Re: Discovery of Herod's Tomb

On May 10, 7:24 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 9, 3:35 pm, John Vreeland <vreej...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


But the term "evidence" presupposes that it is not a divinely
revealed work.

Do you have a source for this crackpot definition of "evidence"?

I am serious, question is not rhetorical.

Look up the word "faith." If you believe the Bible is divinely
inspired then you do not need evidence. Evidence implies a lack of
faith, ergo, a belief that the book is not divinely inspired.
Therefor I repeat that looking through the Bible for "evidence" of
anything presupposes that it is not a revealed text.

If you assume that the gospels are not divinely
revealed then you have to be careful how you interpret them for
historical accuracy.

Why?

What are you talking about, John?

Historical analysis of the books of the New Testament. You have to be
careful when doing historical analysis. If you are not careful then
you might come to incorrect or even silly conclusions. You should
always be careful when doing academic work. Did I not understand your
question?

There are techniques that can be used to analyze texts such as the
Gospels but it is not that same as simply reading the Gallic Wars. In
that case we know exactly who the author is, why he wrote it, and whom
he was (Gaius Julius Caesar).

Comments presuppose (that unlike the Gaellic Wars) we do not know that
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John wrote the four Gospels. We know why they wrote (to
communicate the gospel according to the Incarnate expression of God
"on the stage of history," and we know Matthew and John were Apostles,
and that Mark and Luke were firstfruits of the Spirit disciples.

Again, what are you talking about, John?

This is not the case for the Gospels,
where the best tradition (ignored, as all traditions are, by most
Protestant faiths) has it that the Gospel of Mark was written and
edited after the illiterate disciple Peter's death by his assistant.

Very predictable atheist buffoonery.

Scholars know for a fact that Mark wrote his account under the
tutelage of Peter, in Greek, the language which ruled the then known
commercial world.

I think that was what I said. Yes, I re-read it. That was what I
said.

The gospel of Mark has occupied the minds of the most brilliant
scholars since the First Century. Such individuals would not concern
themselves with any writing produced by any illiterate person, but
then again, illiterate persons cannot read or write, so once again,
what are you talking about John?

I think you misread what I wrote. I said that Mark, an assistant of
the disciple Peter, wrote the Gospel from his memories of having
traveled with the disciple for many years. We know this from Papias,
who heard it second-hand from a Christian from the community where
Mark wrote his gospel. This Christian also mentioned that the
disciple Matthew had written a book of the saying of Jesus in Hebrew,
but he mentions none of the other three gospels. This tradition would
date to about 110 CE, maybe 120. For a long time the idea of a book
of Jesus' sayings was thought to be silly, until we actually found
one. Origen had nothing but insults for Papias but few scholars find
any reason to doubt the validity of his claim here.

There is no evidence within any of the gospels themselves to identify
their authors. If you think there is, go back and re-read it
carefully. I do not know of any serious Bible scholar who claims
otherwise. And if you claim that the titles of the gospels identifies
the authors then we need not be having this discussion.

The others were apparently written later and were even farther removed
from the source, perhaps not even having been written by an author who
had met one of the twelve. This does not bode well for accuracy, but
there are ways of peering through the murky veil of oral tradition and
biased reporting..

A ball of silly opinion.

We know for a fact that Matthew wrote his account exactly 15 years
after the acension (48 AD; Codex Mayerianus, dictated to Nicolas the
Deacon). Didn't know this? Why would any Atheist or Darwinist or
their
microphone report this fact which disproves all of their previous
Elaine Pagels (a Darwinist) based fraudulent scholarship?

I have no idea what you are talking about or whom Elaine Pagels is.
Beg pardon?

We know Luke wrote his account before 70 AD when Titus sacked the
Temple because such a Earth shattering event would have surely been
mentioned.

I addressed this in a different post in this thread. It's a curious
thing for a believer to claim.

Biased reporting?

What does that mean?

No, that was my question.

Everyone is biased. Except Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins and John
Harshman (atheist-evolutionists) - correct?

