One question for Christians

[DeistPaladin]

OK, pay attention class. This is how the apologist deals with a skeptic on the Jesus story and defends the free ride Christianity gets from how they've written history.

First, you dismiss your opponent as crazy or a crackpot, with plenty of ad hominems:

Oh Lordy! You’re one of these fringe people too? So much for honest scholarship.

Next, in a jaw-dropping departure from logical thinking, the apologist presents the story book as proof of the story book. Impressive terms like "testimony" and "eye-witness accounts" help to deceive the unwary into thinking that anonymously written mythology texts are actually biographies.

Not sure what you mean by proof, but the evidence is overwhelming. Multiple contemporary accounts based on the testimony of eye witnesses to Jesus...

In reality:

Mark: Putting aside the dubious authorship, we have a non-witness (companion of Paul) who wrote a hearsay account (based on Peter says he saw) from a source that couldn't have witness all the events (Peter was not always present in that Gospel), penned at least four decades after the alleged events (circa 70 CE) and we know of at least one undisputed alteration to that account (Mark 16).
Matthew: Supposedly an eye-witness but he bases his account on Mark even though he corrects Mark on some of the sloppy moments where Mark is ignorant of Jewish theology. He writes for a Jewish audience, padding his account with "prophecies" from the OT. Unfortunately, when the OT is cross-referenced, it turns out Matty is lying his ass off. Were he to give courtroom testimony, he'd be arrested for perjury.
Luke: Also not a witness, as admitted in the very first chapter. His timeline is utterly incompatible with Matthew's. Luke also goofs on the dates of Herod the Great vs. Quirinius, or else the virgin Mary had a ten year pregnancy. The "annunciation" happened during the reign of Herod the Great (died 4 BC) and she gave birth when Quirinius was governor of Syria (began 6 CE).





John: [sung] One of these things is not like the other... [/sung]





Christians refer to the other of the four as "synoptic" (similar), tacitly admitting that John sits oddly alongside them. John presents some clearly advanced theology. "The Jews" are a separate and hostile group. Jesus is one with his father instead of being a clearly separate, lesser and wholly subordinate being. Jesus opens a baptizing stand next to John the Baptist and beats him at his own game. John the Baptist becomes so submissive that he doesn't even baptize Jesus at all. The meek and mild Jesus is replaced with the bombastic Jesus who is nothing less than God-incarnate. John's Gospel is aimed at establishing orthodox theology. It's a Gospel for the Trinitarians.

Trying to arrange a timeline for all the Gospels is impossible. Matthew has Jesus born before 4 BC, Luke after 6 CE. Luke says Jesus is about 30 when he starts his ministry where John implies Jesus is about 50. Mark says Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days immediately after his baptism where John says Jesus spent the next two days gathering disciples and the next day attended a wedding. The Synptics have Jesus end his ministry with the arrival at Jerusalem and temple "cleansing". John has Jesus go to Jerusalem and kick off his ministry with the temple cleansing. Luke says Jesus went to Heaven on the day of his resurrection. John says it was at least 8 days later. Acts says 40 days later. Shall I go on?

is more than we have from any other historical figure from that time period.

Oh bull.

Repeating that lie over and over doesn't make it true.

Let's try Julius Caesar. We have books he wrote. Where's the Book of Jesus? He had a mission to save all of humanity, didn't he? Why didn't he write down his teachings so we could get it all from the horse's mouth instead of hearsay and mythology? We have his memoirs and dispatches. We have busts and statues and coins depicting him (who knows what Jesus really looked like but it probably wasn't the blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer dude we know today. We have his family tree. For Jesus, we have three different bloodlines in the Bible. We have his political career, unlike the ministry of Jesus which supposedly was controversial, popular, highly successful, drawing crowds and gaining the attention of the rich and powerful and spread like wildfire to the surrounding provinces and yet nobody in his century seemed to notice it.

But hey, maybe I'm unfair talking about a major political figure of the time. How about John the Baptist? He's actually mentioned by actual historians of the time, not just followers in his religion. He gets a better billing from independent witness than Jesus!

Using question-begging epithets to describe the New Testament doesn’t count as a valid argument.

All I'm doing is being consistent. You don't believe in Islam just because of what the Koran says. You don't believe in Zeus because of what the Iliad says. When you understand why you don't take the mythology of other religions seriously, you understand why I don't take yours seriously.

This seems to be a poorly worded attempt at poisoning the well.

No, it's a statement of fact.
Is Jesus one with his father or a lesser being, separate and subordinate with a lesser base of knowledge, a subordinate will, and a being that "grew in wisdom and favor with the Lord"?
Did Jesus rise into Heaven on the day of his resurrection or 40 days later?
Was he born during the reign of Herod the Great or the governorship of Quirinius?
Did he go into the Wilderness after his baptism for 40 days or did he stay and gather disciples and then attend a wedding?
Was Mary from Nazareth and went to Bethlehem to give birth in a manger or did she live in Bethlehem and give birth in her home, to settle in Nazareth after returning from Egypt?

It's...
A...
Mess!

Christianity is remarkably united on their Christology, so apparently the New Testament does present a coherent picture of the Christ.

