My Beliefs- GDR

Well if it isn't evidence then why have so many historians spent time trying to figure out what we are to make of it? The point was that our understanding of the nature God has evolved. I am not offering it as proof of anything. I am suggesting that IF God does exist, and IF He does reach out to us in some form THEN we can reasonably suggest that our understanding of God's nature is likely to have become more focused on the truth.I don't know that my concept of God is exactly right and I'm pretty sure it isn't as my own views have continued to evolve over the years as I continue to read. I have faith in God as I can best understand Him. I have Faith in God as we see Him incarnate in Jesus but I don't have Faith in God that is a compilation of the god that is sometimes depicted in the OT of advocating for genocide and public stonings. Why is that arrogant. I have my beliefs as we all have and presumably we think we are right. Are you so arrogant to think that your non-theistic views are correct and great minds like Lewis and Tolliken are wrong.I don't believe anyone has a perfect understanding of God but I do believe that the best that we can do is to look at what words we have of Jesus, and then try and sort out as best we can all of the scholarship of the centuries starting with Paul. I am convinced that my wife loves me but I don't know it. (I am using know as in something that can be empirically verified.) It is not the same thing. I might say I am convinced that the Boston Bruins are going to win the Stanley Cup but I don't know it.

Of course the message is important but if the messenger is a crazed individual with a messianic complex we might not to be inclined to believe that our right flank is in any danger at all. He might actually be working for the other side, and it is really our left flank that is in danger. On one level I agree with you but Jesus goes further than that. Yes we should serve the community and I agree that it isn't just Christians that believe that and follow through on it.Jesus' point was that it isn't just what we do but what drives us. He says that it is important that we do it because we genuinely desire to find joy in that service regardless of the approval of others, or for any other reward including from God.As I have said numerous times it is about loving others unselfishly. I agree with that. The thing is though that we are not automatically selfless. In one sense I believe that Dawkins was on to something when he talked about memes. Selflessness, as well as selfishness is contagious. Jesus' claim was that He was establishing a kingdom of followers whose job it was to infect the world with selflessness and that, as you put it well, they would be invisibly empowered by Him working in the background. That doesn't mean that a Christian is going to behave more selflessly than his atheistic neighbour but it should mean that he will behave more selflessly than he would have if he hadn't accepted Jesus as Lord. Sure it is. We can argue about whether Bobby Orr was a better hockey player than Gordie Howe. We can look at the objective evidence such as goals scored etc but then there are the intangibles like how their play affected the physiology of their opposition that help us form our subjective conclusions.The writers of the Gospels wrote their accounts of the life of Jesus. We objectively know that they were written but we subjectively come to our conclusions about the accuracy of their accounts. I believe that all of the Biblical authors, OT and NT, were culturally and personally influenced in what they wrote. That does not mean that what they wrote was either right or wrong. If however, Jesus was bodily resurrected then what the NT writers have to say has to be taken in that light as a more accurate revelation of the nature of God and His desires for our lives. If they are wrong about the resurrection then we are not only wasting our time but as Paul says in ! Cor 15:

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14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. 15 Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised ; 17 and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless

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There is really only one flood story and there is the occasional reference to it, as well as the fact that it was written years after it was supposed to have happened. It was also written by a different author. When we read articles in a newspaper we believe some commentaries and we reject others. The Bible in that sense is like a newspaper and yes we have to come to our own conclusions about the individual authors.In a sense I do cherry pick the story of the resurrection as all of what is in the NT hangs on that. Not quite the same thing is it. Magicians all acknowledge it is an illusion. In the case of the resurrection there is no evidence to cover-up. Actually when people started claiming that the resurrection had taken place then why didn't the Romans or anyone else produce the body which would have put an end to the whole thing.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

