Posted on 03/31/2018 9:29:51 AM PDT by V K Lee
”PAUL, THE APOSTLE OF CHRIST”
ABOUT THE FILM
PAUL, APOSTLE OF CHRIST is the story of two men. Luke, as a friend and physician, risks his life when he ventures into the city of Rome to visit Paul, who is held captive in Nero’s darkest, bleakest prison cell. But Nero is determined to rid Rome of Christians, and does not flinch from executing them in the grisliest ways possible. Before Paul’s death sentence can be enacted, Luke resolves to write another book, one that details the beginnings of “The Way” and the birth of what will come to be known as the church.
Bound in chains, Paul’s struggle is internal. He has survived so much—floggings, shipwreck, starvation, stoning, hunger and thirst, cold and exposure—yet as he waits for his appointment with death, he is haunted by the shadows of his past misdeeds. Alone in the dark, he wonders if he has been forgotten . . . and if he has the strength to finish well.
Two men struggle against a determined emperor and the frailties of the human spirit in order to live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ and spread their message to the world.
Poison Pill: I find it fascinating that you just state something controversial (Tacitus is a forgery) without citing any evidence whatsoever!
I doubt I’ll convince you, because that would mean a major adjustment in your worldview, but for other readers I’ll offer this:
Even Bart Ehrman, famous New Testament author and NO friend of Christian causes, says this:
“I asked one of the prominent scholars of the Roman world, James Rives, who happens now to teach at UNC. Anyone who wonders about his credentials can look them up on the web; he’s one of the best known experts on Roman religion (and other things Roman) internationally. He has given me permission to cite him by name, as he is willing to stand by what he says.
My initial email question to him was this:
I’m wondering if there is any dispute, today, over the passage in Annals 15 where he mentions Jesus (whether there is any dispute over its authenticity).
His initial reply was this:
I’ve never come across any dispute about the authenticity of Ann. 15.44; as far as I’m aware, it’s always been accepted as genuine, although of course there are plenty of disputes over Tacitus’ precise meaning, the source of his information, and the nature of the historical events that lie behind it.”
https://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/
Likewise, Wikipedia dismisses the forgery theory:
“Suggestions that the whole of Annals may have been a forgery have also been generally rejected by scholars.”
I have yet to have any exchange with a Christian who would accept anything but evidence that corroborates their apologetic viewpoint. You cherry pick the evidence that suits you and you ignore the evidence that does not. This is dishonest. Your argument with Tacitus is a good example. You cite the quote and give the dates for Tacitus' life as if to suggest an original exists. But that work is not extant from the 1st. C. It comes from only one document that was written in the 11th. C. That is a gap of nearly 1000 years. This ought to give you some pause. It ought to beg a question in your mind, but it never does. Why? You only want to defend what already believe.
If Tacitus was the ONLY document on which our faith hinged, you might be right. However, the fact of the matter is that Christians base their belief on 20 or more things making a CUMULATIVE case. So if even 1/20th or even 5/20ths have problems, that’s not enough to sway. It’s like a court case where not everything is figured out, but there’s enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s true of almost all cases.
Now if you DO want one thing to shake up Christians, disprove the resurrection. But beware, almost all who try it end up becoming Christians. (C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Jim Warner Wallace, Gary Habermas, Frank Morison, Sean McDowell, etc.)
Ditto for Aristotle.
The Church also finished the rest of Homer's works too.
Going by your “expertise” of how literary works were derived from antiquity; Herodotus, Polybius, Thucydides (LOL), Hippocrates, Isaeus, Sextus Empiricus, etc... literary undertakings were all created from Church manuscripts, thus all forgeries in your view.
Do you have any idea how all these manuscripts are created and then put under historic review?
If you have proof Tacitus was a forgery, then you would be the toast of academia. Never heard of anyone proving this though.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if Plato wrote “The Republic”. It doesn’t matter if it was written by one person or re-written by several people. If we found out tomorrow that Shakespeare never existed, and that all those plays were written by Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe it wouldn’t change the importance of “MacBeth”. What matters is that we have the works and that they are brilliant commentaries on the human condition. The difference between the historical existence of Plato or Shakespeare and Jesus is that neither Plato nor Shakespeare ever make any claim to divinity. Their works don’t perpetuate centuries of violence, war and bloodshed. And, nobody ever committed genocide because some other group didn’t want to sit through “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
The claim of a god/man resurrection isn’t special or unique to Christianity. Dying and resurrecting gods were very common in the ancient near east. Osiris, Adonis, Innana, etc. Each were created by their cultures and none of them were real. Trying to disprove that the resurrection you believe in is false is like trying to disprove that Dorothy never made it to the Emerald City.
Why was Alexandria the site of the most important library in the ancient world? This should clue you in on the whole reason why manuscripts produced during the Middle-Ages were important in retaining the longevity of literary works. What did Egypt corner the market in during antiquity around the West and the Middle-East?
These monks were not Live-Action Role-Playing and making up crap but copying from fragile sources which were copied from fragile sources and so on and so on. Scholars then used archeology to verify “these” stories along with other sources/traditions. Ancient histories were debunked if they failed this scrutiny.
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