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

[kmortis]

Hmmm - female apostle, huh?

If DDT's suggestion is correct, that'll be Snow White....

Bear in mind
Living Word = Living Document.

 

[ddt]

Hmmm - female apostle, huh?

If DDT's suggestion is correct, that'll be Snow White....

Actually, I tacked the names of the seven dwarves on the zombie saints that rose from their graves at the crucifixion and roamed Jerusalem after the resurrection, so no.

But the story of Snow White is tangentially related to this topic. A lot of our "knowledge" about the Bible actually is not in the Bible. For instance, the name of the Roman soldier who speared Jesus in John's gospel has no name there. Nor is Pilate's wife named in the Bible. They all got their names in later myths spun around the Biblical stories.

The same with Snow White's dwarves: you won't find their names in Grimm's recounting of the tale. Those names are a later invention, to be precise, by Walt Disney.

And of course, there's a lot more myth spun on top of the Bible stories. One which has been addressed here frequently, but unfortunately never satisfactorily answered by our resident apologist, concerns the fate of Simon the Zealot, one of the apostles. Which of the seven or so stories about his ending is true, DOC?

 

[Akhenaten]

Let me get this straight.
Jeebus dies.
An earthquake occurs.
The tombs of the saints are wrenched open.

It says many saints. Many saints could be 8 people.

Where are you getting this '8 people' nonsense from? What is your reference?

In any case, it's not the bloody number that's important - we're talking about dead people jumping up and running hither and yon creating a disturbance. 8 zombies is no less a ridiculous a notion than <some other number> zombies.

Which, by the way, inspires another question.

Why is it that the alleged resurrection of the alleged Jesus is so pivotal to the existence of Christianity when dead folks coming back to life was apparently no big thing in those days? Why doesn't Zombie Lazarus get his own cult?

And what about the earthquake, DOC? You forgot to make up a stupid story to account for that.

We demand lulz! Get on it.

Said saints are resurrected, but lie still for 36hours.

Who said anything about lying still; several translations say the tombs were opened and the saints arose.

True enough.

Matty 27:51-54 (LCV)

⁵¹ At dat moment teh curtain ov teh temple wuz torn in 2 frum top 2 bottom. Teh earth shook, teh rockz split an teh tombs broke open.

⁵² Teh bodiez ov lotza da holy peeps hoo had dide wuz raisd 2 life!

⁵³ They came out ov teh tombs aftr jebus resurrecshun an went into teh holy city an appeard 2 lotza da peeps.

⁵⁴ When teh senturion an dose wif him hoo wuz guardin jebus saw teh earthquaek an all dat had happend, they wuz terrifid, an exclaimd, "surely he wuz teh son ov ceilin cat!"​

What a shame they're just translations of a fairytale.

So if the tombs are opened, light and fresh air is coming through, they can stand up sit down . . .

That's all it takes to get the whole zombie thing happening, is it DOC? A bit of fresh air and sunlight?

When did you learn all this stuff about raising zombies, DOC? Before or after you did the logic module?

. . . and even walk outside the open tomb.

No, DOC.

Not only are you missing the point that welshdean was making about the 36 hour delay (which, by the way, would have been 72 hours if the 3 days/3 nights thing had been true), but you're making up stuff that isn't in your Big Book of Fairytales.

viz.


Matty 27:50-53 (KJV)

⁵⁰ Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

⁵¹ And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

⁵²And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

⁵³ And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.​

Red = Friday evening. <------ 36 hours of zombie quiet time --------> Green = Sunday morning.​

Only one translation has the saints leaving their graves before Sunday morning, DOC. The one that you made up.

The New Living Translation said, after Christ rose they left the cemetery.

Yes DOC, it does. And that, apart from demonstrating that their leaving their graves/tombs before then is an embellishment of your own creation, tells the rest of us that the whole story is about as believable as a low budget horror film.

These bloody zombies laid where they were for 36 hours, didn't move, then got up and perambulated around town on a drippy flesh, bones showing, Thriller-esque meet & greet?
They must have had the patience of a sain.... ahhh fuhgeddaboudit.

Once again, what's with this they didn't move.

You'd be needing to ask Saint Matty about that in your prayers, DOC. He's the one who made the stupid story up.

