Merged Evidence for why we know the New Testament writers told the truth - (Part 2)

[Lord Emsworth]

I've had a think, but nothing seems to fit the bill, sorry

You don't believe that yourself, do you?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Or we could do less assuming that they were great biologists and students of evolution and totally into classifying skeletons and observing differences -- which is very very hard to support -- and go for the simpler explanation: that they were in the Akkadian zone of influence, and a lot of their myths are copied from or influenced by Akkadian myths.

In Eve's case, a close equivalent to her story is Ninti, also born from a rib. But her name isn't based on actually noting differences between skeletons. It's based on just a pun.

To understand the pun, I'll have to detour a bit through cuneiform writing. A heck of a lot of their words were single syllables, or two syllables tops, and there were a lot of homophones. For example this bitch:

was pronounced TI and could mean arrow (which is why it looks like that), or life, or rib.

Now you may see each of those written as two signs in dictionaries, and think "Hans lost his mind." That's because in writing they also wrote a determinative which told you which of the homophone meanings to understand. So if you saw WOOD+ARROW it meant an actual arrow, while if you saw FLESH+ARROW (UZU+TI) it meant rib. But you wouldn't actually read the determinative, so in both cases you'd read just the TI.

So they have a myth where Enki needs to be healed, so they have to create a "lady of life" to heal him. The name NIN-TI means quite literally "lady of life". But TI also means rib, so her name can also be understood as "lady of rib". Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky? Well, they did, because they actually create her out of a rib.

The Genesis story mainly reproduces that story of the "Lady Of Life", as an origin for a character which is also called the "mother of life" in Genesis.

So basically instead of just spinning wild tales about ancient biology explanations, we can just look at what Akkadian myth it mirrors. And how that one is literally based on a rib, not on a penis, and is based on a pun, not on any classifying skeletons.

 

[phelix]

Not really if those probabilities are based on guesswork. There is an awful lot of documented "evidence" for vampires but I wouldn't conduct a meta-analysis on it to say that it's 83% (or some other arbitrary figure) true because the same themes keep cropping up.

In the case of vampires though, there is the counterargument that we would expect better evidence given the nature of the claim. Asking someone to believe in a whole new species going undetected despite their present and extensive threat to humans is a fairly big request, and so even thousands of fake historical accounts aren't really enough to give it a decent probability.

I suppose it comes down to what claim is being made.

If I claim that there's a banjo-playing pink unicorn at number 72 then I'm going to require more evidence.

In the case of the New Testament we have a set of core claims that run counter to out current understanding of the universe and which can be explained by more mundane means:

• Immaculate conception - or what she just knocked up
• Performing miracles - or was stuff just exagerated and/or made up
• Son of God - or just (one of man, many people) claiming to be the Messiah
• Rising from the dead - or just a made up story

True, but then they were religious believers, so this is not all that unexpected. If a creepily devout, potentially psychopathic, religious person today said "I've seen Jesus. He comes to my living room. Sometimes I bring slugs in from the garden, kill them, and he brings them back to life. He is the master of all nature. Tonight I'm going to kill my cat and watch as he demonstrates the majesty of God. Come back to my house. It's number 72"
Then, despite the avalanche of known incorrect claims, you would likely still put some weight on 72 being correct, though you might not want to visit so much any more. If you rang the police, and they asked for the house number, you wouldn't say "I don't know". You'd either say "72" or "she said 72" indicating you think there's some evidential worth there.

Against this background of dubious claims we are then asked to consider this to be a reliable source on other (more mundane, less contentious) uncorroborated matters. The typical MO would then be to claim that this makes the dubious claims true too.

Typical exchange:

Believer : Skeptics claim everything in the Bible is false
Skeptic : No, there is some true stuff in there by accident
Believer : Aha ! so everything in the bible is true
Skeptic : I never said that

.....and repeat ad-nauseam

This is not what I am suggesting. But then who knows? This could be a great big trap Also that does happen in popular circles, but not so much in academic ones. There are very very conservative christian bible scholars, and only one is willing to claim the story of the adulterous woman to be true.*

I have no idea, maybe the stories got crossed, maybe people were making up a bunch of stuff and attributing meaning to it (look in the Conspiracy Theory sub-forum to see how people do that).

Yes there are possible ways in which Josephus could be right here. There are possible ways in which both could be right. That's why it's not something that can really be built on or used, or even decided with any confidence without any additional sources coming up. It still stands though, that if my life were on the line, I would have to favour biblical truth on that one.

