Hitch is dead

Paul was collecting funds to be delivered to the church in Jerusalem. The reason of course was that the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem were severely marginalized and as a result required financial help from the Greek church and what then was called Asia Minor. This is hardly a motivation to get on board with the movement. The church in Jerusalem was impoverished and the church in the gentile world, (including members of the diaspora) was being asked to give sacrificially to help them.In neither case would it be an incentive to join the Christian movement, and would in fact be a disincentive.

I guess I didn't make my point clear. There were still those around who witnessed the 3 years of Jesus' ministry and would know if the story of the feeding of the 5000 was a complete fabrication then the whole account would be brought discredited.Interestingly enough the account is in all 4 Gospels. As it is in Mark, it makes sense that it would be in the other synoptics but the fact that it is also in John, one of the eyewitnesses, is interesting.

The differences are in the timing and location. All the accounts agree, like witnesses to a car accident, that the main event happened.

Just how do you equate giving money to a televangelist living an affluent life style to raising money for an impoverished group being promoted by a man living a hand to mouth existence? This is from the article you quoted.

quote:

---

he second condition is expressed in the final verse describing the meeting: "[The Pillars] asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do" (Gal 2:10). It is broadly agreed that Paul's phrase "remember the poor" refers to a one—time collection of money raised among the believers in Antioch to be given to "the poor" in Jerusalem3. While it has been suggested that the label "poor" may have been an honorific title for the members of the church in Jerusalem, it more likely represents an accurate descriptor of their situation. The collection was intended not merely as a symbolic effort meant to demonstrate unity among the different churches; it also addressed a genuine need in the Jerusalem community.

---

Yes the early church was about looking after the poor. I realize that would sometimes meaning asking people to open up their wallets in order to fulfill that mission. How about you provide a source for that comment.

That would be true today but I contend that it wouldn't have for early Christians. Today after centuries of cultures that have been under Judeo-Christian influence the idea of loving your neighbour is pretty much universally understood even if it isn't always followed. You agree that there are good lessons to be gained from the Bible without accepting but that has been gained from your culture.Most of what Jesus taught was counter-cultural. There were no atheists in their day. The point was trying to figure out what God wanted and what was He up to. A messiah was supposed to be the anointed one of Yahweh who would lead them against their enemies. Jesus' disciples believed that Jesus was the Messiah and that He could vanquish the Romans. The thing was though that He had no army with which to carry out this mission. The only reason that they believed that Jesus could do this is that they saw that God was with Him because of the miracles.After the crucifixion it was clear to the disciples that the had backed the wrong horse and that obviously a messiah couldn't suffer the humiliation of death by crucifixion. He was simply a failed messiah.However that all changed with the resurrection. Resurrection was then and still is the basic understanding of the Christian church. Without it Jesus wouldn't even be a footnote in human history. If the miracles such as the 5000 is shown to be false then the resurrection itself is thrown into question. This being the case the writers would be careful not to be making false claims that could easily be refuted by the remaining eyewitnesses. As far as the incentive to raise the funds go I think that we can simply look at the life style of Paul. He moved around constantly, was driven out of many communities with his life often being threatened, as while as being alienated from the culture and beliefs that he had grown up with and had been strongly committed to. Well, maybe I can be allowed a small use of hyperbole. Maybe the number of 5000 was a case of that.

Nobody disagreed about where the crucifixion occurred. Yes, the details don't all line up. Different disciples and others had different experiences of the risen Jesus. However, like in a car accident where all agree that the accident happened, they all agreed that Jesus had been resurrected after being crucified.

You can if you like. I don't. Each book in the bible has to be understood within its own genre, culture and time.

How do you want to define fiction. Is the parable of the Good Samaritan fiction. I mentioned earlier that the book of Job reads like a play to be performed. In both cases they aren't to be understood as factually true but they are written to project a more basic truth or message.

