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Author | Topic: The Bible: Is the Author God, Man or Both? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Obviously we must realise that the Gospel writers had strong biases and that their source material was little better. They may well have believed what they wrote - but it is also very likely that that belief often lacked an adequate rational foundation.
Indeed, given the marked disagreements between Matthew and Luke how could we possibly consider the Gospels reliable ? And if they are not reliable, on what basis can we conclude that God had any role in their writing ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Of course the differences are too marked to be so lightly dismissed. Especially given the amount of copied material found in those two Gospels.
quote: If they can hardly be expected to get anything right - as you insist - how can they have a rational foundation for much of the text ? What foundation could they have for their divergent Nativity stories, for instance ? Let me ask my question again. If the Gospel stories cannot be trusted as history - as you clearly agree in your attempts to sweep the discrepancies under the carpet - then it seems obvious that any intention God might have had for them did not include historical accuracy. In that case surely you would be wrong to say the the Gospels are correctly understood as histories, since God's purpose for them - if there is one - must be something else.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: I don't know about that. Going to the point of declaring practically everything in the Gospels as mere "details" that you expect to be wrong would seem a pretty drastic step.
quote: Shall we start with the hugely different Nativity stories ? Set about ten years apart with completely different explanations for Joseph and Mary being in Bethlehem and Nazareth it seems pretty clear that at least one of the authors had no real knowledge of the actual events. In fact it looks to me as if they knew the names of Jesus' parents, that Jesus grew up in Nazareth and that they wanted to have him born in Bethlehem - and nothing else.
quote: Of course not. I wouldn't start pretending that points important to Josephus were mere details, throwing out most of his work either. But with Josephus we have a good idea of who he was, and his sources and his biases. I would for instance, throw out much of what he wrote about Moses because we know that it is very unlikely that he had good sources and because of his religious bias. On the other hand he was one of the leaders of the Jewish revolt, so his writing on that can be considered more reliable - once we subtract his own pro-Roman, pro-Jewish and especially pro-Josephus biases. Now we don't know who the Gospel writers were, all we know of their agenda and sources (save for Matthew and Luke's use of Mark) is what we can reconstruct from the Gospel texts - itself a very uncertain exercise and one that can tell us very little about the reliability or provenance of those sources. The differences are quite large and require us to consider that the accounts are quite inaccurate even when dealing with important events that a participant would have got right - not mere inconsequential details. Josephus is reliable when he has good sources and where his biases don't come into play. But there is nowhere that we can say that the Gospel writers definitely had good sources and almost nowhere where their bias does not come into play.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: I think everything but the Resurrection is close enough to practically everything.
quote: Matthew has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem and only leaving for Nazareth after they return from Egypt. Luke as Mary and Joseph as residents of Nazareth, only visiting Bethlehem for the census (and doesn't even give a valid reason for residents of Galilee to have to go to Judaea for a census anyway).
quote: The fact that Matthew has Jesus born in the reign of Herod the Great, and Luke has Jesus born in the census of Quirinius, taken after the deposition of Herod's successor, Archelaus. Archelaus was deposed in the 10th year of his reign...
quote: The point is that the stories differ so much that one of them must be badly wrong. So wrong that we should take it as a fiction, at most loosely based on fact. (And thus we can conclude that if there was any "Divine Inspiration" it did not make the Gospels historically reliable, at all.)
quote: That's untrue. We know that he had personal experience of the Jewish War. We know a number of the sources that he used such as Nicolaus of Damascus. And of course, knowing his biases allows us to anticipate where he may be inaccurate - it's a lot better than simply assuming that he is unquestionably correct in every claim that he makes.
quote: But since you obviously don't know what the differences are - or even care - how can you say that they are just details ? And it's obvious that we aren't just talking about the sort of minor details that an eyewitness could get wrong. We are talking about things that nobody who was there could possibly have got wrong.
quote: By which you mean that I have the Bible as it actually is, and you have your opinion of what the Bible ought to be. It seems obvious which is the sounder basis for evaluating the text. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: I was only reporting what you had said. But is true that you dismiss all the actual events in the Gospels as mere details, save for the Resurrection, is it not ?
quote: That is simply not true. Joseph and Mary cannot both be residents of Nazareth prior to Jesus birth, and never have lived there until some time after his birth.
quote: Again we're not talking about simple discrepancies we're talking about very different stories with only details in common.
