If you feed the trolls, you feed their ego...
Posted on 12/04/2013 3:17:41 PM PST by servo1969
A sixty-seven year old proud atheist friend of mine recently interjected the sweeping statement “all religion is irrational” into one of our conversations. I replied, not with a direct rebuttal but, instead, with the unexpected question, “who is Jesus Christ?” He replied, “I don’t know.” If I were to ask some of you why I pulled that question out of left field you might also reply with a bewildered “I don’t know.” So keep reading. Please.
If you have never really pondered the question “who is Jesus Christ?” then you simply cannot consider yourself to be a committed intellectual – at least not yet. Let me say that in a different way: if you have never given serious thought to the true identity of the most important individual ever to walk the face of the earth then you are either a) suffering from severe intellectual hernia, or b) possessed of an intellect impaired by a fear of knowing the true answer to the question.
Let me begin by defending the assertion that Jesus Christ was the most important individual ever to walk the face of the earth. 1) We divide time using the date of Jesus’ birth. 2) More books have been written about Jesus than anyone else in recorded history. Case closed. Now we can move on to the issue of fear and intellectual curiosity.
The options we are given for understanding the identity of Jesus are so limited that no one who is truly intelligent can be behaving rationally if he just avoids the question altogether. Take, for example, my friend who has lived 2/3 of a century on this planet without so much as attempting to work through the options. I don’t want you to be one of those irrational people so let’s get to work.
When addressing the question of Jesus’ identity, there are only four available options. Anyone who has ever read C.S. Lewis or Josh McDowell knows that Jesus was either: 1) A legend, 2) a lunatic, 3) a liar, or 4) the Lord.
The idea that Jesus was merely a legend, as opposed to someone who actually lived, is simply not an option we can take seriously (at least not for long). Independent historical accounts, by that I mean accounts written by non-Christians, are enough to put this option to rest. Jesus is cited by 42 sources within 150 years of his life, and nine of those sources are non-Christian. By contrast, the Roman Emperor Tiberius is only mentioned by 10 sources. If you believe Tiberius existed, how can you not believe in a man who is cited by four times as many people and has had an immeasurably greater impact on history? You can believe that if you wish. But then you risk forfeiting any claim to be considered rational.
Nor is it rational to consider Jesus to have been a lunatic. Perhaps you could maintain that belief if you’ve never read the Bible. But how can a person claim to be educated if he’s never read the Bible?
World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky once entertained the notion that Jesus was a mere lunatic. But, then, in the early 1970s, as an atheist and a communist graduate student, he examined the words of Jesus for the first time. He was traveling to Russia on a ship and wanted to brush up on his Russian. But all he had with him to read (that just happened to be written in Russian) was a copy of the New Testament. And so he read. And he was transformed.
Marvin recognized immediately that the words of Jesus represent a profound level of moral understanding that rises above anything else that has ever been written. Read for yourself the words of Jesus. Then read the words of Charles Manson. Try to convince me that they are one in the same – merely two lunatics who mistakenly thought they were the Messiah. You have a right to that opinion. But you don’t have a right to be considered rational if you cannot detect a glaring difference between the teachings of Christ and Manson.
So, now only two options remain. And this is where the real trouble begins. If we call Jesus a liar (who falsely claimed to be God) then we cannot also call him a great moral teacher. One cannot be both. But many look at the final option of calling him Lord and panic. To go there means to accept belief in the supernatural. And surely that couldn’t be rational. Or could it?
Science has taught us a lot since the Bible was written. For one thing, we know that the universe had a beginning. It is expanding, it is finite, and it was not always here. Put simply, Carl Sagan was wrong. In fact, he was dead wrong. The cosmos is not all that is or was or that ever will be. It had a beginning. It is irrational to dismiss the obvious implications of this: that the universe was caused by a supernatural force existing outside of space and time.
People have to let go of the idea that the natural world is all there is because that is not where the science leads us. It instead leads us away from the philosophical commitment to only considering naturalistic explanations for the things we observe in the physical universe. This also leads us to one very important question: if a supernatural force was great enough to create the universe could the force or being not also reenter creation? And another related question: is the force or being responsible for creating life not also able to conquer death?