OK, so then if a parable is fiction then we are agreed that the Bible does contain fiction. Just because the Bibl;e contains metaphors and parables that we are going to label as fiction, (I still don't agree that they are fiction but we do have an agreed upon understanding), then it doesn't mean that we are to consider then that it is all fiction without any of it being historical. The Bible again is a library of books with no doubt hundreds of people having input into the the Bible that we have today.This being the case we have to look at what is written in context of the whole Biblical narrative, the culture at the time, and the results of what is written.With all of that criteria in mind it is clear that the Biblical accounts of the resurrection are intended to be taken as historical.

Rowling is a contemporary and Tolkien only died in 1973 and so we from the writers themselves we know that what they wrote was written and intended as fiction even if there was an underlying theme or message.Luke however writes this at the beginning of his Gospel.

quote:

---

1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

---

Luke clearly "assumes responsibility for presenting only the historical and factual truth". Obviously then Luke's Gospel has to be considered non-fiction. That does not mean that everything or anything that he writes is accurate. However, even if there are small or gross factual errors it is still a work of non-fiction.I have read a considerable amount on the historical aspects of the Gospel and I have come to the conclusion that what he has written is essentially accurate. I know others like yourself reject that belief however I haven't come to that conclusion without research.

Whether or not the writer's name is Luke does not detract from the quote. However the Gospel has always been attributed to Luke, Paul's travelling companion, from the beginning including in the writings or Irenaeous.Regardless the statement stands. The writer "assumes responsibility for presenting only the historical and factual truth".

Moby Dick was written as fiction. That was the authors intent. Luke, and it probably was Luke the physician who traveled with Paul, who compiled the Gospel from sources such as Mark, Paul, possibly Q, and other eye witnesses. Irenaeus confirms that it was written by Luke fairly early on. He also confirms that John was written by the apostle. Irenaeus was taught by Polycarp who spent time with John. There are the parts of Acts where Luke uses the term "we" in reference to the story of Paul.So, there is good evidence though not conclusive that Luke wrote that Gospel.I agree that it is something of a narration as it is a something of a biography, that is made very clear at the beginning that it is intended to be historical, regardless of who wrote it.

Actually we can. Again from Luke 1:

quote:

---

1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

---

You can't have eye witnesses to a fictitious event. You can't investigate fiction.Also it isn't as if this Gospel is written in isolation. There are the other Gospels, (this was probably the last one), in circulation as well as the Epistles. Also people don't build social constructs around fictitious writings. Also this is written a thousand years prior to that type of fiction being written.

In the first place you can as the Bible isn't simply one book. You not only have 4 individual Gospel accounts, there are all of the epistles and their various authors.
Also there is Papius and Polythorpe. Josephus mentions Jesus. Tacitus wrote this after the great fire in Rome in 64AD

quote:

---

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Juda, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

---

This is from wiki.

quote:

---

The historicity of Jesus relates to whether Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure. Virtually all scholars who have investigated the history of the Christian movement find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain,[1][2][3] and standard historical criteria have aided in reconstructing his life.[4] Scholars differ on the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels, [5][6][7][note 1] but virtually all scholars support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed

---

At any rate we are both going to believe what we are going to believe. As far as I am concerned the evidence for the resurrection is substantial. There is IMHO no other plausible explanation for the rise of Christianity and the form it took. The basic argument against it is that we know that it can't happen. While, if there is an intelligence responsible for the existence of life then it can happen. A lot depends on one's starting point of theism or materialiam.

The Bible is the canon we wound up with. There is also the question of what is true. Is the story of the "Good Samaritan" true? There are many parts of the Bible that I don't believe are true such as the case of God either commanding or committing genocide or public stoning.Everything written is written from some point of view and we come to our own conclusions by doing our best to understand the various writers biases, their sources, and in the case of historical writers the culture, styles of writing and supporting documents from their era.The world of Jesus was far removed from the world of Isaiah and even further removed from the world of Moses. When I claimed that the Bible didn't contain fiction I was using the definition that in order for it to be fiction, it had to be intended to be understood as neither literally true or as a parable. That was not to say that there aren't accounts in the Bible the are false. I then accepted your idea of what constitutes fiction Well no, the whole Christian message is that this was a one off. My point was a materialist cannot accept belief in resurrection as it is contradictory to their fundamental view of the world. As a theist I can't conclusively prove the historicity of the resurrection, but I can look at what we have and start with the view that it is possible.