Posted on 12/04/2013 3:17:41 PM PST by servo1969
So he didn’t send emails, but you were convinced by the good behavior of others.
Not a bad reason to convert, and one that led me to convert once myself. Humans are very sociable animals, as anyone who tried to bet against the guy rolling in Craps (the odds are better) will attest.
I wish you joy, and thank you for your service in the Special Forces. De Oppresso Liber!
I would not like playing dodge ball against you.
Perhaps a courtesy of reviewing Greenleaf’s method is in order. You can blame the ancients for their approach, however we are now in the 21st century and can examine the same evidence they had.
God sure does like to write. Check out Exodus 24 & 34. He prefers stone tablets.
Why didn’t G-d inspire them to meet modern standards.
After all. G-d knew that we would develop these modern standards, right?
Anyone?
More ‘Jam yesterday,Jam tomorrow, but never Jam today.’
So you aren’t getting emails either? The noive of him!
have a link for greenleaf?
Greenleaf wants to admit the gospels as ancient documents.
Hypothetically a court could admit the gospels as ancient documents, but that does not mean that their specific contents are automatically acknowledged as facts.
Technically, the gospels are at best hearsay, and are thus inadmissible for that reason alone.
When considering the contents as possibly, but not certainly containing facts, one should ask if they contain obvious falsehoods. Certainly the behavior of the Star of Bethlehem is an obvious falsehood, and any document that has obvious falsehoods should be rejected.
Certainly an assertion of an eclipse during the full moon would be a falsehood.
The assertion that the Sanhedrin said what ever they said has no record of who in the Sanhedrin said it, nor to whom it was said that carried the tail to the author. Such pretended testimony is not even hearsay, and should be rejected as if it was never uttered (because it may not have been).
So using Simon Greenleaf’s method, the gospels testimony is rejected.
a
I further assert that the gospels bear the marks of forgery, with the synoptic gospels being largely copied from another document, (Q) with their contents being such that the people available when writing them could not have been eye witnesses of the events to which the documents assert. That leads to errors of fact, such as odd behavior of stars, eclipses of the sun during a full moon, manufactured testimony by persons not available to the author, and (ready...
Assertions that people rise from the dead.)
No amount of correct testimony (Pontius Pilate was governor) mixed in with falsehood is sufficient to give the testimony of ancient documents, only admitted under the exception to hearsay rules that is given to ancient documents, credence.
If the ancient documents are a mixture of falsehood and fact, the fact that the documents are ancient makes it difficult to determine which is which. So after the gospels show the marks of forgery and the inability of the author to restrict his testimony to fact, the whole document can be safety relegated to the category of pious fraud- and rejected from being admitted as evidence.
“The author of Matthew was not matthew, and probably didn’t meet Jesus.
The author of Mark was Paul’s secretary, and probably didn’t meet Jesus. It is likely that Paul never met Jesus.
The author of Luke was commissioned by one Theophilus, and probably didn’t meet Jesus.”
Good to see that you have changed targets from Robert E Lee to Christ. And that your tactics haven’t changed even though you’re after bigger game.
Matthew and John were two of the original Apostles.
Mark was Peter’s amanuensis, not ‘Paul’s secretary’.
Luke accompanied Paul and is mentioned in two of Paul’s letters.
It looks like you’ve been memorizing all the greatest hits from your favorite atheist website. The usual junk that any good apologetics source can debunk.
The Bible contains 66 emails from God.
Prior to reading Greenleaf's free book, may I suggest you take a look at Sir William Blackstone.
So he didn’t send emails, but you were convinced by the good behavior of others.
Wrong! His behavior provided me the reason to examine the evidence for the veracity of the Gospels. My mentor had 5 earned doctorates: literature, law, psychology, and two in theology. He frequently made the statement, " There is more than enough evidence in the Gospels to send ten men to the electric chair.
Not a bad reason to convert, and one that led me to convert once myself. Humans are very sociable animals, as anyone who tried to bet against the guy rolling in Craps (the odds are better) will attest.
I don't gamble, nor convert based on personalities, but look at all the available evidence, and then try to prove myself wrong. Anybody can prove themselves right on a subject, but it takes a strong person to prove themselves wrong.
Now try reading "Greenleaf's book with an open mind.
BTW, your knowledge of textual criticism is very flawed. Almost all Biblical scholars place Mark as having been written first, and we now have a probable fragment of Mark from the First Century.
http://danielbwallace.com/2012/03/22/first-century-fragment-of-marks-gospel-found/
Instead of letting skeptics define Christian faith as a leap into the dark, let me define it from a Christian pov. "Faith is an action, or a readiness to act, based on the evidence one has in the object or person of their belief."
So you listen to men like G.A. Wells. Listen to what a professional secular humanist has to say about your view.
G.A.Wells - retired German teacher, amateur theologian and the hyper-skeptics' demigod. Wells is not very well known outside of the skeptical community. It is the curious nature of his ideas which draws attention. There have been Bible scholars who have denied Jesus said the things attributed to him. Few, however, have joined Wells in denying Jesus very existence. Randel Helms, speaking to an audience of secular humanists at a CODESH "Institute for Inquiry" on "A Secular Humanist Approach to the Gospels," said sarcastically, "I think that you can deal with Well's notion that Christianity could have started without a historical Jesus [as follows]: Sure Christianity could have started without a historical Jesus. And monkeys could fly out of my butt."
