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

[ddt]

@DOC

Here's Luke 3.

Find Mary for me please. All I can see is Joseph and ancestors. And the names of these don't agree with Matthew. It would surely be, if you were right: "Jesus was known as the son of Joseph. Jesus' mother was Mary. Mary was the daughter of ... etc"

And to pre-empt any inane arguments about Jewish matrilineality: this tradition postdates Jesus' times. The idea of matrilineal descent appears for the first time in the Talmud. Before that, Judaism firmly used patrilineal descent, and all the genealogies in the Bible list only males. The idea that a genealogy would list a mother would be preposterous in those times.

Of course, the fundamental problem with that is that Joseph wasn't Jesus' father at all: the holy spook was, according to the gospels. So Joseph's descent from David, as listed by both Luke and Matthew, is fully irrelevant to make Jesus "from the house of David".

 

[TimCallahan]

No, a flat out contradiction will have no other possible explanation or translation that can explain it. If one gospel says Christ was not crucified or resurrected, that could not be explained. All the gospels agree on the major things such as Christ was crucified and Resurrected. Minor discrepancies are normal for eyewitnesses. IF there was no video taken of the 911 attacks, you could imagine all the discrepancies that would occur in the stories about what actually happened.

The problem, as I've pointed out, is that the discrepancies are not minor. In any case, the author of the gospels weren't eyewitnesses. They were working from hear-say.

 

[DOC]

...They were working from hear-say.

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

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

 

[Akhenaten]

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

<spam>

What about if you stop spamming that irrelevant nonsense and respond to a few of the on-topic points that have been raised?

 

[Akhenaten]

Like, for starters, have you managed to figure out who wrote The Acts of the Apostles yet, and who was talking to whom along the road to Damascus?

 

[joobz]

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

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

It is clear you failed logic and philosophy.
If you didn't, it is clear you went to a fourth rate school.
Either that,, or you are simply a dishonest troll.

 

[Akhenaten]

Wait . . . don't tell me . . .

I know this one . . .

 

[ddt]

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

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

So you only have half a dozen canned answers and throw a dice which you'll type this time in your post, relevance be damned?

 

[Robrob]

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

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

That people can fall so hard for a fantasy they are willing to die for it, this surprises you?

 

[Reality Check]

No, a flat out contradiction will have no other possible explanation or translation that can explain it.

Do you know about the zombies that only Matthew mentions?
“And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”
Matthew 27:52-53

Not only do the other gospels ignore the zombies, but everyone else in Jerusalem including the many that they appeared unto ignored them !

 

[Craig B]

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

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

Do you know about the zombies that only Matthew mentions?
“And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”
Matthew 27:52-53

Not only do the other gospels ignore the zombies, but everyone else in Jerusalem including the many that they appeared unto ignored them !

And Matthew has Jesus riding into Jerusalem on two donkeys simultaneously, while the other gospels settle for one! Another discrepancy. It arises from the fact that Matthew is not using eye witness testimony in his description of the event but basing it on Zecheriah 9:9

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

He misunderstands the poetic repetition of the donkey, and takes it to refer to two animals. So he turns Jesus into a circus stunt rider to make him fulfill this "prophecy". It is not even "hearsay"!

DOC's response to the improbability of these stories? To send us a wiki list of Christian martyrs! Look them up separately in wiki, DOC. Your list contains masses of preposterous mythology making Jesus' donkey stunt look quite credible by comparison. Philomena, for example.

According to Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù [who had "visions" in the nineteenth century] Saint Philomena told her she was the daughter of a king in Greece who, with his wife, had converted to Christianity. At the age of about 13 she took a vow of consecrated virginity. When the Emperor Diocletian [Diocletian himself ruled Greece; it had no separate king] threatened to make war on her father, her father went with his family to Rome to ask for peace. The Emperor fell in love with the young Philomena and, when she refused to be his wife, subjected her to a series of torments: scourging, from whose effects two angels cured her; drowning with an anchor attached to her (two angels cut the rope and raised her to the river bank); being shot with arrows, (on the first occasion her wounds were healed; on the second, the arrows turned aside; and on the third, they returned and killed six of the archers, after which, several of the others became Christians). Finally the Emperor had her decapitated.

So, a list containing this balderdash proves that the gospel accounts are more than hearsay? Is that a joke, DOC?

 

[pakeha]

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

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

I'm confused, DOC.
Are you saying those people died because Luke's two accounts of Paul's conversion contradict each other?
Like in Shogun, where people voluntarily die as testimony to the truth?
Apparently as part of the samurai honour ethic?

