, otherwise it's a ad hom.

Um, no. If they had said "DOC is ugly, therefore wrong" THAT would be an ad hominim (Lat. "of the man") fallacy. Instead, they are calling the veracity of your sources into question, and for damned good reasons. The first (abovetopsecret) is a well-known conspirocy theory website. Not one that is noted for its scholarship or critical thinking skills. The second (stormfront) is a well-known white-power website; again not a hotbed of research integrity. Granted, it is very possible that they could have some well-researched and -written articles that could support your point, but there's no reason for any person to go to those sites because the chances are rather small. The burdeon of proof is on the claimant (that would be you, DOC, in case you forgot); part of the burdeon is to make sure that the sources are of sufficient quality that they would not be rejected out of hand. Linking to websites such as these do nothing to help your claim, in fact it hurts that much lauded credibility you so whistfully proclaim.

So get out there and find a non-biased, well-respected researcher that actually writes about your point. Then fully present their findings, without cherry picking or quote mining. And we'll look into it.

 

[catsmate]

So, from a quick reading of the posts here, it has been established that this Ramsay Mitchell fellow has about the same credibility as that other great historian:Luke?

Well that would be an exaggeration; William Mitchell Ramsay was an archaeologist and a genuine academic¹ (and did actually exist, something that's not necessarily true of Luke). However his descent to xian apologetics coloured his later work to the extent that it is considered dubious; furthermore his academic peak was pre-WW1 so a lot of his work has been superseded by more modern scholarship.

Gasgue said of Ramsay, in his review of Ramsay's work²

The twentieth-century Ramsay suffered in his scholarly reputation because he allowed himself to be persuaded by Sir William Robertson Nicoll to don the mantle of a popular apologist. That Ramsay was no “fundamentalist” is evident to any careful reader of that section of St. Paul the Traveller which deals with the first five chapters of Acts, but this section comes near the end of the book, and probably a large proportion of his devout reading public never got so far. It is no disgrace for a scholar to obtain a reputation as a defender of the faith, but when this reputation is gained by covering reams of paper with apologetic material, spreading the factual content out as thin as possible to make it go farther, it is apt to be gained at the expense of his reputation for pure scholarship. The twentieth-century Ramsay tended to be dismissed as unworthy of serious attention by many Neutestamentler who never made themselves acquainted with the solid achievements of the nineteenth-century Ramsay, which underlay his more popular work of later years.
Whatever may be thought of the superstructure, the foundation was always sound, and even in his most ill-considered work one constantly comes across flashes of insight and original contributions to knowledge which one would not willingly have missed.

This isn't particularly unusual in an academic, there is something of a tendency to crankhood in later years.

Interestingly many xian apologists³ (though not DOC I believe) claim Ramsay was an atheist whose studies into the bible converted him to xianity; this is a lie.


ETA: Bugger. I should have read on in the thread, some of what I said had already been said by Lothian.


¹ He's probably best known in the academic community for his work on the Galatians question, i,e, what part of the region known as Galatia was Paul writing to. See here for more details, if you're interested in the minutiae of biblical study.
My one sentence summary does not do justice to this vexed question and the controversy it caused in nineteenth century biblical study..........

² The quote is from pp8-9 of "Sir William M. Ramsay: Archaeologist and New Testament Scholar. A Survey of His Contribution to the Study of the New Testament" by W. Ward Gasque. published in 1966. and comprises part of the foreword written by F. F. Bruce. The text is available here. The highlighting is mine.

³ Such as Strobel, in The Case for Christ, and McDowell, in Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Geisler and Turek deliberately edit a quote of Ramsay, in I Don’t have enough Faith to be an Atheist, to suggest this.

 

[catsmate]

Interestingly I may have found the source of DOCs Ramsay obsession....