quote: And Mary wouldn't know when she gave birth to her first child ? She'd give dates about ten years apart ? Come on ! One of the stories - at least - is so badly wrong that it seems only fair to call it fiction. (In fact with the obvious legendary elements of Matthew and the problems with Luke I'd personally say that BOTH were fiction !)
quote: Which means that Divine Inspiration - in your usage - is no guarantee of truth or even usefulness of any particular point.
quote: And as I pointed out, we know of other sources he used, too. In contrast to the Gospels where, excepting Gospel writers copying from each other, the sources are all conjectural and our only knowledge of them comes from analysis of the Gospel texts.
quote: No, you aren't. Someone attempting to understand the Bible as a historical document wouldn't make up lame excuses to dismiss the disagreements in the text without even bothering to find out what the disagreements are !
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: There's no "of course" about it. Certainly you dismiss a good number of them as mere details.
quote: Luke has them as residents of Nazareth before and after the birth. Matthew makes it clear that they were not residents of Nazareth until after the return of Egypt by having them move there. That seems simple enough.
quote: Again, we are not talking about variations we are talking about different stories. Please deal with the facts rather than trying to sweep them under the carpet.
quote: I was not talking about your beliefs, I was talking about your view of Divine Inspiration. According to you a Divinely Inspired text may well contain passages that are hopelessly inaccurate or even completely useless.
quote: Of course you are playing down the differences as usual. The problem is that the location is a major part of Luke's text and it's important to Matthew, too. Nobody who was actually there is likely to confuse Galilee with Jerusalem, or forget Jesus commanding them to remain in Jerusalem. The stories are clearly badly confused. And we come to the question of why that would be if the post-resurrection appearances were really the impressive events we see in the Gospels...
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Where does Matthew mention a return to Nazareth ? According to Matthew the only reason for going to Nazareth at all is fear of Herod's successor, Archelaus. Which is a bit unlikely if Nazareth was their home ! Can you find anything in Matthew at all that contradicts the straightforward reading that Joseph and Mary were residents of Bethlehem up until the Flight to Egypt ?
quote: No, they are telling stories that you mash together without caring about the fact that they don't fit. I mean aside from the whole business of the census in Luke which puts Jesus' birth AFTER the reign of Archelaus instead of before it, the stories have very little in common. Luke has no Wise Men (and why would a man seeking to appeal to Gentile readers leave THAT out ?), no Massacre of the Innocents, no Flight to Egypt. None of the major narrative elements. Matthew has no census (and no reason to expect one), no journey to Bethlehem, no need to find an inn, no shepherds, no presentation at the Temple - and Luke has Joseph and Mary return to Nazareth directly after that. Indeed we have to ask where would you put Matthew's story within Luke's. Would you put the whole of it between Jesus' birth and the return to Nazareth ? That's a bit of a tight squeeze !
quote: That is a misrepresentation In fact I argue that the accounts of the post-resurrection appearances are so different that they must represent considerable elaboration in different directions - and that this is implausible if the real events were anything like as impressive.From this I go on to conclude that we have no basis for thinking that the actual events were beyond the range of natural human experience - and thus they provide no support for a literal resurrection at all. quote: That is your opinion, but I see no reason why a genuine belief in some sort of resurrection would not serve as well. I would add that the whole doctrine of the Second Coming was likely as important since it saved their belief system from the problem that Jesus died without fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. It's a known way in which cults handle failure.
quote: And that works against your point since Paul did NOT have any personal experience of a bodily resurrection. If he did not need that, how can you know that the Disciples needed it ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: More accurately, Matthew gives no hint that they had ever lived anywhere but Bethlehem, and Luke gives a dodgy reason for their being in Bethlehem - due to an event that occurred around ten years after Matthew's story.
quote: In the sense that they weren't writing histories, yes. Which means taking them as historically reliable - even by the standards of ancient writers - is dubious. And let's not forget that the point is that we have two DIFFERENT stories... NOT two views of the same story.
quote: And yet the stories we have do not fit a simple physical resurrection. Jesus doesn't just come back and keep on going as he was. He comes and goes mysteriously. Even appearing in a closed room without opening the door (John 20:26). Indeed talking about previous expectations doesn't address my point of view at all. My point is that the resurrection stories came about as a reaction to normal events which were interpreted as a resurrection, and the original stories would fit in with that - and the need to resolve the cognitive dissonance. THe stories we have actually fit better with that, than with a simple physical resurrection.
