• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

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

Status
Not open for further replies.
DOC said:
So you don't believe the word "may" has anything to do with the future.
Click to expand...
Did you understand what ddt said about the aorist subjunctive having the force of a future tense? If you had understood it, you would not have asked that ridiculous question.
 
DOC said:
So you don't believe the word "may" has anything to do with the future.
Click to expand...

"may" indicates a possibility, that could lie in the future, depending up context. "will" indicates a future event that will take place. You know bloody well the difference.

I see, BTW, that you're referencing the "will not pass" from Mark 13:30, while my comment was about the subjunctive in 13:29. Oh well, I didn't give you a link for that one. But I did give you one for the translation of verse 13:29 and you didn't respond to that anyway. You know, this text:
ὅταν, a particle of time, compound of ὅτε and ἄν, at the time that, whenever (German dannwann;wannirgend); used of things which one assumes will really occur, but the time of whose occurrence he does not definitely fix
Click to expand...
Why didn't you? Why did you lie about that?

ETA: Oh, and your apology better extend also to your equivocation of "may" with future.
 
Last edited:
DOC said:
I've already said it his opinion Jesus is not divine, just like it is his opinion Jesus certainly existed. He has the right to his opinions.
Click to expand...

So you now refer to them as opinions when they don't support the conclusion that you started with?
 
ddt said:
"
Why didn't you? Why did you lie about that?

ETA: Oh, and your apology better extend also to your equivocation of "may" with future.
Click to expand...

I don't lie, and it is my opinion your argument is just your interpretation of your source. You have your translation and Young's Literal translation has theirs. If people want to believe your translation, so be it.
 
Hokulele said:
So you actually believe everyone on that list existed.
Click to expand...
Well since it seems most skeptics don't care what I believe, I'll say Ehrman believes Peter, James (the brother of Jesus), Paul, and Judas existed, and said there are solid reasons to believe Judas betrayed Christ. I don't know how he feels about the others on the list.
 
DOC said:
I don't lie,
Click to expand...
There's ample evidence on these threads you lie.

DOC said:
and it is my opinion your argument is just your interpretation of your source. You have your translation and Young's Literal translation has theirs. If people want to believe your translation, so be it.
Click to expand...
Have you read the preface to Young's literal translation? It goes into great detail on the idiosyncracies of Hebrew and how they literally translate the tenses. Compare that to Lucian's comments about the French use of tenses, which Akhenaten so kindly reproduced two pages ago. Such a translation paradigm just doesn't yield correct English.

Likewise, translating the Greek subjunctive slavishly with "may" is simply incorrect. I quoted from Daniel Wallace's grammar. Here's his bio. If you would consult that, you would see that yourself. In case of the "may not pass": this is actually an emphatic negation, so a truthful translation would be "will certainly not pass". No inkling of a possibility, which the English "may" expresses.

But you're not interested in engaging honest debate. You just look and pick a translation that suits your needs. You're dishonest and a liar.
 
Let me see if I have this right:

DOC brings up Bart Ehrman's latest book, in which Ehrman attempts to prove the existence of a historical person behind the Jesus narrative, thinking that because skeptics like Ehrman's other books, we'll have to agree with this one.

Everyone else points out that this book, unlike Ehrman's other books, is a load of poorly-researched and fallacy-ridden hogwash.

DOC spends 3 pages trying to understand why skeptics don't accept Ehrman's authority on the issue.


Has anyone explained that we don't evaluate arguments based on who made them, but only on the merits of the arguments themselves? Ehrman is no more exempt from this than DOC is. His previous books were well researched and thought out, which is why skeptics value them. His latest book is neither, and thus we have a clear example of the arguments being evaluated, not the arguer.

It's not a difficult concept to wrap one's head around.



ETA: In regard to bible translations, one should keep in mind that most translations have an agenda. And the translation effort is therefore skewed in favour of that agenda. Which sometimes changes words and meanings substantially. ddt's analysis of the original Greek is far, far more valuable than DOC's repetitions of some translation or another saying something different. Remember: the translators had an agenda. So does ddt, but unlike the translators, ddt's agenda in this thread has only been to find the most accurate meaning of the original Greek text. Learn Greek, DOC. The links have been provided. Or you can keep showing your ignorance on that subject.
 
Last edited:
DOC said:
So then you must believe these people died for Bart Ehrman's Jesus and not the resurrected Jesus of theologians and preachers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_martyrs
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hindu_martyrs

People die for all sorts of silly beliefs DOC, no matter how wrong they are. With your logic, does Brahma exist because of these martyrs?

We can play this silly game all day if you'd like, there are many more religions to pick martyrs from.
 