I have the Pereus Classics Colllection, which contain 366 of Plutarch's writings in Greek and English. Luke and Plutarch are not the same person.
Seventy-one N.T. scholars date Mark as having been written between 59 and 64.3.
They place Matthew between 62.1 and 69.
Luke was penned between 64.1 and 68.4.
John;s Gospel is dated between 83.5 and 89.4.
http://www.errantskeptics.org/DatingNT-ChronologicalOrder.htm
The Shroud rates zero on my evidence scale.
The Rules for scientific evidence have changed, but historical evidence is a totally different matter.
I will post this again for your benefit.
The story of the ancient world is recorded by several historians of old, such as Homer, Josephus, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus—called “the father of history,” and Thucydides, who is credited as being one of the most trustworthy of ancient sources. All of them suffer in comparison to the historical pinpoint accuracy of Luke.
Luke was undeniably brilliant, possessing remarkable literary abilities and a deep knowledge of the Greek language. He was the only non-Jewish author of the Bible. Yet he wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else—28 percent. He was a physician and a scientist. He was a writer and a medical missionary. He has proved himself a historian of first rank. Here he tells us that before writing his Gospel, he did the work of an investigative journalist, recording his findings in an orderly manner based on careful investigation: “It seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught” (
With that in mind, remember that Luke painstakingly and confidently described the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in his Gospel, chapters 23 and 24; and he repeatedly made reference to the Resurrection in the book of Acts.
The brilliant Wilbur Smith said:
"Of all the writers in the New Testament, Luke was the one who knew better than any of them, from his own medical experience, that it was utterly impossible for a dead body to come to life again by its own power. He was also a man who would have no faith in such a great doctrine as the resurrection of Christ, were it based upon a vision, a hallucination, mental excitement, or the blowing of the wind, or the rattling of a window. It was the conviction of this scientist and scholar, true Grecian and true Christian, that the Lord manifested himself to his disciples in many proofs." To reject the Resurrection, you have to disregard the demonstrated reliability of one of the foremost historians of the first century, a man who has been proven accurate even in the minutia of his narrative. How accurate was Luke's historical record? He tied everything into history and gave us historical anchors all along the way, both in his Gospel and Acts. His historical pegs have proven accurate even in minute points. For example, notice the way he began chapter 2: those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register” (Luke 2:1–3).
Luke did not just say that Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem. He said they traveled there because of a census instituted by Caesar Augustus and that this particular census occurred while a man named Quirinius was governor of Syria. A hundred years ago, critics had a field day with that statement, finding no evidence in history to suggest that Caesar ever issued such a decree. Furthermore (critics charged) there was nothing to suggest that Quirinius was ever governor of Syria at the time prescribed by Luke. Then a series of discoveries were made. Sir William Ramsay, the Scottish archaeologist, dug up first-century documents showing that the Roman Empire conducted a regular taxpaying census every fourteen years and that this system originated in the days of Caesar Augustus. Another document was found in Egypt, an edict of G. Vibius Maximus written on papyrus, describing the procedure used in such a census, directing taxpayers to return to their ancestral towns to register. Another inscription discovered by Ramsay in Antioch showed that with brief interruptions, a man named Quirinius functioned as military governor in Syria from 12 b.c. to a.d. 16.
Notice in the next chapter, Luke 3, how meticulously Luke nails down his historical references: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert” (Luke 3:1–2)
Sound like misty legend and fabricated fable? Anything but! Luke tacks John’s ministry to the wall of history using six different pins. John the Baptist appeared when (1) Tiberius Caesar was in his fifteenth year of rule; (2) Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea; (3) Herod was tetrarch of Galilee; (4) Herod’s brother Philip was tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis; (5) Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene; and (6) Annas and Caiaphas were sharing the office of high priest. Most of these facts are easy to verify, but a couple of them caused problems. A hundred years ago, critics were attacking Luke’s reference to Lysanias, saying, “The only Lysanias mentioned in history was killed in 36 b.c., sixty years before John the Baptist.” But the critics were stilled when archaeologists excavated an inscription near Damascus, stating that a man named Lysanias was indeed tetrarch of Abilene at the time mentioned by Luke. The skeptics also made hay with Pontius Pilate. For most of modern history his name has been absent on every historical document we have from the ancient world. Critics charged that Pilate was a fabrication. But a stone I have personally seen and took a picture of was excavated in Caesarea. It has the name Pontius Pilate plainly engraved for all the world to see. He was governor of Judea during the very time given by Luke, and he was headquartered at Caesarea.
I mentioned earlier how William Ramsay traveled to the Middle East to disprove Luke’s historical references and how, to his great surprise, he found the writings of Luke accurate in their tiniest details. This is even more remarkable when we consider that every other historian in the ancient world—men like Polybius, Quintilian, Xenophon, Josephus, and even Thucydides—did not hesitate to misrecord the facts to suit their own purposes.
Sir you are entering the clown zone.
You would have to look at the rules governing previous testimony and deposition. Both are admitted as evidence given the capacity of the witness. Luke deposed numerous witnesses to gain the history of Christ’s life and ministry. Those witnesses were first hand accounts and are no longer available for cross examination of their testimony. However their deposition as presented by Luke is not thrown out of court when considering the preponderance of the evidence.
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