The Bible was never made for a historical reference, yet it does have some historical stuff in it. Most stories (before the nt) where not all real, they where metaphorical stories aiming to give a message. The book of Job and the rest of the judges, where not literate events. The biblical figures of the OT are also divided by many christians to be actual single people, such as Adam and Moses. You see, the OT names are Hebrew titles that have meanings in english. Adam meaning the Man, Noah meaning the rest, Abraham meaning the father of many nations, Moses meaning the liberator, Immanuel (which was the Title given to the Messiah in the OT) meaning God with us. More likely, these weren’t names but titles. Adam could have been many men not just one man. Also, before technology, it was common for writers to use figures of speech in their writings, they used figures of speech allot to emphasize and detail the pitch of the story they where telling or reporting.
Guys, I do admire your commitment to this thing, but you’re once again arguing about whether Jesus was a guy. I’m not bothered as to whether he was a guy. Whether he had a special connection with God (however you want to phrase that, eg “Son of God”, “God made flesh” etc) is more important, because of the ultimate importance you are attaching to the book.
Even more reason to not consider it a “100% reliable source” in anything. Ever. Oh and writers never use figures of speech anymore. I mean… are you trying to make an argument here? All I see is further evidence to support Lebowsk1’s argument.
Compelling in what way? Authenticity? I will point to Plato’s writings and, as a “religious” example, heiroglyphics within ancient Egyptian relics. Mayan Carvings? Or maybe Hammurabi’s code? Confucius? Siddh?rtha Gautama? I’ll rest my case. Unless of course, you meant only during the 30 or so years during which Jesus was purported to live and not the centuries before?
You obviously have no idea what Free Masonry is nor the many denominations of Satanism. Here’s a hint: More than a few Free Masons are christian. This entire piece is non sequitur.
I typically charge $400/hr for this sort of thing, but for the srk guys, I’ll make an exception. You guy’s provide the blood and blow and I will provide the prayer to Ba’al and asshole.
Why is that a reason not to consider it a reliable source? It is as a message, a revelation from God to man… not for historical documenting.
when did i start talking about writers of today? I was talking about writers of the time - the time of the OT, you do know how to read, right? Writers during the ancient times used allot of figures of speech, it was the way they emphasized and detailed their writings.
Research man.
If you are saying that Jesus’ documentations don’t amount to the names you gave, then you really need to start researching before you give an input.
Look at all the historical figures (not historical dynasty’s) of the ancient times, and check the quantity and dates of all of their documentations.
Jesus with in 150 years of his lifetime period has 42
Tiberious Ceasar, Confucius, Buddha/Siddh?rtha Gautama have 8 - 10 (did you even know this, since you brought 2 of their names up).
42:10, that is some ratio
Alexander’s most reliable documents are 5 in quantity and they are 400 years after he died. Jesus has more sources than ANYBODY that lived in Palestine and even those Historical rulers and historical teachers.
The gospels and the epistles are written in less than a decade after 33 ad.
So why is it, that Jesus is questioned when his sources are far more in quantity and better in date? Would you want me to give you quotes from reputable atheist historians saying that any questioning of Jesus’ historicity is academically destroyed?
Oh, if you use “Jesus has no first hand writings” as a counter argument, you just made yourself look more academically ignorant. There is no teacher during that time who has their own first hand writings. The reason why is because they were under the era known as ORAL TRADITION. Confucius doesn’t have his own writings; his followers wrote about him; same goes with nearly every religious teacher during that time. Yet no scholar questions the existence of Confucius, and regardless of their being no first hand accounts from rabbis’ in early AD, this doesn’t mean Rabbis’ never existed.
Masons and satanists have been christian opponents for a long time.
Ya well, we can only argue about the historical Jesus. Even though you are interested in the theology debate, it’s just against the rules here… but it is a smarter argument for an atheist.
From my point of view, the best way to go with that theology debate is by disproving the resurrection; a basis that the Apostles really got fooled like you guys suggested.
It’s not possible to make the connection that person X is identical to God. Human’s don’t have the mental capacity to make such an identification, not through sense-data and not through reasoning. You couldn’t make the connection if you got to analyze person X entirely. Taking someone else’s word for the matter is even more silly, so the whole divinity of person X is a futile debate.
Whether or not someone came back from the dead takes more than the eye-witness accounts of primitive people. All Thomas did for example, was touch some wounds and then he concluded it must have been resurrection, a silly leap of logic on his part, who knows how the others came to their conclusions.
The source you quoted concedes that the early versions of Mark do not contain this passage and were a later addition. His whole argument, “well … early versions don’t contain the verses, but afterward it got added, and its been around for centuries now, so we should treat it as legit” is wack. Of course 99% of the later versions contain it. Some scribe decided to add those verses, then later scribes copied those additional verses as well. The argument that “well these changes were made centuries ago and have been around for a long time in canon” does not alter the fact that the changes were made.
