I had intended on positing a more lengthy response to your last post which was full of error both in terms of characterizing what I was saying and in your understanding of Biblical authorship. You have been unwilling to respond directly to any evidences I have previously offered. What should change now? You are simply satisfied in your current state of mind (you call it openness), are willing to make accusations that you cannot/will not defend and then posit one more shallow argument before running out of the room to here/consider any response. And rather than discuss the totality of my response to you, you’ve cherry-picked a single statement and turned this into a new area for discussion. No mention of the Piso family. No defense of their questionable character/nature. You mention many empty tombs and...what can I say. Yes, you’re right. There were/are many empty tombs all over the place. Probably not just in the Middle East. But Christ’s was empty on the third day. The grave clothes were still inside. The body was not. And then the “body” that was supposed to be dead and buried starts walking around and talking to people and eating with people and takes a band of shaken-to-the-core followers who are hiding for their lives and offers them such hope that they are now out in the streets preaching His gospel. One of these, who boasted how he would die rather than deny Him, suffers such a monumental failure of loyalty (having denied Him 3 times, exactly the way he was told he would), is now ready to risk life and limb to preach the Gospel. Gets sent to jail, gets beaten, is crucified upside down for it. Who would do this for a hoax? Who would do this for some agenda? Who would do this because he thought he might stand to gain some power or position? This, too, is evidence for THE empty tomb (which I believe you knew we were talking about, but you would not stand THERE to consider THAT empty tomb. Peter preached to those who were alive and saw Christ crucified (heck, some of those there were the ones who HAD Him crucified!) Where was the counter-argument as he preached? Where was the counter-manuscript to challenge this? Your dates about scripture authorship take the later, but not agreed to dates (and some you cite are simply inaccurate—2nd century?) Most historians believe most of the books of the New Testament to have been written by 70 AD. Luke was likely written by 50 A.D. which would mean that there was an audience of quite a few people who were alive at the time of the events he was recording. You use some idea about writing and reading being illegal and punishable, as if that settled if for folks, “We’re just not going to read and write.” No. Even in Communist China, where it is illegal to have a church, there are churches. But, look at me. I said I wasn’t going to post long and here I am, attempting to persuade, convince, refute...
Therefore, I will stop. I will consider my work done here. We have left an electronic trail for all time of how each of us stands on this issue. We have We can both walk away knowing we have stuck to our guns, defended our positions (you, somewhat less so, in my view) and can go and tell others how we have “run the course, finished the race, kept our faiths.”
I responded to your postings because you are one who believes the bible despite fact and logic of human nature is those issues of transcription.
You will believe because you have been taught not to think beyond the box you are in.
You keep proving that fact so why don’t you just go your way and believe what you want to believe and I will go for documentation of actual script and not parchment that was missing for nearly 5 centuries and all that existed was copies of copies of copies etc..............................
By now.