Repeating the lie doesn't make it true.

This assertion would actually require some information to back it up. As it stands now it is meaningless.

During the first few centuries, there were a wild variety of Christianities that, as I've said, would make modern Christianity vs. Islam look like picking nits. Islam and modern Christianity both agree that the OT icons were prophets, Mary was a virgin, Jesus was born as a baby, he was a physical being, he preached a monotheistic religion (with a confusing Trinity with modern Christianity but let that go for now) and he flew up into the sky after being last seen.

Docetics denied that Jesus was a flesh and blood being. To them, the material world was evil, the spiritual world was good and therefore God could only be spiritual, almost by definition. Echoes of the struggles with Doceiticism are found in the Bible where 1John 4 and 2John both rail against them on a faith-based grounds and pleads with the reader to reject them, not appealing to recent history, but on the basis of faith.

Marcionites believed there were two gods. They rejected the Jewish god and all things Jewish. Jesus was a higher god who appeared as an adult in the temple one day (no baby Jesus, no virgin Mary).

Ebionites believed that Jesus was born a normal baby, son of Mary and Joseph, conceived the same way all babies are. He was a normal man until adopted by Yahweh as a son at his baptism. Then the Holy Spirit came down and formed a symbiotic relationship. Salvation was in keeping the Jewish laws.

The Arians (not to be confused with Hitler's mythical race) believed Jesus was an angel sent by Yahweh. They rejected the Trinity.

Christianity only became a unified faith once all the "heterodox" beliefs were all violently persecuted out of existence.

People do not fabricate a person in order to die horrible deaths for what they know to be a lie.

I never suggested that anyone "just made up Jesus one day".

A more compelling story than either that straw-man or your folklore is that the ancient Jews, chaffing under foreign rule, wondered WTF happened to Yahweh's promise to David? Some of them rebelled, and were violently and thoroughly put down by the Romans. Others decided that the promised kingdom existed in a "higher place".

Reading the NT books in order is revealing that way. You can almost see how the story developed and got better with the telling. Revelation was the first book written. Jesus is the mighty warlord that would lead Israel to ultimate victory over Yahweh's enemies. Bits and pieces of pagan ideas of Hell, salvation and an intercessor deity (ALL of which are either absent in Judaism or wholly blasphemous to it) were synchronized into the new religion. Christianity was born the bastard child of Judaism and paganism and the maladjusted brat would grow up to persecute both parents. Paul's letters described this being but in vague terms. In fact, the much touted testimony in 1Cor 15 actually has Paul denying that he was born during the time of JC.

This savior deity was brought down to earth first by Mark, in stories which may have been regarded as parables. Certainly the fig tree was not a literal event, or at least many Christians say so, as surely the godman would have known they were not in season.

Matt and Luke added to the story by writing in a birth and lineage to David (though both are contradictory, having been written independently and to different audiences). John the Baptist sinks lower and lower onto his knees, an obvious put-down for the early rivals of the Christians, the followers of John the Baptist.

John goes completely over the top and writes a completely different story, one more compatible with modern Trinitarian ideas.

Nice try. The martyrdom and persecution of Christians in Rome is a historical fact establish by the New Testament,

Excuse me, but are you citing ACTS as a "historical document"?

Seriously?



"historical documents"

the writings of the Church fathers,

Propaganda

Pliny the Younger,

The Christians didn't hold their heads high and go to their deaths. They renounced Jesus.

Tacitus, Suetonius, and

According to the story, Nero blamed the fires of Rome on the Christians and had them killed for it. There was no attempt that I saw in either account to get them to renounce Jesus. They were simply exterminated in a religious pogrom. Not the first time in history that's happened and you don't believe in the other religions just because it happened.

The story in a nutshell:
Rome burns.
Nero claims "The Christians did it. Kill them!"
No "renounce Jesus and we'll spare you".
It was "you burned our city and now you'll pay"
No way the Christians could have seen that coming.

Eusebius.

Self-professed liar for Jesus.

The burden of proof is actually upon you to refute the historically accepted position.

Nice. I see what you did there. You confused whether or not Rome persecuted any Christians with the folklore that Christians willingly held their heads high and laid down their lives, waiting to be reunited with their savior rather than renounce him to live. Not the same thing.

Christians persecuted the pagans. That doesn't prove Isis and Zeus are real. Hitler persecuted the Jews. That doesn't prove Yahweh is real. Buddhists and Hindus have been fighting in Sri Lanka. That doesn't prove the validity of either religion.

Your assertion is that the Christians told the Roman's "Go ahead and kill me. I'm ready to meet my Lord." As if religious fanaticism proves anything. Regardless, that's what you need to prove: the folklore of their heroic martyrdom, not just their persecution.

This is how we have to deal with Holocaust deniers.

Wonderful. A false dichotomy designed to shift the burden of proof onto the skeptic with a side order of Godwin!

Prove that anyone in Waco or Jonestown who died believed that what they were dying for was false or else my argument still stands.

Nope. Your argument was that the Christians were persecuted and refused to renounce their lord, preferring death. And this proves Christianity is true. My counter is that people do that all the time. Fanaticism proves nothing.