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Hagbard Celine said:To which ones do you refer? There were many texts written about Jesus. The ones that went into the New Testament were decided upon by the Council of Nicea based on source, age and in keeping with traditional "Christian" values, not unlike the values applied during the forming of the Septuagent, which eventually became the Old Testament. Everybody knows that.
Hagbard Celine said:If you read the link, you would know that this was a question posed in the Atheist's diatribe. Luvergirl's question was just as ridiculous and is not in keeping with the rules of honest debate.
Hagbard Celine said:We also know that Jesus isn't the first person to claim he is God.
Hagbard Celine said:Of course Jesus existed, nobody's refuting that. I'm refuting that you can prove what was written about him is true. It's fairly far-fetched if you haven't noticed.
I can tell you bluffed. You didn't look anything up until I called you on it. Anyway, many of the sources here, i.e. Josephus, Pliny the Elder, etc. weren't used by the Council of Nicea because they refute many claims made by purveyors/converters of the faith such as Paul, John, Mark, and Matthew.
Avatar4321 said:I believe it does, and I believe that having a picture in the signature is against the rules. It doesnt occur very often so Ill have to check.
Avatar4321 said:well the article was a waste of time. No where in the article did I find any evidence that the writer was concerned with rational intellectual discussion or even capable of it.
The fact is even from the beginning he admitted he is closed minded to the possibility. The fact that he dismisses anyone who has faith in God as insane clearly demonstrates how open he is in the discussion.
I found the Santa analogy pretty poor, because it doesn't really reflect any type of religious people, particularly Christian fundamentalists who I am sure he is trying to imply are like this. heck even the muslim terrorists dont reflect half of the things he is trying to analogize.
And considering how passionate he is about his diatribe, i hardly believe this is a guy that is going to be walking on eggshells trying not to offend people. If he experiences half of what he tries to claim I doubt he is the innocent party in a majority of those encounters.
I think the majority of the problem is he has completely closed himself off of the possibility. Not because it isn't logical, but because he doesn't want to believe. The problem is he would merely dismiss any evidence of God as people merely being deluded sheep.
For example, I know God exists, I know that Jesus Christ died for my sins and rose from the grave because of my experiences with the Lord, the miracles of seen, etc. Most of all just from talking with the Lord. and you don't have to take my word for it, you can talk with the Lord yourself and He will tell you.
The writer would dismiss me as psycho delusional. Heck I am not sure id believe half of it if i didnt experience it myself. the fact is he has closed himself off to the possibility that there is a God and that He actually interacts with His children. In fact, I am willing to bet a few of the posters who will read this will think I am nuts. But I am not. I know what I know. I've experienced what Ive experienced. You might not believe me but who cares, I know the truth and God knows the truth and I wont deny it nor could I if i wanted to. Although sometimes it may seem like it would be easier if I could.
The Lord said seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall receive, knock and it it shall be opened unto you. He certainly hasn't lied about that. Problem is few people are willing to actually seek Him out anymore. No one wants to have to change their life to live a higher standard. They want the benefits of faith without the work involved to make it living faith and some want it without having to believe. Which is a pity because God is more than happy to welcome you with open arms when you feel like coming.
Powerman said:So if I don't have a picture as an avatar, yet have one as a sig, then how am I wasting anymore bandwith than anyone else. And if it is against the rules to have a pic as your sig then why do they have an image function for you when you create your sig? Seems like you guys are just trying to pick on me. I think it's quite pathetic actually. If the sig offends you then just say so and I will happily remove it.