No, but that is why we have so much BETTER attestation of Jesus, BECAUSE better evidence is needed. We have LOTS of eyewitnesses and reports of other eyewitnesses and we have LOTS of secondary writings based on the eyewitnesses that are in agreement with each other. Same with the Old Testament. Miracles need lots of witnesses and they have given their reports. Which doesn't stop skeptics from refusing to take them seriously anyway of course, but that's the skeptics' lack of discernment because the witnesses are very credible. Here's that lack of discernment. There is nothing about the story of Jesus that is in any way like "typical fiction." There is nothing in the tone of the writers, nothing in the characters written about, certainly nothing about Jesus himself, and nothing in the story, that is like "typical fiction." All you mean is that the story includes supernatural elements which you automatically prejudge as fictional, you certainly can't mean anything about the quality of the reports themselves. As I recall at least one historian did but I'm lousy at remembering which one.* But most of the pagan world dismissed the Christians as "atheists" and didn't regard the doings in Judea as much to concern them.=============================ABE: *The historian was Tacitus. Here's a Wikipedia reference on the subject of Tacitus' writings about Christ.And here's another Wikipedia article, on the Historicity of Jesus which gives Tacitus, Josephus and the Talmud as extrabiblical sources.=============================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes of course. One of those obvious difficulties is whether or not a man claiming he was god rose from the dead. It's when the book speaks of miraculous events and the suspension of reality when it gets difficult. That doesn't make any sense. Everyone else from kings to philosophers of the time were written about by the historians of the time. Why not the guy that rose from the dead? Opinions don't matter. Reality and nature of course exist. This we can agree on. That is the only thing we know for a fact. Since we have no evidence for god as we do nature, then, FIRST you must get that evidence, then you can present it as something able to create everything. It's simple logic. Example:"Hey who broke this vase?"
"Aliens did it."
"Wait, aliens exist?"
"Well, the vase is broken isn't it?"That's the logic you're using with god. Well we have evidence that no life existed at one point, then we have evidence of single celled organisms existing. So, we can both agree something happened in the period.We know the elements that make up life are found on the planet, we know those elements originate when Stars explode, and we know that chemistry exists. So here again we can agree something happened with these elements involving basic chemistry.So, we know for a fact nature exists. We no nothing about god. It leaves only one evidenced answer and one wishful thinking answer. Life happens naturally and almost likely it has happened on many planets.There is the evidence. The Sun forms naturally. Planets and solar systems form naturally. We have plenty of evidence for this. Are you saying a few elements coming together due to chemistry to form single celled organisms is so much more complicated than Suns, planets and solar systems that it requires the involvement of a supernatural being? Yes one was resurrected as a plant, the other as a fish, the other as a bird, the other as a human. But they all resurrected, which is the miracle part. It's the same story. You're being stuborn on this I guess because you want to keep believing Jesus was different or special in some way. What do you mean "So what?" What that means is that you recognize the story of the son of god has it's origins in Egypt.- Oni

What you have are people who claim to have seen something and someone (as in Jesus). That's all you have. Well, sorry but people claim they see a lot of things. Unless you have something other than what a few people have claimed to have seen, you got nothing.So you believe aliens have visted people? That people have seen the real life Big Foot too? C'mon, please. This is the worse kind of evidence, if you can even call it that. It talks about a person born of a virgin and god is the father. Then this person goes on to cure the blind, and the sick, and then dies and comes back from the grave - THE WHOLE THINGS TYPICAL OF FICTION. So you have no evidence of historians writing about Jesus. Good, so you remain with nothing for evidence other than the claims of a few people. At this point Big Foot is doing better than Jesus.- Oni

Some things ONLY have witness testimony as evidence, that's the way it is with all historical figures, and again I claim that the witness testimony in Jesus' case is extremely high quality. If your bias against what they are telling you leads you to dismiss them out of hand you could never learn anything that could correct your bias, and obviously you aren't going to.Way it goes.But I did add to that post apparently after you responded to it some information about the historian who did write about Jesus, that is, Tacitus, and some other extrabiblical evidence, which I'll copy here:=============================ABE: *The historian was Tacitus. Here's a Wikipedia reference on the subject of Tacitus' writings about Christ.And here's another Wikipedia article, on the Historicity of Jesus which gives Tacitus, Josephus and the Talmud as extrabiblical sources.=============================Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The Talmud reference is a great example of the total dishonesty of Bible apologists.First one must understand that Talmudic discourse is expressed as examples, fiction, "What if .." As is so often the case those claiming Talmudic support of the historical nature of Jesus is simply a liar and misrepresenting the Talmud just like they misrepresent the Bible. It's pitiful.

You ought to read the article, jar, remember it's WIKIPEDIA, not "Bible apologists" and much of the article is far from anything I would agree with. They mention the Talmud as in effect a hostile witness to Jesus, not aimed at validating His existence but confirming it nevertheless by their efforts to discredit Him.

You should read the Talmud Faith, although I seriously doubt you are any more able to read the Talmud than it seems you are capable of actually reading the bible.It neither confirms nor discredits Jesus. It simply uses the name in a Talmudic debate totally unrelated to the existence or non existence of Jesus.Remember Faith, some of us here have actually read both the Bible and the Talmud.