Again, what are you taking about, John?

I do not know what you are talking about here. What do these people
have to do with this discussion? Who (aside from you) claims that
Darwin and Dawkins and Harshman are not biased? They would not even
describe themselves that way. Scientific thinking tries to eliminate
bias but never forgets that it exists.

The three techniques are:
1) Criterion of Independent Attestation. If you try read the N.T. as
separate books, as I do, then you find similarities and differences.
Scholars have long recognized that after Mark the writers of the
Gospels used various sources labeled "Q" (which is now lost),

How do you know Q[source] is lost? Assertion presupposes existence.
Since there is no evidence of such a document; rather, entirely
assumed based on cross textual synoptics, congruity is explained by
the CLAIM: Divine inspiration.

Find and produce hypothetical Q document and I am falsified; hurry I
am waiting, John!

You seem to misunderstand the goal and basic method of historical
inquiry. Since divine inspiration cannot in principle be either
proven nor disproven then historians tend not to bother trying. It's
sort of like science. You can say "there's something interesting
here, I'll bet god did it," but that doesn't really say anything
useful. In fact, if you want to use the similarities of the synoptic
gospels to argue for divine inspiration then you would have to admit
that the differences between the gospels argue against divine
inspiration. As I said at the beginning, if you assume that the New
Testament is a revealed text then there is no point in using the word
"evidence" in your discussion. If you believe that the Bible is a
revealed text then there is no discussion. The statement "It is a
revealed text" leaves little room for argument.

It is possible that "Q" never existed, but it looks very much like
this "Q" document did exist. It is, in effect, the simplest
explanation. Perhaps it will be found one day, as other new gospels
have been found over the years. Matthew's book of sayings would be
fascinating. Origen also referred to various gospels which are now
lost, though pieces of one or another have been found in fragmentary
form. I can look these up if you are interested.

"M" (Matthew's independent source), "L" (Luke's independent source)
and of course John. Thomas, Peter, and Josephus also seem to have
their own information sources. Keeping in mind the obvious common
sources, there is still some usefulness in this technique. For
example, Mark, John, and Q all have independent descriptions of how
Jesus encounters John the Baptist at the beginning of his ministry.
Mark, John, and Paul all state that Jesus had brothers, while Mark,
Paul and Josephus name him "James." From this we can suppose (if we
can suppose anything) that some preacher named Jesus began his
ministry with an encounter with John the Baptist and had one or more
brothers, one of them named James. I must point out that multiply-
attested traditions are not necessarily authentic, but they are merely
more likely to be authentic.

Entire commentary presupposes something nefarious; might just John
Vreeland be an Atheist or Darwinist unable and unwilling to understand
the source which contradicts his worldview?

Ray, what are you talking about? Are you disagreeing with me? Are
you saying that Jesus did not begin his ministry with a visit to John
the Baptist? This is an explanation of historical analysis. This is
not exegisis. I do not think the concepts have very much in common.

2) Criterion of Dissimilarity.

Disproves all conspiracy theories in their tracks.

No, dissimilarity is used to confirm the reliability of a statement.
It cannot be used to disconfirm it.

This one gets misused a lot but it can
be very powerful. Simply put, if a tradition seems to make no sense,
or if in fact it seems to argue powerfully against doctrine, then it
probably happened exactly as attested.

Argument makes no sense. It says if something does not make sense =
probably true. This belief only makes sense when we remember that an
Atheist and/or Darwinist wrote it concerning the New Testament.

The criterion of dissimilarity has been used by bible scholars for a
long time. Since (as you should know) no two manuscript Bibles are
ever the same, conflicts would arise over which reading out of a
selection of possible verses was the correct one. Since the monks who
were copying these texts were likely to change a verse if they thought
that the original made no sense or appeared to conflict with dogma
(thinking they were correcting a mistake) the rule was established
that "the more difficult reading" was the correct one. In other
words, when the editors who compiled King James sat down and went to
work, they used the Criterion of Dissimilarity to choose which
manuscript copies to use. (Not that they had any good manuscripts to
begin with, but that is a different story--q.v. "Textus Receptus".)