Which takes me back to an earlier point. The New Testament makes some pretty remarkable claims about a variety of things and provides a narrative to the early years of the Christian church. There is no supporting evidence for the wildest claims and there is precedent for groups of people to massage or indeed invent stuff so that they appear in the best light.

In light of this, can the New Testament be reliable about the facts of Jesus's life (up to, and including the existence of such an individual) ? Is it a reliable source about the early history of Christianity (when we know that people embellish and we certainly know that the Bible has been extensively edited over time) ?

I would say that in light of the above, it should be treated as suspect at best.

Indeed. You would have to be aware of such ulterior motives when trying to make any argument at all, and always ask "would fibbing to me here be in the author's interests?"

 

[phelix]

You don't believe that yourself, do you?

Hm? I don't believe the garden of eden story, no. If you mean I don't believe that I had a think, I absolutely did. I checked online for the story of King David harvesting foreskins, and the sexual deviancy in Corinth, but both of these are bible-only, so I gave up.

 

[DOC]

Well I can't connect to the previous page for some reason but Phelix asked how do you know Luke was a traveling partner of Paul.

From Scott Grady's article "Introduction to the book of Acts"

"During the account of Paul's missionary journeys, the author occasionally changes his style from that of a third person observer to a first person participant. In Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-16; 21:1-18; and 27:1-28:16, the author speaks of "we" and "us" in relationship to Paul's travels. The language implies the author himself traveled with Paul. These "we" sections include the time when Paul was imprisoned at Rome...

... In 2 Timothy 4:11, Paul says, "Only Luke is with me," making him the most likely person to have written Luke-Acts."


http://www.christianlibrary.org/authors/Grady_Scott/Acts0.htm

Acts 16: 9-11

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.


Act 16:10 And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.


Act 16:11 ¶ Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothracia, and the next [day] to Neapolis;

 

[GrandMasterFox]

In the case of vampires though, there is the counterargument that we would expect better evidence given the nature of the claim. Asking someone to believe in a whole new species going undetected despite their present and extensive threat to humans is a fairly big request, and so even thousands of fake historical accounts aren't really enough to give it a decent probability.

You never heard of vampire the masqurade, have you?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

DOC, you do know that 1 and 2 Timothy are not written by Paul, and are just pseudepigraphic forgeries, right?

 

[pakeha]

"evidence for probability of truth" and "evidence for truth" are the same thing. Evidence necessitates probability. If probability were not involved, then it would be "proof of truth", which is impossible.

This thread is aboput evidence for the truthfulness ofthe NT writers.

No. Well, yes for some parts. I used Josephus in my analysis of John the Baptist, for instance. Mostly though, I mean Mark, Q, L, M, John and Paul.

Usingthe NT to prove the NT is true?
We've spent many pages explaining to DOC why that isn't on.
It seems we now have to explain it to you.
A shame you never bothered to read the thread.

...
And as for the Roman official sources, we have inscription on Herod's temple confirming the prohibition of gentiles, the Delphi inscription (had to look that one up) confirms Gallio's role as proconsul, and his dating fits in perfectly with the life of Paul.

Link them up, please, out of courtesy to the forum.

Well I can't connect to the previous page for some reason but Phelix asked how do you know Luke was a traveling partner of Paul.

From Scott Grady's article "Introduction to the book of Acts"

"During the account of Paul's missionary journeys, the author occasionally changes his style from that of a third person observer to a first person participant. In Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-16; 21:1-18; and 27:1-28:16, the author speaks of "we" and "us" in relationship to Paul's travels. The language implies the author himself traveled with Paul. These "we" sections include the time when Paul was imprisoned at Rome...

... In 2 Timothy 4:11, Paul says, "Only Luke is with me," making him the most likely person to have written Luke-Acts."

Ninja'd by Hans!

DOC, you haven't answered my questions yet!

 

[The Don]

In the case of vampires though, there is the counterargument that we would expect better evidence given the nature of the claim. Asking someone to believe in a whole new species going undetected despite their present and extensive threat to humans is a fairly big request, and so even thousands of fake historical accounts aren't really enough to give it a decent probability.