Arguably, the resurrection is a pretty small accomplishment in comparison with the creation of the universe. But that doesn’t mean it happened. The evidence must be judged on its own merits. I recommend that serious intellectuals start here.
Of course, you could just keep avoiding the question while judging others to be irrational. But there’s no avoiding the plank in your own eye.
And here I thought you research your claims before posting. The reason Herod was visiting Jerusalem. Here is the reference from Luke 23:
When Pilate heard it, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. 7 And when he learned that He belonged to Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent Him to Herod, who himself also was in Jerusalem at that time.
The matter was one of jurisdiction of Jesus being Galilean. Not that Herod had any jurisdiction for Jerusalem.
I mostly start with the assumption that pious frauds abound and abounded.
Then I look at Wikipedia. When I see a range of dates, I pick the latter. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and also makes for fewer people to disagree with your cleverness.
Papyrus scroll didn’t last long. They wore out as they were rolled and unrolled, rather like an 8 track tape. They had to be continually copied, or abandoned. Copying was error prone, and the worst copies lasted longest, as nooone wanted to read the bad ones. After Matthew, there was less copying of Mark, so the oldest copies would be or Mark. Notes made in the margin had a tendency to get copied into the text on the next go around.
Freer Logion in Mark may have started as such a marginal note.
“I, Paul himself, tell you that I did not write Colossians.”
Did you doubt that? You should have.
Glad you agree that Herod was the local king of at least one Jew.
I guess you can "suppose" or "what if" all day and ignore the evidence presented. If you are still stuck on the Romand vs. Jewish Temple guard issue, then examine the scholarly references GarySpFc posted. Or do you think theologians are suspect because they study religion, faith, Biblical history, ancient languages/texts etc.?
I know just like people 'saw' military cargo planes crash into the twin towers and Pentagon. Where did all those passengers go?/s
Just come out and start posting the NT conspiracy theories you are alluding to above. Dan Brown has loads just go to his website.
You are not too good at admitting when you are wrong. The text is clear. Jesus was sent to Herod who was VISITING Jerusalem (probably for the Passover) because Pilate heard Jesus was from Galilee. It was an attempt by Pilate to punt the matter to someone else.
So you agree that Pilate thought that Herod was king of at least one Jew.
How long are you going to persist in this nonsense? Herod was not king of Judea. Galilee was a different jurisdiction. He had plenty of subjects in Galilee. Galilee is neither Judea nor Jerusalem. The Jews went to Pilate for guards, not Herod.
Please show your source documentation of that.
>>After Matthew, there was less copying of Mark, so the oldest copies would be or Mark.<<
Where you there or do you have documentation of that? Please show your source.
>>Notes made in the margin had a tendency to get copied into the text on the next go around.<<
Please show documentation as proof or your source for that information please.
>>Freer Logion in Mark may have started as such a marginal note.<<
May have????? Seriously? May have??? You don’t really think we are going to take you seriously with views based on “may have” do you?
Your really need to show documentation for your claims.
I was a bit older than 10 when I read my copy. I have a 5 volume classics set downstairs on my bookshelf gathering dust. I'm going to give them to my grandson, and pray the day comes when he reads it.
He calls himself a “Roman Pagan” on his about page. It seems he is nothing more than a troll here. He certainly is not one of us and is aligned with the enemy.
I figure my supposes are as good as anyone elses.
If it was important, then the author would have either
(1) made his meaning clear or
(2) someone else would have also thought it was important and made his meaning clear.
That documents are not there is a pretty good clue that they are not there. When the earliest scroll is dated 200, and it is not quoted before say 140 AD, then it is tough for me to accept that it existed before that. Of course such a conclusion is tentative, and subject to being revised in the event of evidence.
What happened to the earlier scrolls or codex? The story is that Tischendorf visited the Convent of St. Catherine, and asked shelter for the night. A monk came to light a fire in his cell, and the sound of tearing was odd to Tishendorf. They were tearing up old manuscripts as kindling. Noone could read them. They had been doing it for ages.