quote: The Maccabees are a poor parallel, as has already been pointed out. Bar Kochba is closer but I suspect that his very success made his failure more credible. And let us not forget that we certainly don't know everything that everyone believed back there...
quote: Of course there are reasons why they might be critical of Peter. Pauline influence, and wanting to minimise Peter's distinctive teachings. Magnifying Jesus. And of course the despair was likely to be exaggerated (we see the same phenomenon today). But again I don't require that they didn't despair - that's a part of the cognitive dissonance ! My point is that some of them found a resolution to that dissonance...(Personally I see hints that Judas real "betrayal" was simply giving up on the movement. And even that he might have been murdered by Peter. But that's just speculative opinion). quote: On the other hand the Disciples were Jesus' loyal followers, convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. Paul was hostile to Jesus and his followers. You can't ignore that.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Provided you ignore the whole problem of the dates you can mush them together. But really all they have in common is details. The stories are completely different.
quote: I don't think the fact that the Gospel stories call the idea of a physical resurrection into question was your point...
quote: And the idea of Jesus returning to Heaven by being levitated into the sky would seem to fit poorly with that idea. But it's there in Luke.
quote: You're seriously asking that ? You're seriously asking why the Christian Gospel authors would write down what they believed rather than what people living decades earlier had expected ? I don't believe that any rational person would even consider that question.
quote: Obviously you don't understand what you are talking about...
quote: Which still doesn't mean that we know of even a tenth of the smaller groups that existed... And I need to point out that human nature isn't as simple and deterministic as you are making out. Some groups fade away when their prophecies fail. Others go on and on (the Jehovah's Witnesses have been through a number of failures to name just one example.)
quote: And maybe some of Jesus' followers did just that. Indeed, maybe James was offered the role and refused it. You just don't know. SO let us point out that your arguments require detailed knowledge that you don't have and assume that human behaviour can easily be predicted - find out what the majority did in a situation and you know what everyone would do in any broadly similar situation. And that isn't true.
quote: I don't think that those who remained in the movement would have seen a difference. So I don't think that you can hope to derive it from the Gospel stories which demonise Judas further. (But note that Acts and Matthew contradict on the nature of Judas' death - and the account in Acts is pretty suspicious).
quote: No. Your point was that such a powerful experience WOUDN'T have worked on the disciples....
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Which is still Jesus rising into the sky to return to Heaven...
quote: Well you ASSUME that that is what it means, but it doesn't actually say that. (The passage you quote isn't even about LEAVING our world at all - it's about COMING TO our world)
quote: If the Gospel writers were making up the stories from scratch that might make sense. But that isn't my position, so your argument is irrelevant.
quote: I'm sorry if you didn't like it, but it seemed more polite than "that is so obviously stupid it doesn't deserve an answer".
quote: And in those cases we have relevant differences in the circumstances so that a differing outcome is not surprising. The more so since we have no survey of the complete range of effects in ANY of the cases. And in fact you DID implicitly claim to know. It is certain that you intended that I should accept it as factually true, even though we have no good basis to come to a conclusion on the matter.
quote: I haven't spoke as to the motivation of Judas - my parenthetical point was that I personally suspected that Judas as unfairly demonised as Jesus' betrayer for actions taken after Jesus' death. The formation of the Gospel stories is something we know little about - we have almost nothing about Jesus' life on Earth from any useful non-Christian sources, or even from Christian sources that predate the Gospels.
quote: On the basis of this I have to say that you don't understand the concept of cognitive dissonance at all. In fact Paul's experience in itself is not explainable as purely due to cognitive dissonance. But even more than that, we don't have the disciples stories. We have the Gospel stories which are obviously greatly elaborated. Again we come to the point which you have yet to answer. THe stories in Matthew and Luke are clearly the product of elaboration in two quite different directions. If we assume that the original events were impressive and strongly memorable in themselves how could this happen ? It simply isn't credible that an important and dramatic part of the story would be so throughly lost by at least one community of believers. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Let me know if you have any support for that other than your own personal ideas of what was happening. There is not doubt that read literally it describes Jesus rising into the sky, for instance...
