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

[ddt]

No he doesn't. I'll answer fully as time permits.

No you won't.

Is that a command ("you won't do that, or else..."), or is that a prophecy ("I predict you are not going to do that")? If the latter, you're in the wrong thread.

Just asking because DOC has shown some difficulty in interpreting modal verbs lately.

 

[ddt]

Let's just say I have about 2,200 posts in Part 1 and Part 2 of this thread.

Not again with the argument ad post count.

Thank you God for giving us the evidence that could allow me to do that.

Your god did a piss poor job then. Monkeys banging randomly on a keyboard would do better, eventually: they'd come up with new arguments and not regurgitate the same drivel over and over again.

 

[ddt]

You are right - Luke does not state that he was not an eyewitness.

What he writes in Luke 1:1-4 is
that there were those who from the first were eyewitnesses
that their accounts were handed down
and he carefully investigated everything from the beginning.

So the questions become:

• If Luke was an eyewitness then why did he not write we who from the first were eyewitnesses.
• If Luke was an eyewitness then why did he not say so?
• If Luke was an eyewitness then why did he not write down his account?
• If Luke was an eyewitness then why is he relying on the handed down accounts of others?
• If Luke was an eyewitness then why did he need to investigate?

The use of those excludes Luke from being an eyewitness.

Should we start a betting pool which translation DOC will use to try to weasel out of that.

How's your Greek lessons going, DOC?

 

[DOC]

Another classic is where DOC defended whipping slaves. Is no worse than a mild sunburn.

Red Flag: doesn't present my actual post; and where did the word mild come from?

eta

And would you rather spend 5 years in jail (the possible sentence today) for beating several men and several woman (the crime committed by the servant in the parable) or would you rather have 10 lashes to your back?

 

[kmortis]

Red Flag: doesn't present my actual post; and where did the word mild come from?

Wait...you're complaining because you think that ddt DOWNPLAYED your position?

/me steps back slowly

 

[DOC]

DOC: How do you reconcile Mark's Resurrection, in which Jesus appears to nobody, leaving the empty tomb as the only evidence, with Paul's claim in 1 Cor. 15:6 that Jesus appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time?

Alleged inconsistencies in the Resurrection accounts were discussed in depth in Part 1. I don't believe you posted in the 500 page part 1.

Oh, BTW, if Jesus was alone in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked God if this cup might pass from his lips (Mk. 14:36, Mt. 26:39, Lk. 22:42), who witnessed this?

I believe this has been discussed before also.

Jesus spent about 40 days with the apostles after the Resurrection. That's a lot of days to talk about things that happened. The apostles could have received that account during those 40 days from Jesus.

Tim, you might do a search of Part 1 before bringing up a point that we aren't currently discussing.

 

[Hokulele]

...

The apostles could have ...

Yeah, that's some real solid evidence there.

 

[DOC]

...One of my favorites was your claim that fiction didn't exist at the time of Christ.

List a work of fiction coming from Judea, where Christ's ministry was. You can go back a thousand years before Christ.

Or how slaves were better off as slaves.

Why don't you present the complete post?

 

[kmortis]

List a work of fiction coming from Judea, where Christ's ministry was. You can go back a thousand years before Christ.

How could he? Paper didn't exist then, right?

Why don't you present the complete post?

Yeah...that's why you can't answer it.

 

[zooterkin]

Red Flag: doesn't present my actual post; and where did the word mild come from?

eta

And would you rather spend 5 years in jail (the possible sentence today) for beating several men and several woman (the crime committed by the servant in the parable) or would you rather have 10 lashes to your back?

Here's what you actually said:

I don't believe anyone ever answered my point as to whether they would rather receive 10 lashes or spend several years in jail.

Personally I rather receive 10 lashes and be sore for a few days, kind of like a sunburn.

Now, how is that significantly different from what ddt said? Did you forget what you said?

 

[Craig B]

List a work of fiction coming from Judea, where Christ's ministry was. You can go back a thousand years before Christ.

Esther. How it got into the canon, God knows. He's not mentioned in it. The mediaeval Jewish scholar Maimonides considered the Book of Job to be non historical. With good reason I may say. It's a work of fiction composed for ideological purposes.

If there was an extensive literature in much earlier times, unless it was incorporated into the scriptural canon, it failed to survive the attentions of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and others. The two exiles, in Babylon and following the Second Jewish War, caused a practically total loss of secular literature, if it existed.

But we have fictional works from Egypt, where ancient texts did survive better. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Sinuhe, for a well known example.

It should also be recalled that Judeans of Jesus' day did their casual reading in Aramaic or Greek, not in Hebrew, which by that time had become a scholarly or liturgical language, and was no longer the vernacular. Paul displays a knowledge of Greek literature. See http://www.padfield.com/acrobat/sermons/saul-of-tarsus.pdf

a) In his sermon to the philosophers at Mars’ Hill, Paul quoted the Greek poet Aratus of Soli, who was from Paul’s own province in Cilicia (c. 270 B.C.), “We are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28).
b) In Titus 1:12, he quotes from Epimenides, a Cretan poet, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”
c) Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:33 that “evil company corrupts good habits,” was a well-known Greek proverb from a line of poetry in Menander’s comedy, Thais.
d) “J. Rendel Harris claims that he finds allusions in Paul’s Epistles to Pindar, Aristophanes, and other Greek writers. There is no reason in the world why Paul should not have acquaintance with Greek literature, though one need not strain a point to prove it.”

