|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
EvC Forum active members: 65 (9164 total) |
| |
ChatGPT | |
Total: 916,913 Year: 4,170/9,624 Month: 1,041/974 Week: 368/286 Day: 11/13 Hour: 0/0 |
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Validity of differing eyewitness accounts in religious texts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
Going over the various points that are supposed to validate an ancient document, we come down to just two.
1) Authority of the Author.The author of the Quran is supposedly God. That would trump Moses on points such as the creation stories. More importantly we need to reliably identify the author. What is the evidence that Moses wrote the Pentateuch ? Moreover the assessment of Moses character we get from the Pentateuch must depend on whether he is assumed to be the author or not. Consider this verse, for instance:
(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)
(Numbers 12:3 NASB). 2) Concern with importance of "witness authority and authenticity". These would presumably include things like identifying the author and the sources used by the author. Which books of the Bible identify themselves as being written by Moses ? Which of the uses of "witness" are used to identify the author as a witness of the events ? Do all the books not written by witnesses identify their sources ? If the Pentateuch identifies neither the author nor sources we cannot say that it has any authorial authority or any concern with "witness authority" so far as it applies to the work itself. Thus, with the lack of evidence reliably identifying Moses as the author the Pentateuch clearly fails on both points and must be rejected as beign a valid eyewitness account.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
mark24 Member (Idle past 5225 days) Posts: 3857 From: UK Joined: |
Faith,
Oh the straw man is now saying ancient = eyewitness? You must be joking. What idiocy, Mark, what doltish idiocy. The Mahabharata does not present itswelf as witness testimony, it presents itself as fiction. The Bible claims to be witness testimony from front to back and it contains a zillion and one clues to authenticate its claim. Please show me where the Mahabharata defines itself as fiction. Just to be sure you understand the difference. I think the bible is fiction, you think it is fact because it has eyewitness testimony. You think the Mahabharata is fiction, I am presenting it to you as fact onthe same basis that you present the bible to me. Of course many people think the Mahabharata is fiction, many also think it is a true account. It's obvious, if you think about it. If no-one thought the Hindu stories were true, then there wouldn't be Hindu's would there? Those Hindu's who believe their stories to be true accounts do so with EXACTLY the same the veracity as you. Mark There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Yeah I avoid that thread about Paul like the plague. Paul was a Jew through and through, taught by the Rabbi Gamaliel. He was a Pharisee of the highest standing, who was personally chosen by the ascended Lord Jesus Himself and taught the gospel by Him and sent to preach it to the Gentiles by the Holy Spirit. In order to deny all this you have to deny half the New Testament, call its writers all delusional or liars.
As for Moses, My post was about witness authentication of Moses' authority and leadership, as one basis for authentication of the Bible reports, and Moses had this authentication from God and from the Israelites and from the authors of many of the other books of the Bible and from believing Jews and Christians today. He WAS an eyewitness of the events written about, along with millions of his fellow Israelites, and for you to deny this is to call him a liar and all the Bible writers liars who referred to his Torah as scripture written by him, some of which I footnoted in a post above. As usual your idea of contradictory accounts is just your own inability to reconcile them as you reject the whole basis of the revelation. I have no trouble reconciling any of them. And plenty of HIGHLY educated people take Genesis as directly inspired by God and authored by Moses. It's just one pack of scholars against another. I'm against your pack. I posted some HIGHLY EDUCATED AND AUTHORITATIVE commentators on the inspired and trustworthy content of Genesis on the Ham v Ross thread, post #99, in the Miscellaneous forum, but I don't know how to link to it as I can't find out the numbers of the forums and threads. This message has been edited by Faith, 04-25-2005 02:50 AM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1474 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
The Koran itself does not present itself as authored by anybody, not even God. And we KNOW the Bible is authored by God, and since the two contradict each other, they can't both be authored by God in any case.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
It's fairly easy to track sown the post and the link is:
http://EvC Forum: Who to believe , Ham or Ross? -->EvC Forum: Who to believe , Ham or Ross? Note that the sources are "authoritative" only from a doctrinal perspective, NOT as experts on the ancient history of the Middle East.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
The Quran does claim to be authored by God
This page is an index to a translation: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/HolKora.html
"10.37": And this Quran is not such as could be forged by those besides Allah, but it is a verification of that which is before it and a clear explanation of the book, there is no doubt in it, from the Lord of the worlds.
And no, "we" do NOT know that the Bible was authored by God. I do know that some Christians falsely state that the Bible claims to be authored by God. But there is no statement equivalent to that found in the Quran in the Bible.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DrJones* Member Posts: 2290 From: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 7.6 |
Faith, what part of: There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet don't you understand? Look, lets assume for the sake of arguement that your god is the one true god, that would mean that Allah is not the one true God, which we know he is. Don't you see? Your logic eats itself.
cribbed from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart *not an actual doctor
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Yeah I avoid that thread about Paul like the plague. why, worried it'll challenge some issues of, well, faith?