 

[Craig B]

I'm confused, DOC.
Are you saying those people died because Luke's two accounts of Paul's conversion contradict each other?
Like in Shogun, where people voluntarily die as testimony to the truth?
Apparently as part of the samurai honour ethic?

A good example of the principle you refer to is this. In 1633 Galileo was threatened with torture and death unless he denied that the Earth is in orbit round the Sun. He denied it in public and saved his life, though then kept under house arrest until he died.

Now, the fact that Galileo refused martyrdom: does that prove that he was wrong, and the Sun goes round the Earth? Only if he died to "prove" it, can we say he was right? Of course not! Galileo did the right thing. Statements of fact need no martyrs. They witness to their own truth! As a matter of reality the geneaologies of Jesus, and the accounts of the experiences of Paul's companions, disagree, and a million insane hagiographies of St Philomena will not change this unfortunate fact.

 

[pakeha]

You've made me wonder if Fugu^WP vs ravioli^WP explains the difference in martyrdom readiness there.

Philomena became the only person recognized as a Saint solely on the basis of miraculous intercession

from
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=98
Now THAT'S a saint!

 

[Craig B]

You've made me wonder if Fugu^WP vs ravioli^WP explains the difference in martyrdom readiness there.
from
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=98 Now THAT'S a saint!

According to your source

Philomena became the only person recognized as a Saint solely on the basis of miraculous intercession as nothing historical was known of her except her name and the evidence of her martyrdom.

But we don't have unambiguous evidence even of these details!

On 24 May 1802 in the Catacombs of Priscilla on the Via Salaria Nova an inscribed loculus (space hollowed out of the rock) was found ... closed with three terra cotta tiles, on which was the following inscription: lumena paxte cumfi. It was and is generally accepted that the tiles were in a wrong order and that the inscription originally read, with the leftmost tile placed on the right: pax tecum Filumena (i.e."Peace with you, Philomena"). Within the loculus was found the skeleton of a female between thirteen and fifteen years old. Embedded in the cement was a small glass phial with vestiges of what was taken to be blood.

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

After that unpromising start, he whole thing was worked up by a crazed visionary nun in the nineteenth century, referred to in my last post, along with that obsessive imbecile

Saint John Vianney [who] built a shrine in her honour and referred to her often, attributing to her the miracles that others attributed to himself.

And if that's not convincing enough:

Another miracle accepted as proved in the same year (1835) was the multiplication of the bone dust of the saint, which provided for hundreds of reliquaries without the original amount experiencing any decrease in quantity.

Wow, that does it for me! The Gospels were right after all, and so Jesus was born both under Herod and under Quirinius.

 

[DOC]

Do you know about the zombies that only Matthew mentions?
“And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”
Matthew 27:52-53

Not only do the other gospels ignore the zombies, but everyone else in Jerusalem including the many that they appeared unto ignored them !

"Appeared to many" Eight people can be many.

Maybe the other authors weren't confident enough in the account to write about it, whereas Matthew was. Or the accounts of those maybe eight people never got around to them. Jerusalem was a big populated city.

And the bible reports Peter converted 3000 on one day, and 5000 men (woman and children not counted) a short time later. Maybe it was more than just Peter's preaching that caused the great sudden growth.

 

[joobz]

Maybe the other authors weren't confident enough in the account to write about it, whereas Matthew was.

I would be skeptical about people rising from the dead. Seems like crazy fiction to me.

Or the accounts of those maybe eight people never got around to them. Jerusalem was a big populated city.

or it was completely made up.

I'm glad you agree that it is a discrepancy that isn't easily addressed without accepting the idea that it could be unreliable fiction.

 

[DOC]

I would be skeptical about people rising from the dead. Seems like crazy fiction to me.

So you imply some miracles are more believable than others?

If God exists miracles are possible -- any miracle.

 

[joobz]

So you imply some miracles are more believable than others?

If God exists miracles are possible -- any miracle.

No. I was agreeing with you that people raising from the dead is simply an unreliable account.
I also agree with you that 8 people claiming to see something isn't a reliable account.

 

[TimCallahan]

That must have been some powerful hearsay:

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

How about the Saxons martyred for resisting forced conversion to Christianity by Charlemagne? Does their stubbornness in resisting Christianity attest to the validity of their pagan belief system? For that matter, did the stubbornness of Irish Catholics on behalf of their faith show the soperiority of their belief system, or did the fall of Drogheda prove the superiority of Calvinist belief?

BTW, the reason for this thread being in the history forum, rather than in religion and philosophy is . . . ?