William Ramsay didn’t set out to prove the Bible’s accuracy. In fact, the young Oxford graduate and budding scholar set sail in 1879 from England for Asia Minor convinced that, based on his university studies, the New Testament—and the book of Acts in particular— was largely a hoax. After all, his professors had taught him that the Bible had been written much later than it claimed to be, so its stories had been fabricated long after the fact and weren’t to be taken seriously.
The focus of his work was ancient Roman culture. But the more he dug into it, literally and figuratively, the more he came to see that the myriad of tiny details in the book of Acts—place names, topography, officials’ titles, administrative boundaries, customs and even specific structures—fit perfectly with newly discovered historical and archaeological finds. He was gradually convinced that, to use his own words, “in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth.”
Contrary to all his earlier education, he was forced to conclude that Luke, the author of Acts, was “a historian of the first rank” and that “not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”
In an outstanding academic career Ramsay was honored with doctorates from nine universities and eventually knighted for his contributions to modern scholarship. He shocked the academic world when in one of his books he announced that, because of the incontrovertible evidence he had discovered for the truthfulness of the Bible, he had become a Christian. Several of his works on New Testament history are considered classics.When confronted with the evidence of years of travel and study, Sir William Ramsay learned what many others before him and since have been forced to acknowledge: When we objectively examine the evidence for the Bible’s accuracy and veracity, the only conclusion we can reach is that the Bible is true.

This particular morass of lies, half-truths, distortions and carefully mined quotes was published by the United Church of God. The entire mess can be found here (2.2MB pdf); the Ramsay section is only a small part.

Note the careful use of ellipses to change Ramsay's quotes to suit the apologists views and perpetuation of the atheist converted to xianity by reason myth.

 

[welshdean]

Interestingly I may have found the source of DOCs Ramsay obsession....

This particular morass of lies, half-truths, distortions and carefully mined quotes was published by the United Church of God. The entire mess can be found here (2.2MB pdf); the Ramsay section is only a small part.

Note the careful use of ellipses to change Ramsay's quotes to suit the apologists views and perpetuation of the atheist converted to xianity by reason myth.

Here's Ramsay's words 'in the original' (from here)




I comprehend Ramsay to be saying something along the lines of:
"If Luke is right, I embellish and distort for the appearance of greater truthiness. If however he's demonstrably wrong, I simply skip that fact."

Great source DOC, kudos!
That's CUE-DOSS, not COO-DOES
(CUE as in snooker, DOSS, rhymes with boss, not COO as in pigeon and DOES as in female deers)

 

[catsmate]

Here's Ramsay's words 'in the original' (from here)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_5884d91a1a971a26.jpg


I comprehend Ramsay to be saying something along the lines of:
"If Luke is right, I embellish and distort for the appearance of greater truthiness. If however he's demonstrably wrong, I simply skip that fact."

Great source DOC, kudos!
That's CUE-DOSS, not COO-DOES
(CUE as in snooker, DOSS, rhymes with boss, not COO as in pigeon and DOES as in female deers)

Yes that shows Ramsay in apologetic mode; it's a pity when a scholar starts filtering reality through their own prejudices. However the last phase of his work (roughly 1923-39) appears to be worse, even a bibliographer sympathetic to him says:

These were not Ramsay's best or his most productive years. Many of his faults are seen at their plainest in them. Sharp insights are mingled with discursive speculations. He returns obsessively and argumentatively to old themes like the South Galatian debate. He did not mellow with age: in commenting on the publications of a colleague who had offended him he writes: 'They rank as the worst epigraphic articles that the world has ever seen.'

[Hemer 1971]

 

[amb]

Here's Ramsay's words 'in the original' (from here)

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_5884d91a1a971a26.jpg[/qimg]


I comprehend Ramsay to be saying something along the lines of:
"If Luke is right, I embellish and distort for the appearance of greater truthiness. If however he's demonstrably wrong, I simply skip that fact."

Great source DOC, kudos!
That's CUE-DOSS, not COO-DOES
(CUE as in snooker, DOSS, rhymes with boss, not COO as in pigeon and DOES as in female deers)

Like I said, no credibility. No xtian apologist has any credibility, they can't have. They are dealing with fairy tales.