And if a God has the power to resurrect them, he certainly has the power to give them an even cleaner and healthier body than they had before they died. If God exists miracles are possible---any miracle.

my embiggenation

This is why you fail.

Remember, Luke reports incredible growth of the church with at least 8000 men being converted 7 to 9 weeks after the resurrection. If you count woman and teenagers, that could be 10,000 being converted in about 2 months. This great growth could explain how Christians ended up in Rome in 64 CE being blamed for the fire in Rome.

Could the raised saints (maybe 8 or more) have contributed to this great growth, we don't know, but people seeing formerly dead people now alive certainly wouldn't hurt getting converts, and might help explain the great sudden growth of possibly 10,000 in 2 months.

The idea that you are happy to claim membership of a cult that you believe to have been kick-started by a mob of zombies running around in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago leaves even me temporarily speechless.

 

[Akhenaten]

Woman were second class citizens back then, they weren't even counted when a crowd size was being determined.

And this is why one of the genealogies was of Mary's and not....
oh wait....

Young Mary did alright for a not-to-be-counted, second-class citizen. Queen of Heaven™, gaudy statues in every Catlick church, memorialised in thousands of pieces of toast . . .

 

[Akhenaten]

Doc, why do the xtians get all hung up on the resurrection. To paraphrase the late and great Christopher Hitchens "it was a bit of a mundanity of the times".

<polite snippy>

So I make that 250,009 (approx) resurrections, 9 named above and the horde of 250,000 roaming Jerusalem cashing in their nectar points.

Lazarus should be the Mesiah, he was proper dead. Four days proper dead. Jeebus only managed a day and a half pffft.

I just touched on this a little in one of my own screeds but I had no idea zombiism was so popular.

It's hard to believe they didn't have their own team at the Olympics, let alone their own religion.

 

[Akhenaten]

We've been over all of this in part 1 of this thread.

First, you need to try and get your head around this all being one big thread, split for no more reason than to ease the load on the server. They aren't two discreet entities.

Second, saying that we've been over things before doesn't mean "this discepancy has been settled", no matter how much you might like to fantasize that it does.

You've been putting forward the same pathetic arguments for years no matter how many times they're shown to be completely without merit to the extent that saying "we've been over this before" is functionally equivalent to "DOC has already been shown repeatedly to be completely wrong about this".

If someone wants to find a possible scenario that explains the alleged contradictions , there are some on the web.

Again, two things for you to note (although you won't):

Firstly, these are not alleged discrepancies. They're right there on the pages of your Big Book of Fairy Tales.

Do I need to draw you a picture?

Oh wait . . . I already did.

Please note, before proceeding with your explanation that the heading on the above graphic is what we grown-ups refer to as 'sarcasm'.

Secondly, your suggestion that we look for explanations for the glaring inconsistences in your scriptures is possibly the most ludicrous idea that you've managed to come up with in the entire thread. People have been telling you for years that the reason for them is that the whole bloody thing is just make-believe, but all you want to do in response to that is rabbit on about how inconsistencies = authenticity.

And the many bishops at the Council of Carthage-- who officially determined what writings were considered inspired and part of the official church cannon-- didn't seem too worried about any of the above.

George Lucas doesn't seem too worried about the inconsistencies in Star Wars.

If they were worried they could have simply chose one Gospel to be in the bible and there wouldn't have been any alleged contradictions.

If he was, he could have just made documentaries, like David Attenborough does.

See? I can do non sequitur as well as you can.

 

[Alice Shortcake]

Why is it that the alleged resurrection of the alleged Jesus is so pivotal to the existence of Christianity when dead folks coming back to life was apparently no big thing in those days? Why doesn't Zombie Lazarus get his own cult?

That's exactly what I thought when I first read these stories as a kid. What's so special about Christ's resurrection?

 

[dafydd]

Woman were second class citizens back then, they weren't even counted when a crowd size was being determined. So when Luke says Peter converted over 5000 men on a single day, there could have been many woman converted too but they weren't counted. I don't believe woman back then could even testify at a court hearing.

