Hitch is dead

Oh bloody hell GDR, telling stories of imagination is as old as people.

These were folk tales handed down by the oral tradition.This quote is from this site. The Origin of Fiction

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Up until the High Middle Ages in the 12th century, books were surrounded by grave seriousness.

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The accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection were meant to be understood as historic, in the context of how literature was understood at the time. You can say they were wrong , they lied, or they misunderstood but it was certainly not meant to be taken as fiction.

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The average person only ever saw books in church, where the priest read from the Bible. Because of this, the written word was generally associated with truth.

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The perception of books was no different among learned monks, who studied books about science and philosophy in the large monasteries of the Middle Ages.

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The monks presumed that the descriptions of the paths of the planets and the human soul were ancient truths. Truths like the words of the Bible. The books read by the religious men had been passed on from generation to generation for centuries, and this meant that they acquired a special authority.

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The Gospel accounts were clearly written as an account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Sure, you can hold the view that they lied, or were just plain wrong about the main points, but the accounts are clearly meant to be take as historical

As were Homer's accounts of Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector and Hera. The great heroes of ancient Greece and Troy.The Iliad, Genesis, Odyssey and the gospels all written decades to millennia after the events, written from the oral traditions of the times and the popular tales of the people, written by those who heard but never saw the events. And each embellished most self-servingly.As with Genesis, Homer was writing in the Iliad an historical tale of his people's ancient lineage as best he could recount it. As with the various accounts of the Odyssey the various anonymous writers of the gospels were recording the popular stories of the time.Each can be said to be just as history and just as fiction as the others. There is no difference.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

My point that was that the Gospel accounts aren't written as fiction.However there is similarity in style but there is far less reason to compare the two for historical accuracy. Homer wrote it is generally conceded to be about 400 years after the event.The Gospels in one case was written by an eye witness, (John), and the others would have compiled their material from eye witnesses. Paul had considerable contact with the disciples and was convinced enough that he completely reversed his views. Luke and Acts were written by someone who traveled with Paul. Papius and Polycarp had direct contact with one or more of the Apostles. The Didache was what is generally agreed to be a first century writing and called "The Lord's Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations".There is considerable additional support for the NT writing that doesn't exist for what Homer wrote.

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Fiction was invented until the 12th century.

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To be honest you should have said: fiction in a precise, technical sense.A sense which apparently excludes obvious examples like Lucian of Samosata’s A True Story from the second century - a thousand years older.

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My point that was that the Gospel accounts aren't written as fiction.

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Funny how the scope narrows from the entire Bible to just the Gospels. However, we can be certain that the Gospels are unreliable accounts written by biased and credulous people.

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The Gospels in one case was written by an eye witness, (John), and the others would have compiled their material from eye witnesses.

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The authorship of John is in question, and the synoptic Gospels show clear evidence of literary dependencies (I.e. two of them use another synoptic Gospel as a source). We cannot know that any of them made a serious investigation, and we can be certain that writing history in the modern sense was not a concern.

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There is considerable additional support for the NT writing that doesn't exist for what Homer wrote.

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There is very little. We can be sure that Herod the Great existed, and that Quirinius conducted a census of Judaea. However Herod died about ten years before that census. Which is rather a problem when Matthew has Jesus born in the reign of Herod the Great and Luke has Jesus born during the census. They also disagree on Jesus’ ancestry.

Polycarp was the biggest quoter of what would make up the New Testament , and he did not quote or allude to the Gospel of John.You mentioned Polycarp as an associate of the Apostle John in an earlier post.

Critics and skeptics, especially those of the scholarly variety, are good at demolishing arguments. They are unbiased, though some would charge them with being biased *against* Jesus Christ. Perhaps many are against organized religion itself, which is at least more of a rational approach than being against the very idea of a Creator of all seen and unseen becoming human and offering humanity a Communion. I have examined the arguments and have also read the stories. No other assemblage of writing has inspired the lives of or changed the destiny of so many people throughout human history. The Greek myths cant even come close. How many people do you know who attribute an epiphany, clarification of soul, or familiarity with the written characters to the point of believing them to be real and living do you find there? Though not in and of itself evidence, the argument suggests that there is something about the character of Jesus Christ that lives.jar always said that even if a story was simply a tale told around a campfire, the tale had value. I would argue that the tale has value because the character is more than a human invention compiled in a book.I can never win these arguments with evidence, apart from talking about my own changed life and growing awareness. What gets me about you, PaulK is that you can use scripture to enunciate a point regarding human behavior yet you spend as much time calling Christian belief and certainty into question. No one suggests that humanity stops growing or seeking new understandings and insights. Engaging in arguments that call into question the reliability of the lessons being taught as any better than any other human wisdom is, in my opinion, a ripe target.To start with, let's define what reliable teachings are?Different philosophies lead to different behaviors from those utilizing them for understanding.Atheism is not exempt from this critique. It is my personal belief that human wisdom is *not* all we have, but I cannot prove this to be true.What I have noticed is that the scholars and critics of Jesus Christ as an actual Spirit, Relationship, and personal philosophy is accepted by most believers and rejected by the most ardent critics. I can only guess at reasons why anyone would seek to disprove such a character. Do you have any insights?