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Hagbard Celine said:To which ones do you refer? There were many texts written about Jesus. The ones that went into the New Testament were decided upon by the Council of Nicea based on source, age and in keeping with traditional "Christian" values, not unlike the values applied during the forming of the Septuagent, which eventually became the Old Testament. Everybody knows that.
more if interestedWhen we open a Bible and look for the gospels, we find them in English translation, neatly collected at the beginning of the New Testament, complete with book names, chapter and verse numbers, punctuation, paragraphs, and these days, usually with chapter headings and reference notes. None of these were present in the original manuscripts of the writings we know as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. (Yes, even punctuation wouldn't have been present in the original documents.) What we find in our Bibles is the result of a process of preservation, translation, and publication. It makes sense to wonder if what we read bears any resemblance to what the gospel writers actually penned almost 2,000 years ago. Can we know what the original gospel manuscripts really said?
It's not uncommon these days for people to answer "no" to this question, though these skeptics almost inevitably have no idea what they're talking about. Critics of Christianity often allege that the gospels as we know them bear little resemblance to the originals. This criticism appears on the lips of Sir Leigh Teabing, a fictional historian in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Teabing "reveals" the truth about Jesus and early Christianity to Sophie, a naïve and willing learner in the novel, whose "education" also instructs the novel's reader. In his typically condescending fashion, Teabing begins to enlighten Sophie about the true nature of the Bible in this way:
"The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book." (p. 231)
Of course there's a measure of truth here, as is usually the case with Teabing's revelations, but only a measure. The Bible is indeed a human product, though this in no way implies that it is not also "of God." And it did not fall from the clouds. But, contra Teabing, the Bible has not "evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions." It has indeed been translated into more than 2,000 languages far more than any other book and it has been released in myriads of additions. But these translations and additions are all based on the same basic ancient documents, as I'll show in a moment. The "evolved through countless translations" part is fictional.
The original gospels were written sometime in the second half of the first century A.D. (I'll say more about the dating of the gospels later in this series.) It's likely that they were written on scrolls of papyrus (a rough, paper-like substance). But it's highly unlikely that any of the original gospel manuscripts (called by the technical term "autographs") exist today. They were probably worn out through use, lost, burned, destroyed, reused, or even eaten by critters.
Yet ancient people had a way of preserving the information contained in their scrolls: copying. Trained scribes would copy the words from one document onto a new document. Their training taught them to minimize errors and maximize accuracy. Yet their's was not a slavish task, because there were times when scribes would make changes as they copied (when, for example, they believed that their source text contained an error). Even the best of scribes, however, sometimes made unintended errors.
So, the fact that the original gospel manuscripts did not survive to this day, combined with the fact that for centuries the text was passed on through a process of copying, makes one wonder whether we can trust that the Greek text of the gospels we have today looks anything like what the authors originally wrote down.
The answer to this query is an enthusiastic "yes." Though we cannot be completely sure that every word in our Greek manuscripts precisely reproduces what was first penned, we can have confidence that we're pretty close in most cases. Let me explain why.
First of all, we have well over 2,000 Greek manuscripts of the gospels (and other ancient translations like Latin). Compared with other ancient writings, this is a veritable wealth of material. Classical scholars are often forced to rely on a handful of manuscripts of ancient texts, whereas New Testament scholars are overwhelmed with primary material.
This is p52, the oldest fragment of the New Testament. (The 'p' stands for papyrus, the substance of the fragment.) It has been dated to around 125 A.D. The text is from the Gospel of John, which was written around 90 A.D. So the gap between the original and this copy is about 30-50 years. The text reads (in translation, with bold letters represented in p52): The Jews replied, We are not permitted to put anyone to death. (This was to fulfill what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.) Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, Are you the King of the Jews? (John 18:31-33).
Second, many of the gospel manuscripts are quite old, and therefore trustworthy. We have a few papyrus fragments and documents of the gospels that date from the second century A.D., with more from the third century. Full-scale manuscripts of the gospels and the rest of the New Testament can be dated to the fourth and fifth century. Now this might seem like a significant time gap between the writing of the gospels and the manuscripts we now possess, but in comparison with other ancient Greek writings, the New Testament documents are in a different league. For example, the earliest manuscripts of Herodotus (5th century B.C. Greek historian), Plato (4th century B.C. Greek philosopher) and Josephus (1st century A.D. Jewish historian) are at least 1,000 years later than the time of writing.