Well the core claims of the early part of the New Testament are frankly no more unreasonable, and just as poorly supported than claiming that there is predatory race of undead, blood-drinking humanoids

True, but then they were religious believers, so this is not all that unexpected. If a creepily devout, potentially psychopathic, religious person today said "I've seen Jesus. He comes to my living room. Sometimes I bring slugs in from the garden, kill them, and he brings them back to life. He is the master of all nature. Tonight I'm going to kill my cat and watch as he demonstrates the majesty of God. Come back to my house. It's number 72"
Then, despite the avalanche of known incorrect claims, you would likely still put some weight on 72 being correct, though you might not want to visit so much any more. If you rang the police, and they asked for the house number, you wouldn't say "I don't know". You'd either say "72" or "she said 72" indicating you think there's some evidential worth there.

Why would I place any reliance on any part of a narrative which is riddled with fantasy, allegory, contradiction and things that are demonstrably untrue.

There comes a point in time when, if someone has been wrong often enough, you submit almost anything they say to the utmost rigour.

This is not what I am suggesting. But then who knows? This could be a great big trap Also that does happen in popular circles, but not so much in academic ones. There are very very conservative christian bible scholars, and only one is willing to claim the story of the adulterous woman to be true.*

Awwwww, I was looking for what was at the other end of the asterisk

Yes there are possible ways in which Josephus could be right here. There are possible ways in which both could be right. That's why it's not something that can really be built on or used, or even decided with any confidence without any additional sources coming up. It still stands though, that if my life were on the line, I would have to favour biblical truth on that one.

But you have no way of checking the veracity of either claim. It's like saying that Bram Stoker is more likely to be right about vampires than Stephenie Meyer.

Indeed. You would have to be aware of such ulterior motives when trying to make any argument at all, and always ask "would fibbing to me here be in the author's interests?"

...and in the case of the Bible, the answer is a resounding YES !

 

[phelix]

Or we could do less assuming that they were great biologists and students of evolution and totally into classifying skeletons and observing differences -- which is very very hard to support -- and go for the simpler explanation: that they were in the Akkadian zone of influence, and a lot of their myths are copied from or influenced by Akkadian myths.

In Eve's case, a close equivalent to her story is Ninti, also born from a rib. But her name isn't based on actually noting differences between skeletons. It's based on just a pun.

To understand the pun, I'll have to detour a bit through cuneiform writing. A heck of a lot of their words were single syllables, or two syllables tops, and there were a lot of homophones. For example this bitch:

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=540&pictureid=4603[/qimg]

was pronounced TI and could mean arrow (which is why it looks like that), or life, or rib.

Now you may see each of those written as two signs in dictionaries, and think "Hans lost his mind." That's because in writing they also wrote a determinative which told you which of the homophone meanings to understand. So if you saw WOOD+ARROW it meant an actual arrow, while if you saw FLESH+ARROW (UZU+TI) it meant rib. But you wouldn't actually read the determinative, so in both cases you'd read just the TI.

So they have a myth where Enki needs to be healed, so they have to create a "lady of life" to heal him. The name NIN-TI means quite literally "lady of life". But TI also means rib, so her name can also be understood as "lady of rib". Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky? Well, they did, because they actually create her out of a rib.

The Genesis story mainly reproduces that story of the "Lady Of Life", as an origin for a character which is also called the "mother of life" in Genesis.

So basically instead of just spinning wild tales about ancient biology explanations, we can just look at what Akkadian myth it mirrors. And how that one is literally based on a rib, not on a penis, and is based on a pun, not on any classifying skeletons.

I've had a search for this ninti story, because I hadn't heard of it before. There's an account of it here:
http://volker-doormann.org/enki05.htm
(control f for "where ninhursag buried" for the original, but I'll summarise what happens from there on)
Ninhursag plants Enki's semen in the ground, and 8 plants start to grow because of it. The two-faced god Isimud says they're called tree plants and cuts them down for Enki to eat. He does so and becomes ill in 8 places (one for each plant presumably). The other gods are upset and try to heal him but can't. One god cries out about the loss of Enki's semen, and a passing fox says "I know Ninhursag (Enki's wife). She can save him" and goes off to fetch Ninhursag. I think the two of them have sex but it's a bit confusing. Enki says afterwards that her soul enters his, so there appears to be a magical process going on whereby she extracts the semen that has infected each part of his body, thus healing it. Anyway, Ninhursag then gives burth to Abu, which heals Enki's body, then Nintulla, which heals Enki's jaw, then Ninsutu for his tooth, then Ninkasi for his mouth, then Azimua for his throat, then Enshag for his limbs, then Ninti, for his rib, and effectively for his whole body, allowing life to occur. Ninti is a play on the word life-giver, as you point out.