This is what is so unusual about the gospels reporting woman were the first to discover that Christ was risen. If the story was made up, 2nd class citizens (who couldn't testify at a court hearing) would not have been the first to discover Christ had risen. It would have been the apostles. Translation: the story wasn't made up.

Women Doc, many women. Is English your first language? The story was made up.

 

[Craig B]

That's exactly what I thought when I first read these stories as a kid. What's so special about Christ's resurrection?

We have an example of Paul restoring the dead to life in Acts 20, written by the Great Historian, Luke.

9 And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep:

during one of Paul's sermons, which seems to have been of great length

and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. 10 And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him. 11 When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed. 12 And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.

It is argued by some that this is unlike Jesus' experience, because "his life is still in him" but if that is to be taken literally, then there is no miracle. Restoring life to someone who isn't dead is not an impressive achievement!

 

[ddt]

Talk about boring someone to death!

 

[TimCallahan]

Young Mary did alright for a not-to-be-counted, second-class citizen. Queen of Heaven™, gaudy statues in every Catlick church, memorialised in thousands of pieces of toast . . .

What's interesting is that the original Queen of heaven was Ashtart, against whom Jeremiah fulminates. While Mary's most of Mary's iconography was borrowed from that of Isis, the Virgin of Guadalupe is probably based on the Aztec mother-goddess Tonatzin.

 

[TimCallahan]

DOC: Do you assert that any of the gospel writers were witnesses to the Crucifixion and Resurrection? If so, which one(s)? Do you think that Paul witnessed them? If none of them witnessed the Resurrection, upon what did they base their testimony?

DOC: I'm still waiting for an answer to these questions. They are important.The go straight to the assertion of the historicity of the New Testament.

 

[Akhenaten]

What's interesting is that the original Queen of heaven was Ashtart, against whom Jeremiah fulminates. While Mary's most of Mary's iconography was borrowed from that of Isis, the Virgin of Guadalupe is probably based on the Aztec mother-goddess Tonatzin.

I don't know that there's anything at all original to Christianity, is there?

Maybe the toast thing, I suppose.

 

[Craig B]

I don't know that there's anything at all original to Christianity, is there?

Maybe the toast thing, I suppose.

I bet the Aztec mother-goddess Tonatzin appeared on a slightly overcooked tortilla from time to time!

 

[TimCallahan]

I made a slight misspelling of the goddesses name: It's Tonantzin, rather than Tonatzin.

Another interesting aspect of the Virgin of Guadalupe is that her imagery is taken from the Book of Revelation (Rev. 12:1):

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars;

The Virgin of Guadalupe is sown standing on a crescent moon with stylized rays emanating from her. In succeeding verses, the woman in Rev. 12:1 is said to be in the pangs of childbirth, and the red dragon is waiting to devour her child when it is born.

 

[Akhenaten]

Meh. Wannabes.

 

[pakeha]

Ninja'd yet again!

...But woman should be thankful Christ came. ...

Which woman?

Also, eeyew. ...

 

[GrandMasterFox]

You need to write it down in a book and then reference that book as it's own proof. Make sure that you include embarrassing details about the zombies though. That makes it true-erer

And embarrassing details! Lest we forget!

 

[Reality Check]

And the many bishops at the Council of Carthage-- who officially determined what writings were considered inspired and part of the official church cannon-- didn't seem too worried about any of the above. If they were worried they could have simply chose one Gospel to be in the bible and there wouldn't have been any alleged contradictions.

It is the Councils of Carthage (there were a series of councils over several centuries).
The Councils of Carthage did not choose the New Testament canon. They issued a statement about an existing canon - "The Council of Carthage, called the third by Denzinger,[4] on 28 August 397 issued a canon of the Bible...". The concept of the New Testament containing 4 gospels was established about 200 years earlier.

 

[Craig B]

It is the Councils of Carthage (there were a series of councils over several centuries).
The Councils of Carthage did not choose the New Testament canon. They issued a statement about an existing canon - "The Council of Carthage, called the third by Denzinger,[4] on 28 August 397 issued a canon of the Bible...". The concept of the New Testament containing 4 gospels was established about 200 years earlier.

Exactly so! In order to do what DOC suggests they ought to have done if they had concerns about discrepancies, they would have been obliged not to choose one, but to throw out three!