Paul was a Jew through and through, taught by the Rabbi Gamaliel. this is the primary bit we're questioning. and we're questioning it because paul's teachings just seem to have nothing to do with judaism, at all. they blatantly misrepresent the jewish faith. however, there are a few ideas that seem plucked straight from greek mythology...
who was personally chosen by the ascended Lord Jesus Himself and taught the gospel by Him and sent to preach it to the Gentiles by the Holy Spirit. according to luke. who wasn't there to see any of it.
In order to deny all this you have to deny half the New Testament, call its writers all delusional or liars. ok, in a ranom bible laying around, first one i pick up, the nt occupies pages 735 to 953. that's 218 pages. paul's letters take up pages 862 to 917 (or 55 pages). according to my calculations, that's about a quarter. in fact, almost exactly a quarter. so, no, we're denying about a quarter of the new testament. although it's closer to 40% if you throw in acts.
As for Moses, My post was about witness authentication of Moses' authority and leadership, as blah blah blah this is strictly dogmatic crap and i suspect you know it. i could equally as easily claim the same things about muhammed and quran, couldn't i? he's got the trust of millions of muslims, doesn't he? they say god directly imparted this stuff directly to him, right?
He WAS an eyewitness of the events written about no in genesis he's not. he's not even alive. either during the events themselves, or the writing, take your pick. works both ways.
along with millions of his fellow Israelites again, not during the events in genesis. in fact, at the END of genesis have something on order of only a dozen families of israelites. the start of each tribe. hardly the multitude that exodus starts out with.
and for you to deny this is to call him a liar and all the Bible writers liars who referred to his Torah as scripture written by him, some of which I footnoted in a post above. i've got a thread i made reference to earlier tonight along the same lines. it's called "the forgery of deuteronomy." look it up, if you want. deuteronomy presents quite a problem. the text clearly indicates that moses could not have written it. it starts with moses on opposite side of the jordan from the israelites. ie: someone in the promised land wrote it, not moses. what's even more suspicious is that we KNOW, point of fact, that the israelites (or the judah-ites for that matter) did not have this text until the reign of king josiah. it outlines a couple of key theological concerns that josiah impliments, such as destroying every temple but the one in jerusalem. it also (very anachronistically) discusses the hebrews having a KING. genesis has a breif mention or two, but hardly prophesy. and there's no other mention of it in the torah. not in exodus, not in leviticus, not in numbers. this book is then used as the standard by which israel (as in "not judah" israel of the divided kingdom period) is judged as idolatrous, according to the sin of jereboam. it's only a sin in reference to deuteronomy, and no other book. so let's review.1. not written by moses. 2. "lost" until josiah. 3. used to condemn israel. 4. still called part of "the law of moses" see, what we're dealing with is ATTRIBUTED authorship, and tradition. not literary analysis. also, it brings up another point. if they didn't have deuteronomy until the reign of josiah, are the references to "the book of the law" including deut? no, obviously not. if they didn't have genesis until 600 bc, did the people who wrote about the law of moses before then include it, do you think? so are they lying when they talk about the law of moses, or are they simply not refering to it in the modern sense? and are we lying today when we call it "the law of moses" even if it's not laws and not written by moses?
As usual your idea of contradictory accounts is just your own inability to reconcile them as you reject the whole basis of the revelation. I have no trouble reconciling any of them. nor did i the first dozen times i read it. people on this board assume i just started out hating the bible or something. no, i'm interested in learning the truth, even if it's sometimes dirty. i find this book truly interesting, and i find genesis the most interesting part of it. if i didn't, i'd go read the hitchhikers' guide to galaxy or something. you see, i started out with the idea that it all lined up perfectly. it has to, right? it's the word of god. not only that, i also started out with the idea that in some way it represented reality. not coincidently, a passage in genesis is the reason i'm a christian. (maybe i shoulda been jewish, come to think of it.) it was the bit about abraham's calling. something there struck me as fundamentally true. and so it piqued my interest. i've read the whole book a half a dozen times, but some sections i've read many, many more times. and the better translations i got, the more i looked into it, the less it lined up with reality. and the less it lined up with itself. it went, in my mind, from days describing logarithmic periods of creation, to being strictly metaphorical. but you know what? it still didn't work out. so on my last complete read-through, for my bible class, i decided that i would just leave all my assumptions behind, and see what it was really about. and it's still one of my favourite books. but my "inability to reconcile" them is not my problem: the texts themselves cannot be reconciled. were plants made before or after humans? were animals made before or after humans? these are fundamental to understanding the nature of the text itself, and therefor its message. is genesis trying to tell us some boring history of what order god made things in? or is there something else to it? the answer lies in understand WHY those questions didn't matter to the redactors. i'm not REJECTING revelation, i'm determining the precise nature of it. and it doesn't appear that god is personally imparting text word for word to moses. it looks more like god is telling different people different things that contain the same essential, if vague, truths. both accounts agree that plants and animals were made for humans, they just can't agree on whether god had them set up beforehand or after. both texts tell us that we are like god in some importan respect. one says we're made in his image, and one says our life -- our souls -- come from his breath. one story tells us why we should take saturdays off, and the other why we marry: "it is not good for man to be alone." these are revelations from god. is the bit about whether there plants before the sun? no, probably not. it's good to know what exactly is the work of men, and what of their work was influenced by some higher power. but it is just plain ignorant and stupid to randomly assume that it's all the words of god literally dictated to however the church tells you it was dictated to, and that that means it's all literally true. it's just ignoring the book itself, and doing a complete disservice to actual truths and revelations involved, not to mention blatantly misunderstanding it.