You called this a close equivalent to the story. There are definitely some relations, and it certainly seems plausible that this story was the influence for Genesis. The parallels seem to be entirely just "eve was called living one and ninti was called the mother of the living" and "there's a rib involved".

The strong assertions that this is the origin is definitely not warranted, and also you straw-man the assumptions required for the penis bone explanation. It doesn't require expert biology or skeletal classification for someone to say "hey, how come they have a bone there and we don't?"

That being said, I am fine conceding the origins of the rib part of Genesis to be from the Enki story. You have a habit of aggressively defending unimportant parts of scholarship though, which is peculiar. Also I found the guy who came up with the penis bone theory. His name is Ziony Zevit, if you're particularly interested in it

 

[kmortis]

Of course, last time I checked, the Garden of Eden story was in the Old Testament not the New.

 

[phelix]

Well I can't connect to the previous page for some reason but Phelix asked how do you know Luke was a traveling partner of Paul.

From Scott Grady's article "Introduction to the book of Acts"

"During the account of Paul's missionary journeys, the author occasionally changes his style from that of a third person observer to a first person participant. In Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-16; 21:1-18; and 27:1-28:16, the author speaks of "we" and "us" in relationship to Paul's travels. The language implies the author himself traveled with Paul. These "we" sections include the time when Paul was imprisoned at Rome...

... In 2 Timothy 4:11, Paul says, "Only Luke is with me," making him the most likely person to have written Luke-Acts."


http://www.christianlibrary.org/authors/Grady_Scott/Acts0.htm

Acts 16: 9-11

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.


Act 16:10 And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.


Act 16:11 ¶ Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothracia, and the next [day] to Neapolis;

Only the reference to 2Timothy is really relevant here, and claiming Pauline authorship of the pastorals requires another stretch. Why do we have 3 books that are so close to each other in style, and so different from the undisputed epistles? Also, even if we accept them, what of the problems I mentioned with believing Luke travelled with Paul? The one line in a disputed text surely isn't enough reason to give weight to a possibility with such issues?

 

[phelix]

Of course, last time I checked, the Garden of Eden story was in the Old Testament not the New.

Yes, there just wasn't anything Juicy I could think of from the NT. Corinth is perhaps the best it gets and that's pretty bland.

 

[carlitos]

Because Paul lopping off Timothy's junk isn't juicy. Or that hooker with the hair foot fetish at Simon's house dinner someplace. Not at all. Maybe something in Revelation?

 

[phelix]

Awwwww, I was looking for what was at the other end of the asterisk

There was actually originally something! Here's the extended directors cut version of that post:
"only one is willing to claim the story of the adulterous woman to be true.*
(then later down)
*Actually, he's now dead."

...and in the case of the Bible, the answer is a resounding YES !

Sometimes, yes. Other times, less so. When Paul writes that his main man Timothy has helped him out with writing the letter, is he fibbing in order to get us to believe in Jesus? Possibly, but it's a strange way of going about it. When the synoptics write that John the Baptist worked in the river Jordan, are they all lying to make the narrative fit with Christian theology? Maybe, but it's not exactly a very persuasive lie.

 

[phelix]

Because Paul lopping off Timothy's junk isn't juicy. Or that hooker with the hair foot fetish at Simon's house dinner someplace. Not at all. Maybe something in Revelation?

But see, revelation, is what most biblical scholars refer to as "insane". If I said that, in the gospel of Luke, right after the last supper, there's a huge female prostitute who has sex with every king on earth, and intoxicates every man, and rides around on a bright red 10 horned, 7 headed animal, dressed in purple and gold and with a sign on her forehead which reads "Babylon the great"... Then this might be interesting. If I said that this is written about in Revelation then you would probably reply "meh, predictable".

 

[carlitos]

Do these "biblical scholars" ever present evidence for why we know the writers of the New Testament told the truth? Because that would be really interesting here.

 

[phelix]

Do these "biblical scholars" ever present evidence for why we know the writers of the New Testament told the truth? Because that would be really interesting here.

As I've said, it depends on which bits. Some claims have external verification, some claims have arguments for likely truth, by the application of the historical method to the various sources.

 

[carlitos]

I think that I like my apologia straight, without the non-apologia apologia chaser.

 

[DOC]

Do these "biblical scholars" ever present evidence for why we know the writers of the New Testament told the truth? Because that would be really interesting here.

I assume you don't believe in the importance of historical evidence.

Sorry, but there was no video of the resurrection or the miracles.