 

[DOC]

Oh, but he didn't just say that Luke guessed, did he DOC?

From here.


(and in case this might seem familiar, we've been over this a couple of times before, at least, such as here.)

Bottom line his opinion is based on a work of Josephus who owed his life to the Roman Emperor -- was a traitor to his own people -- and even skeptics in here don't believe Josephus was right about saying Moses lived in Egypt.

And how can he say it was an independent Jewish kingdom when the Romans helped put Herod in power after Herod went to Rome to plead for help. Do you really think the Romans did that without expecting something in return.

 

[DOC]

Oh, but he didn't just say that Luke guessed, did he DOC?

From here.


(and in case this might seem familiar, we've been over this a couple of times before, at least, such as here.)

Bottom line his opinion is based on a work of Josephus who owed his life to the Roman Emperor -- was a traitor to his own people -- and even skeptics in here don't believe Josephus was right about saying Moses lived in Egypt.

And how can he say it was an independent Jewish kingdom when the Romans helped put Herod the Great in power after Herod the Great went to Rome to plead for help. Do you really think the Romans did that without expecting something in return.

From Wiki on Herod the Great

"Herod fled to Rome to plead with the Romans to restore him to power. There he was elected "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate.[16] Josephus puts this in the year of the consulship of Calvinus and Pollio (40 BCE), but Appian places it in 39 BCE.[11] Herod went back to Israel to win his kingdom from Antigonus and at the same time he married the teenage niece of Antigonus, Mariamne (known as Mariamne I), in an attempt to secure a claim to the throne and gain some Jewish favor. However, Herod already had a wife, Doris, and a three-year-old son, Antipater, and chose therefore to banish Doris and her child.

Three years later, Herod and the Romans finally captured Jerusalem and executed Antigonus."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_the_Great

After reading the above, it seems logical if the Romans wanted a census they are going to get a census. Why shouldn't they, they put Herod the Great in power with their army.

 

[abaddon]

Bottom line his opinion is based on a work of Josephus who owed his life to the Roman Emperor -- was a traitor to his own people -- and even skeptics in here don't believe Josephus was right about saying Moses lived in Egypt.

And how can he say it was an independent Jewish kingdom when the Romans helped put Herod in power after Herod went to Rome to plead for help. Do you really think the Romans did that without expecting something in return.

Did you simply not read the article?

‘‘Luke made a mistake’’ in inventing the census that took Jesus [of Nazareth] to Bethlehem, according to Fr Murphy O’Connor. ‘‘The census was nonsense. The census we’re told was for the Roman Empire. This wasn’t part of the Roman Empire, this was an independent Jewish kingdom. But Luke had to try and find a motive why a heavily pregnant woman would travel the length of the country.

‘‘He made a guess and he got it wrong . . . I think Bethlehem was an embarrassment to the early Christians. Because there was a messianic prophecy centred on Bethlehem, the prophecy of Micah, which promised a warrior king, and Jesus was anything but. He didn’t fulfil the messianic prophecy of Bethlehem."

Luke just made stuff up that he thought would work with the audience he had.

How exactly does that sit with your claim of biblical truthiness?

 

[Lothian]

Bottom line .....Irrelevant tosh snipped

No DOC. The bottom line is there is no evidence of a census. The only place a census is mentioned at that time is the NT. This thread is about evidence. This is another example of a story in the N.T. that has no evidence.

 

[amb]

There is precious little evidence for anything historical in the N/T. I challenge anyone, let alone DOC to prove otherwise.

 

[joobz]

After reading the above, it seems logical if the Romans wanted a census they are going to get a census. Why shouldn't they, they put Herod the Great in power with their army.

there is no evidence of a census at the time.
Even if there was, it makes no sense to require everyone to travel from the town they live in to some other town for census taking.

Bottom line, Luke lied.