Strawman. We are looking at the existence of one person, not the existence of a group of people. Josephus, Philo, Dead sea scrolls, etc mention groups such as the Essenes, Pharisees, Saducees, etc
and LOL at cisco. stick with making troll threads dude.
Let’s say I took Hamlet and had a five-year old tack on an epilogue where Hamlet was revived as Captain Planet.
Would literary scholars consider it part of the play as written by William Shakespeare? No.
Would it be completely fucking retarded? Yes.
Would some people actually be so ignorant as to accept it as the true ending? Probably, especially Captain Planet apologists like StarvinMarvin.
Because by your own words, it is entirely up to interpretation? Thus it is subjective.
In the future, I will be more conscious of how poorly sarcasm is delivered through text.
I was merely pointing out that you’re making some bold claims about the importance of compelling documentation. There’s also documentation of about 20 other guys walking around with a messiah title. Was Jesus a real guy? Probably. I don’t really see what this proves or disproves though. Elvis Presley has more documentation about him as a musician than anyone else in his generation. I guess that’s why he’s called the “King?” Does this discount the validity of every other musician during his time period who was outshone by his performance? What about every musician before him whose work and evidence of existence are more difficult to come by, but still exist? I can concede that there was a dude walking around during that time frame who people called “Jesus.” That’s about all I can concede though since even nowadays we are more prone to avatarize people as heroes without paying attention to their “negative” points. Ex: Margaret Sanger of planned parenthood. Seen as a hero by many people. Was a severe racist and built planned parenthood on the basis of ethnic cleansing. Her Existence is much better documented than that of Jesus and her lifetime is much more recent. However, despite her “atrocious” nature, she is still seen as a hero and for any girl getting a morning-after pill, a savior.
Are you or have you ever been a Mason? Do you know anyone who has been? Have you even had a conversation with them? Have you been privy to their bylaws? Doesn’t sound like it. I have. You’re spouting rhetoric with no basis and are frankly looking very foolish. For perspective, the logic you are using is that since little Susie down the street is in opposition to christianity, then the girl scouts of america are against it. You are most definitely sounding like an idiot. Stop it.
Satanists on the other hand may or may not be opposed to christians, but should very much be aware of the perception of the reliance on christian mythos to base their own off of. Again, this is entirely up to the denomination of Satanism. Many denominations do not even require the acknowledgement of a christ and are more focussed on Judaism and Enoch.
So, many people’s opinions have been changed. Some atheists have become christians, some christians have become atheists. All due to the rousing conversation with NO circular arguments in this thread!
Oh wait…
^_-;
It’s not subjective, that’s what the bible is in whole. It wasn’t meant to be a history book, it was a book of Gods revelation.
Hahaha. You trying to save yourself by saying you where being sarcastic?
I’m not making “bold claims”. I’m stating the facts. You also originally intended to prove me at error by listing a bunch of names you thought had better documentations, now seeing that you were that ignorant, you then shift your own arguments. To question Jesus’ historicity, because of the sources/documentations on him, forces you to actually start questioning the historicity of Caesar, Confucius, Alexander the great. You just don’t want to admit that you really never had researched before.
You really need to think more about the examples you put out here, because this thing about Elvis was really irrelevant and stupid. This has no similarity with the academic identification of a historical figure of the ancient times. Before the time of cameras, videos, and radio. Elvis’ having “greater” performances is a dumb example and it has nothing relevant to historical documentations speaking about a person living in early AD.
Maybe i should start pasting quotes from atheist historians to actually show you Jesus was a historical fact.
Oh god. The originators of the Christ-Myth where Masons and Satanists. Masons have long been known to have been christian opponents. I hope you are not trying to make an argument that Masons are “friends” of Christianity. Masons have been responsible for many lies against Jesus.
Dude, no one is talking about Satanic beliefs, we are just saying that the Christ myth originated from satanists such as Halena Blavatsky. No matter what exactly Satanists believe in is redundant, i don’t even know why you are talking about that.
In her book she writes “Lucifer is divine and terrestrial light, the ‘Holy Ghost’ and ‘Satan’ at one and the same time, visible Space being truly filled with the differentiated Breath invisibly.”
The point of bringing up HP Blavatsky is so that you guys see where the whole “Jesus-Myth” roots from. It’s to trigger you to start actually start questioning the background of this conspiracy. It has no academic roots; no christian opponent historian/academician of the early times ever made a thesis on that but a bunch of Satanists and Free Masons.
You didn’t read everything in there. There is no debate against Mark (16:9-20), it is even annotated in Bibles that those last verses where added. However, what is in error is the argument of those verses being ADDED. The argument is that they where deleted, and yes that is a significant difference.