 

[kmortis]

Think these guys may have penned a line or two of fiction in their days?

 

[Lucian]

Guess? We've had years of your guesses in place of the promised evidence and they've all been either tragic or hilarious.

It's tragilarious!

 

[Elizabeth I]

Think these guys may have penned a line or two of fiction in their days?

[doc mode]Those were all "BC" and in Greece. I said alive at the time of Christ in Judea. I win by a (split) hair.[/doc mode]

 

[joobz]

List a work of fiction coming from Judea, where Christ's ministry was. You can go back a thousand years before Christ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_Scipio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclogues
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_Urbe_Condita_(book) (quite important example as it is a "history" book which contains legend and myth as truth...sound familar?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyricon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedra_(Seneca)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deipnosophistae

Why don't you present the complete post?

Do you deny making that statement?

 

[joobz]

[doc mode]Those were all "BC" and in Greece. I said alive at the time of Christ in Judea. I win by a (split) hair.[/doc mode]

Well, that's a very bad hair to split. After all, we KNOW that one at least ONE of the writers was familiar with greek literature as they wrote and spoke greek. Further, being occupied by Rome, they would be familiar with Roman Literature.


I provided examples of works containing fiction that spanned 1st century BC to 2nd century ad. This should provide some support for the idea that fiction was a known concept to the biblical writers.

 

[Craig B]

I forgot to add that much of the action in my Egyptian example (from c 1800 BCE), The Tale of Sinuhe, is in fact set in the Syria-Canaan area, and the work contains some themes familiar to readers of other texts originating in that part of the world.

Parallels have been made with the biblical narrative of Joseph. In what is seen as divine providence, the Syro-Canaanite Joseph is taken to Egypt where he becomes part of the ruling elite, acquires a wife and family, before being reunited with his Syro-Canaanite family. In what as seen as divine providence, Sinuhe the Egyptian flees to Syro-Canaan and becomes a member of the ruling elite, acquires a wife and family, before being reunited with his Egyptian family. Parallels have also been drawn with other biblical texts: Sinuhe's frustrated flight from the orbit of god's power (=King) is likened to the Hebrew prophet Jonah's similar attempt, his fight with a mighty challenger, whom he slays with a single blow, is compared to the battle between David and Goliath and his return home likened to the parable of the Prodigal Son.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Sinuhe.

 

[Mojo]

List a work of fiction coming from Judea, where Christ's ministry was. You can go back a thousand years before Christ.

The Bible.

 

[Akhenaten]

Red Flag: doesn't present my actual post; and where did the word mild come from?

The word 'mild' is a paraphrase of 'sore for a few days'.

I don't believe anyone ever answered my point as to whether they would rather receive 10 lashes or spend several years in jail.

Personally I rather receive 10 lashes and be sore for a few days, kind of like a sunburn.

The real red flag here is raised by your pathetic attempt to nitpick your way out of having claimed that receiving the lash is no more severe than any kind of sunburn.

eta

And would you rather spend 5 years in jail (the possible sentence today) for beating several men and several woman (the crime committed by the servant in the parable) or would you rather have 10 lashes to your back?

And not only do you raise a red flag about this matter, you seem determined to take it to the top of the highest prominence you can find and wave it madly while cackling and howling "Embrace the Lash! Embrace the lash!!!"

It's quite a spectacle.

 

[Akhenaten]

DOC: How do you reconcile Mark's Resurrection, in which Jesus appears to nobody, leaving the empty tomb as the only evidence, with Paul's claim in 1 Cor. 15:6 that Jesus appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time?

Alleged inconsistencies in the Resurrection accounts were discussed in depth in Part 1.

Red flag.

Does not refer to the actual post in which you previously answered this questiion.

Link to that post and we'll discuss the matter further.

I don't believe you posted in the 500 page part 1.

All the more reason for you to provide links to the posts in which your answers to these specific questions were provided.

Oh, BTW, if Jesus was alone in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked God if this cup might pass from his lips (Mk. 14:36, Mt. 26:39, Lk. 22:42), who witnessed this?

I believe this has been discussed before also.

There has never been a time, there is not now and there never will be a time in which your beliefs are any kind of indication of the truth.

Links or it didn't happen.

Jesus spent about 40 days with the apostles after the Resurrection.

You have failed dismally over the course of a number of years to provide so much as a scintilla of evidence for any element of the above statement.

That's a lot of days to talk about things that happened.

More than enough time to concoct some fairytale to hoodwink the less critically-minded among the faithful.

The apostles could have received that account during those 40 days from Jesus.

They could have just made it up too, assuming that they even existed.

Tim, you might do a search of Part 1 before bringing up a point that we aren't currently discussing.

In order to highlight your past failures to deal with that point?

That's my job, DOC. What would you like to know?