By way of example, consider
the baptism of Jesus. When I was a child the baptism scene made no
sense to me. Why would the Son of Man (in Jewish thought, a heavenly
being) need to be baptized by some wannabe-prophet?

Comment is so ridiculous; posing as a "legitimate issue" but in
actuality it is an Atheist and/or a Darwinist attempting to make the
source of their enemies worldview look stupid.

John the Baptist was a genuine prophet and the baptism of Christ
marked the official beginning of His three year and six month
ministry. The Spirit descended on Jesus; and John plainly said that
he
was unworthy to even tie His shoes. The point is that God uses persons
whom the world (Vreeland's criteria) rejects ("wannabe prophet"). The
message is that if you view yourself as unworthy - God says
differently than Vreeland (thank God).

The normal order
of things is that the spiritually greater baptizes the lesser.

True, but the text plainly has John admitting that he is unworthy and
I explained why. The Bible honestly reports what happened. Just
because there is a departure from your schematic you assume the worst.

In John the story that Jesus initially refused baptism is *not* multiply
attested and looks like a later change made to explain what to the
early church must have seemed strange. For this reason we might
conclude that John the Baptist did indeed baptize Jesus (again,
assuming we can conclude anything). Another obvious example is Jesus'
betrayal (multiply attested) at the hands of one of his own
disciples. This is not the sort of thing you would expect from the
Messiah, as was his actual crucifixion. The suffering and death of
the Messiah by crucifixion--like a common criminal--was a great
hindrance in getting Jews to convert to Christianity. Only by a
careful and imaginative non-reading of the O.T. can you sort of find a
way to predict it. The Jews on the whole were not convinced precisely
because they knew their own holy books and knew that the Messiah was
not supposed to suffer and die. I conclude from this that Jesus was
indeed crucified.

Bible explanation by atheist (now it makes sense).

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it
means. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an atheist, Ray.

3) The Criteria of Contextual Credibility is probably more familiar.
Unlike the first two criteria I presented it is mainly used in the
negative sense. For example, the story of Jesus' conversation with
Nicodemus--where the expression "born again" comes from--relies on a
play on words that only works in Greek: "born again" = "born from
above." The question of why they would be speaking Greek

Why not? Said language ruled the then known world. Jesus spoke all
languages, of course. But we do not know what language Jesus and
Nicodemus were actually speaking, only that their conversation was
FIRST recorded in Greek. They could have been speaking Syriac or
Aramaic, so once again, what are you talking about, John?

--and how the
disciples would have understood the dialog if they were--raises a red
flag.

Why?

The language of Judea was Aramaic. One or two of the disciples might
have understood Greek but the bulk of the Hellenized Jews were
Cesarean artisans, not fishermen. Why would Jesus be preaching in a
language that his disciples did not know?

On the other hand most of the Gospel writers were fluent in
Greek. The four canonical books were soon written in Greek, but were
not written by Jesus' disciples. Another example: in John there is an
account that people were afraid to proclaim that they were Jesus'
followers for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue, but
that almost certainly did not happen until much later (though it did
eventually happen by the time the gospels were being written).
My point is that while there is probably some useful historical
information in the N.T. there is also a lot of editing going on by
people with certain theological axes to grind. It helps to understand
what the individual authors were motivated by if you want to make any
sense out of it. On the other hand, if you view it as a divinely
inspired and absolutely correct then you simply rationalize all the
inconsistencies as being part of "God's inscrutability" and there is
no point in trying to talk sense with you.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

Or you are an Atheist and Darwinist who does not understand the Bible
(but complicated natural selection is no problem) - go figure.

Go figure.

Don't feel slighted John, I have never seen any Atheist or Darwinist
who understands the Bible. Common sense says if you want accurate
information about the Bible do not listen to a Atheist or Darwinist.
Vreeland proves my point.

Ray

I don't think you understand the Bible or natural selection, Ray.
Belief is not understanding.


.

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