I wasn’t talking about those groups. The “Jesus has no first hand writings” is a straw man argument and it just shows you are ignorant of the culture of early AD. Reason why is because Jesus existed during the time when Oral tradition was a common practice for teachers. Confucius does not have his own writings yet this was never an argument used against his historical existence. Finally, there is allot of information from Kix and Cisco against some of your arguments already; please read them because i don’t want to repeat answers all the time.
Oral tradition means people heard the story from a friend of a friend.
Good thing ppl were infallible back then and gossip was always true.
Christians, there are two questions here:
- Was Jesus real?
- Did Jesus have special connection to God that nobody else had?
To defend the first point, you have been using The Bible, or parts of it, as a history book. Now, in order to prove the second, it has to be more than that, as Cisco points out:
Now, we know what kinds of tests a book has to pass in order to be a historical record: it has to match up to other books and other forms of evidence, the historaical details also have to be internally consistent etc.
My question to you now is what kinds of tests would you apply to the Bible to prove it is the Word of God? If it is the only such book, as you believe, then these would have to be pretty spectacular tests because it would be of a totally different category to every other book.
Yet look, I hold a match to a Bible and it burns, I put it under water and its pages fall apart…
It is very traumatic for religious people to give up their beliefs. It will likely not happen instantly in a thread. Yet a big reason I gave up my old beliefs were because of online debates. It just takes a bit of time is all.
Christians: good luck with that, by the way. 
I missed this post.
The reason why Historians don’t consider the absence of Authorship as a reason to question Jesus is because Jesus’ career was of only 3 years. He journeyed, preached and got killed with in a time span of 3 years. There was no room for him to write a book, unlike the names you mentioned who had longer careers as teachers. The next reason is because of the destruction of Jerusalem of 70 AD where allot of (what could be) sources of early AD where destroyed - this is an assumption so you don’t need to consider this. There is no basis at all to suggest that Paul created the theology of Jesus, because we see the other Gospels teaching that same common theology (Jesus is the Christ, the son of God). Paul wasn’t even leader like in the book of acts.
There are no errors or contradictions in the 4 gospels, The “inconsistencies” are actually just a misunderstanding of what the Gospels really are. Did you really think the “inconsistencies” you listed where accidents? They knew what was in each gospels because they used Mark, and Luke used both Matt and Mark as a guideline to for their gospels. You probably think that the gospels are supposed to be like 4 witnesses in a courtroom who are supposed to tell the exact same thing that happened. No. These are gospels, which is the “good news”, and should not be looked at to be a form of journalism. Accusing them to have errors is problematic because they used each other as a guideline. Mark was used by Matt and Matt was used by Luke as a guideline.
The 4 gospels are harmonic when it comes to the main subject, “Jesus is the son of God”. However, the Authors never intended to repeat Jesus. It is trivial to think so. What the authors intended was to deliver the theological description of Jesus to their target audience. So each the authors used different portraits and different focuses of him. For example, Look at Mark and John and read the part before Jesus’ arrest. Mark talks about the agony of Jesus yet doesn’t mention the place he was at (the garden). John gives Jesus at the garden, yet doesn’t bother to write down his agony. The reason why these gospels don’t exactlly share in details is because of their of focusing on Jesus.
Mark’s target audience where the persecuted people/churches, and his gospels focuses more on the humanity of Christ… which is why he records only the agony and shows Jesus to be a total wreck just minutes before his arrest. While John focuses for the Jewish-Christian audience; John’s gospel focuses more on Jesus’ divine God status, than any of the other gospels. Luke, who’s profession was a historian, focuses on Jesus as the teacher (his teachings and moral philosophy) and he shows the philosophical wisdom and impeccable biblical scholar like knowledge Jesus had. Luke give more historical accounts and sheds more of the history of Jesus by even writing about things that took place with in his family before he was born.
This is why the gospels record different things (you gave some other examples) and events of Jesus because of the way they where portraying him to their specific target audience.
This actually shows the historical value of the gospels than an error. Thanks.
Luke has proven himself over and over throughout the centuries to be a reliable historian, even in the details. In his making reference to 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands, Luke made no mistakes. Luke even says in his intro that he has investigated everything from the beginning for his gospel. Straight to the point though, neither Matt nor Luke are at error. Firstly, Luke didn’t say Jesus was born when Quirinus was Governor Syria, it says Quirinus was governing. Luke used the term “hegemon”, in the greek, which is a broader term than “governor”, and may well be referring to the administrative role Quirinius was assigned. There is also confirmation that Quirinius was in Syria during the first Roman census taken between 8 B.C. and 5 B.C… The Roman historian Tacitus also mentions that Quirinius was appointed by Augustus to be an adviser to his young son Caius Caesar in Armenia well before the census of 6 A.D. So yes, he was governing (not a Governor) Syria during the time and Luke didn’t suggest that Jesus was born at 6 AD.