And plenty of HIGHLY educated people take Genesis as directly inspired by God and authored by Moses. really? pick up an scholarly book on the torah. i guarantee you that they'll talk about five sources in the torah:
scholars tend to cite AT MOST one of those as moses. probably the j one, since god revealed his name to moses, and j includes exodus.
I posted some HIGHLY EDUCATED AND AUTHORITATIVE commentators on the inspired and trustworthy content of Genesis on the Ham v Ross thread, post #99, in the Miscellaneous forum, but I don't know how to link to it as I can't find out the numbers of the forums and threads. got any jewish sources? they usually have something different to say about their own book. but i'll look at the ones you've got anyways.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
The author of the Quran is supposedly God. That would trump Moses on points such as the creation stories. according to christian fundamentalists, the author of genesis is god. i consider this blasphemy. god would not write such mish-mashed contradictory accounts just to confuse us. but hey, while we're on the topic, what about the qabala? supposedly, it was actually WRITTEN by god himself, and given to the angels, not intended for human consumption. it supposedly contains explanations about where the power of god comes from, and describes in detail the process of creation. somehow, this got into the hands of man, and has safely been handed down to only the wisest of rabbis. and i think god is the ultimate eyewitness, don't you? so. dogmatic bullshit, or accurate account?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Faith
Moses "spoke face to face with God So you state that since Moses says he was face to face with god then it must be true? How convincing that the person who puits together the tale would be the one to verify its correctness.Do yourself a favor and stay away from used car dealerships eh? From intro to Genesis in my KJV: "Trained in the 'wisdom of the Egyptians,' (Acts 7:22) Moses was providentially prepared to understand available records, manuscripts and oral narratives So are we to infer that he was leaning on the records of others to put together his own narrative? How is this providential? What records and manuscripts did he view? Are there Egyptian records of this?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
I don't think that any of the books were actually written by God. Nor do I know of any rational reason to believe that any of them really were.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: One glaring difference between this internet discussion board and the Gulag is that all of us come here and stay here completely by our own free choice, whereas the Gulag was a prision where people were imprisoned against their will.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i agree.
personally, i think if god did it, they're a discredit to his name. certainly GOD, of all people, could write a more internally consistent, coherent, and to the point book, that quite plainly lays out important philosophies. maybe he'd even do it in a manual format, make it nice an easy for us.
quote: see, look, even i can do better. although, granted, i've read some of the scientology manuals by l. ron hubbard. and they're full of company memos on how to place in and out boxes and correctly use the proper letterhead. but then again, bible writing isn't for everyone. but how much better could god do it? hey, if god were to write, it could even be "the comprehensive manual to everything." life, love, spirit, philosophy.... quantum mechanics, evolution, the meaning of life... you get the idea. not just the spotlessly accurate history of one people, heck, the history of ALL peoples. so what if they wouldn't have understood string theory in ancient israel. "just write it down, they'll understand it in 3000 years," god could say, "and we are writing this for posterity after all." in english, no less. heck, i'm sure he could even include stuff that would blow our minds today, but we'd get in another 3000 years. where is that stuff? where's the math proofs? the astrophysics? This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 04-25-2005 07:07 AM
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
JonF Member (Idle past 198 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
I don't know how to link to it as I can't find out the numbers of the forums and threads. Go to the message and look at the URL: http://< !--UB EvC Forum: Who to believe , Ham or Ross? -->http://EvC Forum: Who to believe , Ham or Ross? -->EvC Forum: Who to believe , Ham or Ross?< !--UE--> "f=12" means forum 12. "t=353" means thread 353. "m=91" means message 91. [msg=12,353,91] turns into Message 91.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
doctrbill Member (Idle past 2794 days) Posts: 1174 From: Eugene, Oregon, USA Joined: |
Arachnophilia writes: we are writing this for posterity after all." in english, no less. Well said. It occured to me, just yesterday, what a strange thing it is that God, who is a spirit (having no physical body), is supposed to have written a book (I know this is not perfectly accurate); while his Son (who is human and has hands), is supposed to have written nothing. In more than 6,000 years of confusion, argument and bloody conflict over what God wants: Neither the Big Guy himself, nor his God-on-earth Son would stoop to pen a single page (except for the 15 ... errrr, 10 Commandments) and we are left holding a moldy sheepskin with virtually indecipherable chicken scratches etched by an ancient Jew and purporting to be "The Word" of this silent God! And if you like that ... You'll love this Florida swampland ... db Theology is the science of Dominion. - - - My God is your god's Boss - - -
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024