Third, though the process of copying ancient documents wasn't flawless, as I explained above, it was actually quite reliable. Moreover, because contemporary scholars understand this process, and because there are so many texts of the New Testament, scholars are able to identify scribal errors and changes with a high degree of probability.
Fourth, the discipline of text criticism by which experts seek to identify the earliest form of the text is the most objective in New Testament scholarship, and therefore offers the most certain results. Though text critical scholars might disagree about some passages, the amount of agreement among diverse critics is exceptional, unlike what you'd find when it comes to other New Testament disciplines, like exegesis, for example. This doesn't necessarily mean that we always get back to the original autographs, but it does mean we can have a high level of confidence in the findings of text criticism.
This is p66, which is called the Bodmer Papyrus. It dates from around 200 A.D. The text is John 1:1-13, plus the first word of verse 14. As you can see, there are many more pages in this papyrus.
Fifth, though there are a few verses in the gospels (less than 3%) in which some words may still be uncertain, the vast majority of verses in our critical texts reflect the original writing, or something very close to it. Moreover, the disputed words are almost always trivial. The only exception I can think of is the ending of Mark's gospel, where we can't be sure about the originality of everything after Mark 16:8. Most translations put the latter verses in brackets. This passage is the one in which Jesus promises that believers will speak in tongues and be immune to the venom of snakes or to deadly poison. Quite a few Appalachian Christians literally stake their life on a passage that may not be part of Mark's original gospel. If you're not into snake-handling, however, you don't have to worry about the textual authenticity of the biblical gospels.
All of this means that when you read one of the New Testament gospels, you are almost certainly getting the words of the original author (in translation, of course, unless you can read Greek). Can we know what the original gospel manuscripts really said? Yes, with a high level of confidence. This doesn't guarantee the truthfulness of gospel writers, of course. I'll begin to address this topic in my next post.
gop_jeff said:But He was the first to prove it.
Clay's Source said:This is how sense works imo, using the Bible itself: Either Jesus died and stayed that way in which case he did not rise and Christianity is built on an erroneous premise, or he did rise in which case he did not die and there was no sacrifice, and Christianity is built on an erroneous premise. It really is that simple.
Max Power said:How exactly did Jesus prove that he was God?
I'll take it as a given that Jesus existed, that he preached, and that he was killed...
gop_jeff said:Obviously, the guy didn't read the part of the Bible about Jesus rising from the dead...
The ClayTaurus said:I'm sure you were all biting your nails waiting for the second and final installment.
Enjoy:
http://brentrasmussen.com/log/node/364
The ClayTaurus said:He does seem misinformed on some issues; whether it's intentionally or unintentionally, who knows.
gop_jeff said:Well, Jesus claimed to be God several times. But here's what proves His claim:
1. The miracles He performed during His earthly life.
2. The testimony of God the Father, which occurred twice during Christ's time on Earth, once at His baptism and once at His transfiguration.
3. His resurrection from the dead.
Max Power said:How can I accept this as proof, any different from accepting that Zeus is on top of Mt Olympus hurling lightning bolts?
*Both cite religious texts as sources of evidence.
Max Power said:How can I accept this as proof, any different from accepting that Zeus is on top of Mt Olympus hurling lightning bolts?
*Both cite religious texts as sources of evidence.
Hobbit said:However, there is no evidence to refute the claims of Christ's divinity, whereas mountain climbers have seen the top of Mt. Olympus and didn't find any divine beings. I'll admit that emperically, there's really not a whole lot of difference in the amount of evidence supporting any of the world's major religions. However, there's about that much evidence proving evolution, as well, and that crap's taught in schools as fact.
Max Power said:Well, at least you'll admit that.
I know that Jeff isn't going to show up with some evidence that prove not only that Jesus existed, but that his miracles were real. If anyone DID have this evidence, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