Read Luke, and read before the start of Jesus’ genealogy, it says: “Jesus, so it was thought, the son of Joseph”. Indicating that Joseph wasn’t actually Jesus father (biologically), he was only the father by “law”. Then the rest goes “The son of Heli” Heli being the closest Biological Male to Jesus, of course his grand father, then blah blah the son of Nathan (Note, Matt includes Solomon). This shows that Luke gives a biological family line of Jesus. Please remember, Luke used Matt as a guide to writing his gospel, so he was well aware of what Mat gave. Furthermore, to show that Luke is the biological line while Matt is Jesus’ line through law, we look at the two sons of David that where mentioned: Solomon who is mentioned in Matt, while Nathan is in Luke. In the OT, God cursed the line of Solomon; a king will come out of Solomon’s line. This supports that the other son David, Nathan, is the root that shows Jesus to be a biological descendant of the house of David, and because of this it is concluded that Luke is using Mary’s line because Mary is Jesus’ biological parent.
Both of those questions obviously get a yes. In the defense of the first point, we don’t need the Bible to show that Jesus existed and i believe that has been explained already. Cisco is right that the Bible was not meant to be a History Book, this doesn’t mean that the Bible is historically wrong it just means that it isn’t the purpose of the Bible. It genuinely serves as to how we showed live our lives and the relationship God had with man. You are mistaken to think that the Bible is an actual book (because you are talking about it like it is a Book); it is actually a compilation of books some of which are indeed historical narratives, while others are songs, proverbs, advices, prophecies, and letters.
Because the bible can be physically destroyed is your reasoning as a against it being the Word of God? This is a dumb form of reasoning, and you think of God as a genie like entity.
God’s way of power is not like that of a complete show off that uses hocus pocus - supernatural powers to prove himself. The Bible is just a material, it’s the messages in it that makes it powerful. You reasoning of evidence is a clue to how misinformed you are as an atheist concerning the Judeo-Christian God.
Every other book (and the Bible is a ‘book’ in that it is printed type on pages of paper) is considered the word of man. Only the Bible is (to you) considered the word of God.
So there should be something damn special about this book of yours. So what is it?
I’ve put forward some ideas for the kinds of thing that would make your book a ‘God’ book, rather than a from man book.
And where is the proof that the message came from God and not from man? I can’t see it.
Honestly, I have respect for general philosohpical theists. As it isn’t possible to entirely rule out the existence of God, I enjoy hearing arugments in favour and those against.
But this religious book stuff, to take all your knowledge of God from a book written by men… that I cannot fathom, and it hurts my brain trying to understand how you guys can put so much faith in the words you read.
Why does it have to have supernatural features to make it special, you really have a messed up concept and you are sounding like an imbecile when you make reasons such as that? The Bible is called the word of God because it contains books of God’s revelation.
its unity is one reason of it being Special from other books. Even though it is really sixty-six individual books, written on three continents, in two different languages, over a period of approximately 1500 years, by more than 40 authors who came from many walks of life, the Bible remains one unified book from beginning to end without contradiction.
Next is the prophecies contained within its pages. The Bible contains hundreds of detailed prophecies relating to the future of individual nations including Israel, certain cities, and mankind. Other prophecies (with in the OT) concern the coming of One who would be the Messiah. Unlike the prophecies found in other religious books or those by men such as Nostradamus, biblical prophecies are extremely detailed. The Bible can also change lives, the words of the Bible are indeed that powerful. That is rather subjective though, but you can not deny that the Bible has been involved in someones personal change.
External wise, The Bible has a compelling historicity accuracy. Even though, the bible it self was not for the purpose of lecturing History, but it doesn’t exclude the fact that the historical accounts have been proven to be true. In fact, all the archaeological and manuscript evidence supporting the Bible makes it the best-documented book from the ancient world. The fact that the Bible accurately and truthfully records historically verifiable events is a great indication of its truthfulness when dealing with religious subjects and doctrines is why it stands out from the other ancient books. Lastly, the indestructibility of the Bible. Because of its importance and its claim to be the very Word of God, the Bible has suffered more vicious attacks and attempts to destroy it than any other book in history. From early Roman Emperors like Diocletian, through communist dictators and on to modern-day atheists, the Bible has withstood and outlasted all of it.
These is what makes the book special. There is no need for any magic like features for a book, because God’s way of reveling himself isn’t that way.
Your ideas show your wrong concept of God and your concept is ignorantly built from what you watch in movies and read in comic books. It’s atrocious reasoning.