“I here pass over in silence the interesting details of my travels—my audience with the Pope, Gregory XVI, in May, 1843—my intercourse with Cardinal Mezzofanti, that surprising and celebrated linguist—and I come to the result of my journey to the East. It was in April, 1844, that I embarked at Leghorn for Egypt. The desire which I felt to discover some precious remains of any manuscripts, more especially Biblical, of a date which would carry us back to the early times of Christianity, was realized beyond my expectations. It was at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the Convent of St. Catherine, that I discovered the pearl of all my researches. In visiting the library of the monastery, in the month of May, 1844, I perceived in the middle of the great hall a large and wide basket full of old parchments; and the librarian, who was a man of information, told me that two heaps of papers like these, mouldered by time, had been already committed to the flames. What was my surprise to find amid this heap of papers a considerable number of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament in Greek, which seemed to me to be one of the most ancient that I had ever seen. The authorities of the convent allowed me to possess myself of a third of these parchments, or about forty-three sheets, all the more readily as they were destined for the fire. But I could not get them to yield up possession of the remainder. The too lively satisfaction which I had displayed had aroused their suspicions as to the value of this manuscript. I transcribed a page of the text of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and enjoined on the monks to take religious care of all such remains which might fall in their way. “
http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/extras/tischendorf-sinaiticus.html
This is a codex, not the older scrolls, but I suspect that the end result is the same.
Victor David Hanson wrote an article on the Battle of Salimis, in which the Greeks were widely known to have been outnumbered 6 to 1. Well they were, at least until a scroll at Pompeii, carbonized by the volcano in the 1st Century was able to be read recently using new technology (positron tomography IIRC). That scroll puts the odds at only 2 to 1. His point is that we know so darned little about ancient times. The conservative position is to know only what you have evidence on. So I use the latest possible date, as evidence of earlier dates are not there.
Are you familiar with the Freer Logion?
If you feed the trolls, you feed their ego...
Freer Logion
The ending of Mark in this codex is especially noteworthy because it includes a unique insertion after Mark 16:14, referred to as the "Freer Logion".
Κακεινοι απελογουντο λεγοντες οτι ο ιων ουτος της ανομιας υπο τον σαταναν εστιν, ο μη εων τα (τον μη εωντα?) υπο των πνευματων ακαθαρτα (-των?) την αληθειαν του θεου καταλαβεσθαι (+ και?) δυναμιν δια τουτο αποκαλυψον σου την δικαιοσυνην ηδη, εκεινοι ελεγον τω χριστω και ο χριστος εκεινοις προσελεγεν οτι πεπληρωται ο ορος των ετων της εξουσιας του σατανα, αλλα εγγιζει αλλα δεινα και υπερ ων εγω αμαρτησαντων παρεδοθην εις θανατον ινα υποστρεψωσιν εις την αληθειαν και μηκετι αμαρτησωσιν ινα την εν τω ουρανω πνευματικην και αφθαρτον της δικαιοσυνης δοξαν κληρονομησωσιν.
Translation:
And they excused themselves, saying, "This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits [or: does not allow what lies under the unclean spirits to understand the truth and power of God]. Therefore reveal thy righteousness now" - thus they spoke to Christ. And Christ replied to them, "The term of years of Satan's power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was delivered over to death, that they may return to the truth and sin no more in order to inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness which is in heaven.[22]
This text is not found in any other manuscript, but was partially quoted by Jerome:
et illi satisfaciebant dicentes: Saeculum istud iniquitatis et incredulitatis substantia (sub Satana?) est, quae non sinit per immundos spiritus veram Dei apprehendi virtutem: idcirco iamnunc revela iustitiam tuam.
I just gave you a nice copy of the Freer Logion on which to practice your NT Greek.
You are welcome!
Pelly assures me he is not a troll. I accept him at his word.
Oddly, he says he thought I was a troll!
Yes I am. Disputes come and go. You’re focus on it is nothing more than an attempt to discredit scripture. Inclusion or exclusion changes nothing as far as the gospel of Christ is concerned. Nothing in any portion of the gospel of Mark has ever been proven in error. Rely on speculation and myth if you will. I trust the word of God and the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Satan through his pagan emissaries has been at work to deceive for over 6000 years now. His and his emissaries time is short and their end horrific.
I wish you joy.
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