quote: Except that it isn't the quote you produced before and none of it contradicts what I said... In fact, isn't it true that this is a symbolic vision ? And it never mentions where the "one like a Son of Man" had come FROM ? Or where the court was set up ? Perhaps you should look at Matthew 24:30
30 And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.
So I apologise for not checking and confusing Matthew's interpretation with the actual text, but I still have more support - weak as it is - for my reading than you have for yours...
quote: The one I've been describing all along ? Where the Gospel stories of the post-resurrection appearances are greatly elaborated stories, developing over time, built on mundane events ?
quote: It would help even more if you made more of an effort to get things right instead of just assuming that the truth was whatever would be convenient for you...
quote: Not really - the whole question of the motive for Judas' betrayal is something that is argued over again and again. Now my speculation makes a lot more sense. Judas abandons the movement after Jesus' death, accepting that it has failed. As a former leading figure he is condemned as a traitor (almost inevitable). The story gets elaborated into a personal betrayal of Jesus before Jesus' death. Of course we can never know because we simply have no sources we can trust to provide us with the information that we need.
quote: If Jesus was as successful as the Gospels claim then we would expect more notice from non-Christian sources. And it's pretty odd that we have so little from pre-Gospel Christian sources. If Jesus left a body of teachings, for instance, then Paul had little knowledge of it or interest in it.
quote: I would suggest that that is a very big assumption, and one that cannot be supported by any evidence at all. Even the author of Luke does not identify his sources.
quote: That isn't in fact a good reason. Q is only the hypothetical source for the material common to Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark. Luke is also held to have used Mark and other sources. The real question is whether Luke used Q or in fact had access to a copy of Matthew. I would think that you would find Q more palatable than the idea of Luke rejecting large chunks of Matthew.
quote: Again you aren't making much sense. There's nothing in Paul's experience that speaks of cognitive dissonance especially. But the Disciples are prime candidates for it. They've seen deeply held beliefs appear to fail. They come to a new "understanding" that lets them reconcile their beliefs with the reality that faces them. It fits all too well.
quote: All of which ignores the point that in this case the location is held to be an important feature of the story. In fact it looks as if Luke is intentionally DENYING the tradition represented in Matthew. And none of the three Gospels dealing with the appearances have a single appearance story in common. Simply writing off important points as mere details is nothing more than an attempt to sweep awkward truths under the rug.
quote: Of course there needs to be no reason more than the beliefs held by the Gospel writers. Moreover, I consider my ow explanation to be more plausible than yours - and you haven't even bothered to pay attention to it when I described it - an opinion based on wilful ignorance isn't worth much. And as we have seen my view better explains the Gospels as we have them.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: ...who claims that Jesus rose literally into the sky... Which rather undermines any claim that the text does not mean that....
quote: In other wordes the court which condemns the Earthly and metaphorical beasts and which talks about a Kingdom to be established on Earth must be referring to literal events in heaven? That's hardly something that's clearly established... The rest is just a long winded way of it ignoring the inconvenient point that in Matthew the Son of Man's arrival is seen by the people of the Earth. So obviously it must be an arrival on Earth, not Heaven.
quote: Of course we have no direct records of the events, just greatly elaborated accounts, so to a very large degree you are agreeing with me.
quote: And that is even more speculative than my ideas. For a start as far as I know the only link between Judas and the zealots is the idea that Iscariot is a corruption of sicarius. And Jesus message, even in the Gospels is rather mixed (telling his Disciples to arm themselves, for instance). And if he had a known zealot as a lieutenant then the whole idea of Jesus' pacifism becomes even more questionable.
quote: Of course Paul would be highly likely to reference teachings of Jesus relating to any subject that he was talking about of he DID agree with them.... And if there was a significant body of teachings circulating I find it hard to believe that Paul would have objected to NONE of them. So it seems that the evidence suggests that there wasn't much at that time.
quote: My position is a little skeptical too, because I don't find the argument that Luke would NOT have gone against Matthew entirely convincing any more. Not since I found that Luke's version of the Olivet Discourse disagrees quite sharply with Mark. However it is clear that replacing Q with Matthew does not INCREASE the number of sources used by Luke, so your argument really misses the issue.
quote: I would say that that is an oversimplification. However I think it concedes the point at issue. Paul had a highly convincing experience that did not rely on a physical resurrection.