DOC said:
So then you must believe these people died for Bart Ehrman's Jesus and not the resurrected Jesus of theologians and preachers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_martyrs
Click to expand...

How is it you have been here for over five years and you still don't understand that just because lots of people believe something doesn't mean it's true.

DOC said:
Well since it seems most skeptics don't care what I believe, I'll say Ehrman believes Peter, James (the brother of Jesus), Paul, and Judas existed, and said there are solid reasons to believe Judas betrayed Christ. I don't know how he feels about the others on the list.
Click to expand...

Of course we don't care about what you believe, we care about what you can evidence. How is it that you have been a member of this sceptics' site for over five years and yet you don't appear to understand the difference between belief and knowledge?

Everybody here understands you believe in the Christian God and not in any other god, everybody here understands that you believe in the stories in the Bible and in Jesus as a divine being. Nobody is trying to undermine your faith, since faith is by definition belief without evidence.

What you appear to be doing in your many threads is to try to present evidence for your beliefs, possibly in order to change our beliefs. However, all you have ever done is present evidence that some people believe in the tenets of the Christian faith. That is not evidence for the truthfulness of their beliefs, or evidence for the events recounted in the Bible.

Evidence that millions of Christians exist is not evidence that anything in the Bible is true.

Evidence that the 9/11 hijackers existed is not evidence that their warped view of Islam is true.

Evidence that there are millions of Muslims is not evidence that anything in the Qu'ran is true.

Evidence that millions of children truly believe in Father Christmas is not evidence that there is a real elf workshop at the North Pole.

....und so weiter.

What you keep doing, DOC, is showing us evidence that people have faith. You are not showing us any evidence for the truth of the belief, just for the strength of the belief. We understand that people will die for their faith. But a willingness to die for something does not make it true.
 
Last edited:
X said:
ETA: In regard to bible translations, one should keep in mind that most translations have an agenda. And the translation effort is therefore skewed in favour of that agenda. Which sometimes changes words and meanings substantially. ddt's analysis of the original Greek is far, far more valuable than DOC's repetitions of some translation or another saying something different. Remember: the translators had an agenda. So does ddt, but unlike the translators, ddt's agenda in this thread has only been to find the most accurate meaning of the original Greek text. Learn Greek, DOC. The links have been provided. Or you can keep showing your ignorance on that subject.
Click to expand...

This (highlighting mine). Even if I had an agenda, I have given him the links and the tools are out there (the Greek Bible text, Greek grammars and lexica) with which he could reason why his favoured translation would be correct. DOC could even try to find an explanation by another scholar of his translation. But he doesn't. In the case of the Luke 2:2 translation - which he hasn't responded to either - he has only come up with secondary or tertiary quotes saying that "Heichelheim translates it thus" but without the actual explanation by Heichelheim.

ETA: DOC apparently hasn't dared posting in the "natural diasters" thread.
 
Last edited:
ddt said:
This (highlighting mine). Even if I had an agenda, I have given him the links and the tools are out there (the Greek Bible text, Greek grammars and lexica) with which he could reason why his favoured translation would be correct. DOC could even try to find an explanation by another scholar of his translation. But he doesn't. In the case of the Luke 2:2 translation - which he hasn't responded to either - he has only come up with secondary or tertiary quotes saying that "Heichelheim translates it thus" but without the actual explanation by Heichelheim.

ETA: DOC apparently hasn't dared posting in the "natural diasters" thread.
Click to expand...

Or, just to get the idea of the principle of the thing, DOC could look at Latin, which at least doesn't use crazy heathen alien letters. I have tangled with Latin (I have the scars to prove it), and fairly often you will come across something like an imperfect passive subjunctive. You simply can't translate it absolutely literally in English for a number of reasons. For one thing, if you tried, you'd end up with some nightmare of tangled auxiliaries and participles that would essentially be incomprehensible. Secondly, it wouldn't really give an accurate notion of what the original says anyway. English just doesn't work the same way Latin does.

Aside from the issue of the moribund subjunctive in English, a characteristic of the Germanic languages is that they only have two true tenses (tenses which do not take auxiliaries): simple present and simple past. Many other languages (Greek, Latin, the Romance languages) have verb tenses out the wazoo. Consequently, when translating one of those languages into English, you have to fiddle with the verbs: you have to try to match the grammatical context rather than slavishly and literally twist them into an awkward, meaningless, literal mess.

By the way, although I can't find the post, somewhere (possibly in this thread, perhaps in the Fulfilled Prophecies thread) I predicted DOC's "well that's his opinion" response to ddt's informative and educational (and well-sourced) discussion of the Greek. My prophecy was fulfilled, which is Evidence for Why We Know Lucian Told the Truth.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom