Why is Faith a Virtue?

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They didn't influence "secular" sources.

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So the miracles were literally invisible to anyone who wasn't a believer?For that matter, Jesus himself was literally invisible to anyone who wasn't a believer?

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Secular sources rejected them or ignored them.

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Well, then the actions must NOT have influenced thousands.

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What's a "secular source" anyway? Somebody who didn't believe the reports, that's all.

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No, I think he means a source that is witholding belief and just reports what happened. Like a reporter.

This is the statement about the author from the book jacket:"Marc Zvi Brettler received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University, where he is now Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Literature and chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies"It further states he is co-editor of The Jewish Study Bible.I don't know him personally. His book How to Read the Bible is published by the Jewish Publication Society. He is scarely unfamilier with Hebrew or the customs of the time.lfen

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By the time we encounter civilization and writing we also encounter what Maurice Berman calls the Sacred Authority Complex which in his writings he often abbreviates as the SAC. Here religion and the priest class are used to encourage, enforce, or control a large population of people into a functional social conformity but civilization has its price which can be very high. With the developement of the SAC faith comes into service of the SAC and the rulers. Faith is now in the authority of the state and its high priests and is used to further obediance. Such was clearly the function of Judaism.

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Hey, check out my sig below:

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"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."--Thomas JeffersonThere is no greater threat to civil liberties than an efficient government. -jar

Yes! Jefferson was quite radical in some of his ideas.lfen

Then he's just a Jewish version of our Brian.

There isn't even secondhand eyewitness testimony."Second hand eyewitness testimony" is what is generally referred to as hearsay evidence. It has a poor reputation for accuracy, and is usually not permitted in courts.

Well, he appears to be fluent in ancient Hebrew and has finished his Ph.D. He is not an atheist but states at the end of the book that he is an observant Jew for whom the Bible is more than the subject of his historical-critical scholarship. So I wouldn't say just a version of Brian.However both Marc and Brian are historical-critical scholars. Would you admit that Brian really knows the old testament? A least as a historical document?Btw in trying to gather materials about Christianity and European history I realize that I just don't have the time to range over hundreds of years. It's just a huge chunk of history to debate and other things are more pressing or of more interest at the moment. I'll leave it that we have differing views on the matter.This was the most recent work I've read on the subject:The Closing of the Western Mind: the rise of faith and the fall of reason by Charles Freeman, Heinemann, 2002a review of it can be found here:
http://homepages.which.net/...ical.faith/reviews/freeman.htmEdward Gibbon I think did what Freeman did several hundred years earlier but his work is immense. Here is a link for those interested in Gibbon: But if Gibbon in his awesomely massive scholarship can't convince you I'm sure I couldn't.lfen

and how long have you spoken fluent hebrew?Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

I'm afraid you are misremembering.The goths were among the first barbarian tribes to convert to Christianity around the 3rd and 4th centuries. The honor of being the last to convert at around 1000 AD belongs to Scandanavian Vikings77Dragon adalah situs judi slot online dan judi online terpercaya dengan slot online, slot88, agen slot online,game slot, judi bola, serta live casino onlineConstantine was sole emperor of the Roman Empire from 324-337 AD, which was not significantly smaller than at its territorial height under Trajan. The Roman Empire at the time still included Britain, Spain, France, North Africa, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, the area once known as Yugoslavia, and the Mediterranian. As sole emperor, Constantine had a significant influence upont these areas.Constantine I (306 – 337 A.D.) – Roman Emperors – An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Rulers and Their Families Constantine died in 337. The Western Roman Empire ceased to exist 140 years later in 476. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire ceased to exist 980 years later in 1453. Both Western and Eastern Empires were at least partially in Europe during the entire time.Please rely on reputable sources instead of faith in faulty memories when making assertions.Edited by anglagard, : Speling

You're wrong. What makes your evidence any better than the evidence of the people from Heaven's Gate or Jonestown? They've demonstrated more faith than you've demonstrated. Why is yours more real?There are only two options here. Either accept all this totally subjective "evidence" that you speak of and you have to accept all the subjective "evidence" of the 4 billion people in the world who are NOT christian, or we just go on objective things. And you really have no evidence of that at all.Again, it is dodging the question to say you have evidence. And again there are two options here. Either admit that you are basing your belief on "faith" or you should not be replying in this thread because if you really have evidence, there is no leap of faith involved.

So judgment call = faith.Great. Can we move on to my question on whether or not faith is a virtue, and if so, how can it be a virtue in light of suicide bombers, 9/11, Jonestown, and Heaven's Gate?

i'm not exactly fluent in hebrew yet, but i'm a good deal more familiar with the language and idioms and customs than your average church-goer. i assure you, there are contradictions. i agree that many are, in fact, simple misunderstandings. most lists i see are about 50/50. well, no. only the modern revisionist fundamentalist squints their eyes and ignores the details. in this case, this contradiction has been known for at least 400 years, and really probably more like 2600.

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2Sa 21:19 And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaareoregim, a Bethlehemite, slew [the brother of] Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear [was] like a weaver's beam.

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when the KJV puts something in brackets like this, it's because the word or phrase does not exist in the original hebrew. usually it's just a case of a word like "is" (which simply isn't used in present tense in hebrew) or similar issues. in this case, it's to correct a contradiction. the similar passage in chronicles says "brother of" (in the hebrew), and samuel already has goliath dead. the kjv translators saw a problem, and chose to fix it by aligning samuel with chronicles. ...they had to have noticed the problem, in order to fix it.it's also somewhat arguable that the author(s) of chronicles knew about it too. chronicles, like kings, is something of a compiled and scholarly history, and seems to have used samuel and kings as sources. (in the hebrew tanakh, chronicles is relegated to kethuvim, while samuel/kings is in the holier book of nevi'im, the prophets.) so it's quite probable that the author(s) of chronicles saw that goliath was killed twice, and inserted the "brother" bit. this is actually how a number of contradictions are created in the bible -- revision. elsewhere, the author(s) of chronicles took a story of david being prompted to sin by god, and apparently decided that god would not do such a thing, and changed the reference to satan. well, let's be careful here. misunderstood, this custom leads to arguments like crue knight's, where we end up with rather useless genealogies because we can skip generations. we can refer to families as "ben ____" yes. it's rather similar to the icelandic, norse, etc custom of ending family names in -son or -sen. we can see, for instance, that "beni yisrael" applies not just to jacob's twelve sons, but really the entire country founded in their names. but that doesn't mean you can imply that a name is a family name whenever you like, and change the characters of the bible. i promise the jewish scholars have a much better handle on their culture than the christians. Edited by arachnophilia, : typo

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The Jews who were there who didn't believe explained away the miracles. That's in the Bible. Later denigrating things were said about Jesus and His followers in the Talmud. Besides that, a couple of Roman philosophers mentioned the existence of the Christian sect. Tacitus I believe was one. They weren't there at the time. They heard something about it and didn't believe it and didn't treat it as important, and said denigrating things about the believers. Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Who said anything about anybody being invisible? Some who saw and heard Jesus believed and some didn't. That's in the Bible. Excuse me? Are you thinking at all? Just making everything up? At least a hundred thousand, maybe hundreds of thousands of Jews believed in Jesus and that's before the gospel was preached outside Jerusalem. When it went out to the Gentiles it gathered in many hundreds of thousands more. I suppose many millions otherwise didn't believe but I don't know what the population of the Roman Empire was at the time. "Source" means anybody who happened to mention it in his writings. A couple of Roman philsophers. Josephus. The Talmud later on. Otherwise the writers about the events were believers, and their writings were circulated among hundreds of thousands of believers at the very least, and on top of that we have the writings of the "Church Fathers" in the first centuries. Lots and lots of writings by believers. Very little mention by unbelievers.

I don't see that the differences make much difference to my point. The main point was that Constantine's "influence" didn't involve forcing anyone in Europe to Christianity. It was independent evangelists who were taking the gospel out to Europe in those days. You said nothing in objection to that so I assume you agree.Constantine spent most of his time in the Eastern part of the empire. And the Goths did convert, but to the Arian heresy and not through Constantine's influence.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sure, why not? We are talking about witness reports to events I assume. Of course I would regard them as valid.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.