Yes, jar, I know how well you have read the Bible, something along the lines of "wrongly dividing the word of truth" and I also know what Luther found in the Talmud blaspheming Jesus, though apparently your reading of it hasn't been good enough to discover that for yourself.

So go read it Faith, give it a try. Forget what you've been told and actually read the source.Stop believing what you've been told and learn the truth.

Wikipedia also has an article called Christ myth theory
So I guess that means he was a myth.As for Tacitus, Kapyong addressed this a few years ago on this forum.

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TACITUS (c.112CE)

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Roughly 80 years after the alleged events Tacitus allegedly wrote a (now) famous passage about "Christ" - this passage has several problems however:
* Tacitus uses the term "procurator", used in his later times, but not correct for the actual period, when "prefect" was used.
* Tacitus names the person as "Christ", when Roman records could not possibly have used this name (it would have been "Jesus, son of Joseph" or similar.)
* Tacitus accepts the recent advent of Christianity, which was against Roman practice (to only allow ancient and accepted cults and religions.)
* (No-one refers to this passage for a millenium, even early Christians who actively sought such passages.)

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Thus, even if the Tacitus passage is not a later interpolation,
it is not evidence of a historical Jesus based on earlier Roman records,
but
merely a few details which Tacitus gathered from Christian stories circulating in his time (c.f. Pliny.)

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JOSEPHUS (c.96CE)

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The famous Testamonium Flavianum is considered probably the best evidence for Jesus, yet it has some serious problems :
* the T.F. as it stands uses clearly Christian phrases and names Christ as Messiah, it could not possibly have been written by the Jew Josephus (who refused to acknowledge anyone "messiah"),
* The T.F. comes in several versions of various ages,
* The T.F. was not mentioned by Origen when he reviewed Josephus - Origen even says Josephus does NOT call Jesus the Messiah, showing the passage was not present in that earlier era.
* The T.F. first showed up in manuscripts of Eusebius, and was still absent from some manuscripts as late as 8th century.
* (The other tiny passage in Josephus is probably a later interpolation.)

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An analysis of Josephus can be found here:
LIGAUBO - Daftar Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Deposit Pulsa Jackpot Terbesar

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In short - this passage is possibly a total forgery (or at best a corrupt form of a lost original.)

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But,
its COULD be actual evidence for Jesus. late, corrupt, but just POSSIBLY real historical evidence.

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Such is the weakness of the evidence that this suspect passage is considered some of the best "evidence" for a historical Jesus of Nazareth.

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TALMUD (3rd C. and later

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There are some possible references in the Talmud, but:
* these references are from 3rd century or later, and seem to be (unfriendly) Jewish responses to Christian claims.
* the references are variant and quite different to the Gospel stories (e.g. one story has "Jesus" born about 100BC.)

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So,
the Talmud contains later Jewish responses to the Gospel stories,
but
the Talmud contains NO evidence for a historical Jesus.

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Message 7Message 8 is the definitive post on the issue.You really should read the sources, not take other peoples word for it.

and let's quote from a small part of that wik

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Scholars have also debated the issue of hearsay in the reference by Tacitus. Charles Guignebert argued that "So long as there is that possibility [that Tacitus is merely echoing what Christians themselves were saying], the passage remains quite worthless".[56] R. T. France states that the Tacitus passage is at best just Tacitus repeating what he had heard through Christians.[57] However, Paul R. Eddy has stated that as Rome's preeminent historian, Tacitus was generally known for checking his sources and was not in the habit of reporting gossip.[23] Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman wrote: "Tacitus's report confirms what we know from other sources, that Jesus was executed by order of the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, sometime during Tiberius's reign."[58]

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Seems there is disagreement amoung scholars about it's relevance.

Eddy's comment is worthless and just an outright assertion.
Ehrman's comment is also worthless, because Tacitus is not confirming anything. Tacitus may have just been repeating what he heard from Christians. So his source is the source that needs to be confirmed. In other words the books of the bible are probably being used to confirm themselves.

Most historical figures have more than one source as written evidence, leave behind children, marry, and most write something themselves. What you have for Jesus is nothing like that. What you have are four Gospels that speak of him as eye witness testimony and that is all. No other historians, no children, no wife, nothing written by his own hand - nothing. Oh yeah, and these other figures don't claim to be the son of god and said to have risen from the dead!So for you to say that in Jesus' case the testimony is of extremely high quality is ridiculous. You are not looking at this clearly.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.