quote: I agree with the point but not the application. Luke seems quite determined to deny that there were any appearances in Galilee, while Matthew doesn't even hint at any post-resurrection appearances in Jerusalem at all (and Mark also implies that the appearances will be in Galilee). Galilee would be about a week's journey away, and I can't believe that if Jesus had appeared to the Disciples before they could leave and told them to remain in the vicinity of Jerusalem it would have been completely forgotten by the community that produced Matthew.
quote: The argument for theism is pretty poor, and doesn't give any credence to the idea that impressive events would be so poorly remembered. So I'd say that you've got three bad arguments there.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: In fact a large part of the article is dedicated to arguing that the event occurred as Luke describes it. Davis doesn't argue that the text is symbolic - he argues that the event was symbolic. You cannot have read the article without realising that. So not in a "loose sense" at all. Davis directly claims that Luke's account must be taken as literally true. The next point concerning Daniel goes nowhere, making no point to be answered.
quote: I think that you are confusing Jewish and Christian thought here. And I note that you offer nothing to support your opinion either.
quote: Since it is well-known that all the Gospels were written decades after the fact and only the last written, John, is even plausibly written by someone who was there, to call them "direct accounts" seems extremely dubious. And your argument against elaboration seems to be that none of the actual appearances were anything more than unimportant details anyway....
quote: A tax collector (especially in the Roman system where they were freelance contractors) need not have a strong commitment to maintaining the system (in fact, so long as he could afford it, he could have done a lot to mitigate the worse parts of the system). This does not compare to someone with a strong religious devotion to expelling the Romans...
quote: Referring to documents to back up his words wouldn't stop him using his own words. So this argument doesn't make much of a case.
quote: Unles you wish to count Matthew as more sources than Q, Luke's claim has no relevance to the existence of Q at all.
quote: Which tells us at most that Paul believed in some resurrection.
quote: If all the evidence can be better explained without invoking miracles - and it can - how can you have compelling evidence for a miracle?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Which really doesn't change the fact that your source argued that the event literally happened as described. Think on that while you wonder how it is possible for two people to look at the same evidence and come to differing conclusions. Sometimes it's the case that one of them only thinks he's looking at the evidence, and is missing something quite obvious,
quote: Of course we aren't talking about Jesus or simple copying language - we're talking about the interpretation of that language by Christians writing decades after Jesus died. I hope that you can concede that the Jews in general would not have been thinking of Jesus specifically!
quote: Of course the absence of direct records was the point, so really you should just have agreed. And since we don't know the sources of Luke other than Mark and maybe Q or Matthew it's questionable whether any of them were first hand (Mark and Matthew are almost certainly not). In fact what we are told in Luke makes it seem as if the documents he refers to are other attempts to compile the story, and it could easily be that all were second hand, or further removed from the events.
quote: If this "Matthew" even existed and if he cared about money that much he probably wouldn't be among Jesus' followers at all. Whiuch rather proves my point.
quote: I would be very surprised if there were many dedicated Jewish nationalists in those days who did NOT have a religious devotion to it. The Judaic religion is strongly nationalistic, even today. Moreover it does seem odd that if Jesus was opposed to the zealots that he would have one as a trusted lieutenant - more than a mere follower. Or that the Gospels don't make more of it - the Gospels are far more pro-Roman so showing Jesus opposing Judas belief in violent revolution would have been very much in keeping with their agenda. Instead we can't even be sure that Judas was a zealot at all. It looks to me far more as if the Gospels are downplaying the violent side of Jesus' ministry.
quote: As I've already pointed out, Paul is not at all clear that the post-resurrection experiences are anything more than visions and the Gospels don't present a straightforward bodily resurrection either.
quote: And yet you cannot refute my argument. Indeed your approach accounts for the evidence by making excuses to discount the bulk of it ! Clearly it is true that I can explain the evidence better than you.
quote: However, my explanation is better than yours EVEN WITHOUT THIS CONSIDERATION. I can explain why we see such strong differences between the accounts of the post-resurrection appearances we see in the Gospels. Why Paul says so little about the post-resurrection appearances. Why Jesus mysteriously comes and goes all the time in those stories. All you can do is try to explain these points away. None of them are expected given your view - and in the first case especially you don't even have a good excuse.
quote: Since your argument relies on effectively ignoring a very large part of those accounts it seems rather clear that your opinion is untrue.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
And this article shows you what cognitive dissonance is really like and how people suffering from it rewrite the past in their minds.
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