This is my point also. Critics suggest that the motives of the writers were to influence public opinion. I fail to see any evidence that the writers were simply making up stories in order to placate a poor and needy audience. I will agree, however, that many modern evangelists and teachers do exactly that. The motive speaks for itself. GDR and I would likely argue that so does the Truth.Why is it that not everyone senses this truth? Perhaps too many are indoctrinated with the message from The Scientific Method which asserts that it is normal and expected to try and disprove a claim (or an experiment) as a normal part of the method. Everyone is looking for truth. Believers differ in that they think they have found it. (Him) Scientific thinking never settles on an answer in a personal sense. They keep looking.

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I can never win these arguments with evidence, apart from talking about my own changed life and growing awareness. What gets me about you, PaulK is that you can use scripture to enunciate a point regarding human behavior yet you spend as much time calling Christian belief and certainty into question.

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I occasionally do the former typically when addressing a Christian, or the behaviour of a Christian. Scripture is a useful means of making a point. And, of course, Scripture can contain worthwhile insights.For the other, Galatians 4:16 seems an apt answer.

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Engaging in arguments that call into question the reliability of the lessons being taught as any better than any other human wisdom is, in my opinion, a ripe target.

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Do you agree that historical reliability is a different question? A fiction can convey a lesson - that after all is where parables and allegory come in. And the value of the lesson - so far as it has any - is not diminished by being conveyed through fiction.

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To start with, let's define what reliable teachings are?

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Alright. Go ahead.

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Different philosophies lead to different behaviors from those utilizing them for understanding.

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Perhaps, but I think you will find that other factors are also relevant, to a large degree.

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Atheism is not exempt from this critique. It is my personal belief that human wisdom is *not* all we have, but I cannot prove this to be true.

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Atheism in itself is not a philosophy. It may be a component of a philosophy - in some an axiom, in others more of a conclusion - but it’s not a philosophy in itself. Atheists may be Marxists or Objectivists or Buddhists - among others.

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What I have noticed is that the scholars and critics of Jesus Christ as an actual Spirit, Relationship, and personal philosophy is accepted by most believers and rejected by the most ardent critics. I can only guess at reasons why anyone would seek to disprove such a character. Do you have any insights?

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In the first place, if you bring something up as an argument those who disagree will reject it. That is the nature of debate.In the second place anyone seeking to understand the world will come to their own conclusions. It is only natural for those of us who were raised as Christians to include Christian beliefs in our evaluations. Do you really expect me to believe both that Jesus is dead and gone and that you have a personal relationship with him? Or expect me to change my mind just because you claim to have a personal relationship with him?As an aside since Matthew 7 recently came up, let me quote a relevant section: I never knew you is hardly compatible with a personal relationship.

It's more likely that followers couldn't believe that it was over and wanted it not to be. Then just imagined up all sorts of self-reinforcing myths and rumours. You see it even today when wacky evangelicals predict the second coming - they find excuses why it didn't happen and their beliefs either strengthen or disappear. Because it's obvious bullshit.

Here is an excerpt from a letter written by Irenaeus to his friend Florinus.

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For while I was still a boy I knew you in lower Asia in Polycarp's house when you were a man of rank in the royal hall and endeavoring to stand well with him. I remember the events of those days more clearly than those which happened recently, for what we learn as children grows up with the soul and is united to it, so that I can speak even of the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and disputed, how he came in and went out, the character of his life, the appearance of his body, the discourses which he made to people, how he reported his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what were the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, and about their miracles, and about their teaching, and how Polycarp had received them from the eyewitnesses of the word of life, and reported all things in agreement with the Scriptures.

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And yet you refuse to even discuss what the apologists claim. It's your position that's laughable. I see the same emptiness in your beliefs. You have nothing but the word salad that the apologists have fed you. You reject the only Book that even mentions your "saviour" (which I have never done). That's the point. You don't need to replace it. It's nothing. You don't even have to " throw it away". There's nothing there to throw away.

In the case of Homer he wrote, if I remember correctly, about 400 years after the events. He then wove in stories involving their deities but it wasn't written as fiction. Also it was based on actual events such as the Trojan war. Here is a wiki quote.

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Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles' imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War.

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It isn't a work of fiction. It is based on an actual event and then embellished and then with their mythologies thrown in for good measure.It isn't 100% certain when the Gospels were written but it would be within the lifetime of some of the disciples. The Gospel of John and also the letters of John were almost certainly written by a disciple who walked with Jesus. Traditionally it has been John son of Zebedee but more likely by John the Elder as talked about by Papius and Polycarp.We can't be sure but it is probable that Mark was written in consultation with Peter. Also of course we know that Paul had considerable contact with the disciples.Comparing the NT with Homer is apples and oranges.

As others have pointed out, that's clearly false. Maybe you could say that the Bible authors didn't make a clear distinction between "truth" and fiction but you can not deny that the Bible contains fiction. The parables, by definition, are fiction. Metaphors are the stuff of fiction. "The Lord is my shepherd" is fiction, not news.