Information on failed prophecy

[KUSA]

Does anyone have a compilation of Scripture pertaining to when Jesus was supposed to come back? I know it is mentioned a few times that he was supposed to come back during the apostles lifetime.

I am arguing with a xtian about it and was hoping someone had all the info so I don't have to dig through the bable for it.

[Minimalist]

No, when it didn't happen the fuckers changed their story.

[KUSA]

That's true but it's still written in there.

It's funny that they say one thing and contradict it later on. All this was written after Jesus died so it's not like Jesus corrected them after they said it because he was fucking dead in both cases.

[Minimalist]

As Bart Ehrman writes in Jesus Interrupted....

What sources do we have for Jesus? Well, we have multiple
sources in the Gospels of the New Testament. That part is good. But
they are not written by eyewitnesses who were contemporary with the events they narrate. They were written thirty-five to sixty-fi ve
years after Jesus’ death by people who did not know him, did not see
anything he did or hear anything that he taught, people who spoke
a different language from his and lived in a different country from
him. The accounts they produced are not disinterested; they are narratives produced by Christians who actually believed in Jesus, and
therefore were not immune from slanting the stories in light of their
biases. They are not completely free of collaboration, since Mark
was used as a source for Matthew and Luke. And rather than being
fully consistent with one another, they are widely inconsistent, with
discrepancies filling their pages, both contradictions in details and
divergent large-scale understandings of who Jesus was.

Pgs 143-144

The problem is that Ehrman then goes on to postulate that "oral tales" were told and that the discrepancies are because different authors heard different stories. However, he conveniently ignores the fact that there is no way to determine the authenticity of oral tales that no one has ever heard.

[Bibliofagus]

Search "jesus" in this:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/proph/long.html

[JesusHChrist]

You could read this as an example of the theological bullshit you can expect to encounter in return.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/was-jesus...al-prophet

I couldn't wade through it.

---

OK, I waded a little:

So I’m inclined to a third alternative, which is that the prophecy is ambiguous. That is to say, we don’t really know the original context of these words, so that we cannot be sure that Jesus was in fact predicting that he was going to come again within the lifetime of his contemporaries. Indeed, the eminent historical Jesus scholar John Meier doesn’t think that this saying of Jesus is even authentic, that is to say, actually uttered by the historical Jesus. Meier insists that he is in no way trying to avoid the conclusion that Jesus gave a false prophecy—Meier is ruthlessly objective—rather he argues that the evidence shows that this saying is probably not authentic.

My proposal is more modest. I appeal to the well-known fact that we often do not have the original context in which Jesus’ sayings were spoken, much less their precise wording. When we remember that the Gospels do not give us a tape recording of Jesus’ words, that the Gospels are written in Greek, whereas Jesus probably spoke most of the time in Aramaic, that the Gospel writers didn’t even have the device of quotation marks to distinguish direct and indirect speech, we can already see that we don’t have a verbatim transcript of what Jesus said. Jesus’ speeches would often be paraphrased or summarized. The Evangelists sometimes arrange these sayings in different ways. So we shouldn’t think that we always have the words of Jesus exactly as they were spoken or in their original context.

So with a hand wave, we just ignore any nonsense Jesus might have said or the words his merry band of scriptwriters might have put in his mouth.

i.e., we don't actually know shit about what Jeez might have said or not!

Problem solved!

[xpastor]

Yes, Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet, the position outlined by Schweitzer way back in 1906 and endorsed by Ehrman and numerous other NT scholars. There are ways to determine to some degree of probability what he did say and what was added by later Christians. When you see him as an apocalyptic preacher, the statements which are probably authentic all hang together.

1. The gospels record him as saying the end will come within the lifetime of his contemporaries. "Remember that all these things will happen before the people now living have all died." (Matthew 24:34)

2. His extreme moral teaching is based on the belief that the end is nigh. Sell all that you have and give it to the poor. ... It's better not to marry. ... Take no thought for the morrow.

The parables are almost all based on the theme of urgency—the kingdom of heaven is at hand, be ready for it. e.g, the bridesmaids who did not have enough oil to keep their lamps burning.

[KUSA]

I appreciate all the answers.

[Minimalist]

There are ways to determine to some degree of probability what he did say

It cannot even be demonstrated that the man existed at all, X-P. Ehrman has spent 20 years pissing in this particular pond and now he wants to tell us that he has found a safe place from which to drink. Sorry. Doesn't cut it.

[RobbyPants]

So with a hand wave, we just ignore any nonsense Jesus might have said or the words his merry band of scriptwriters might have put in his mouth.

i.e., we don't actually know shit about what Jeez might have said or not!

Problem solved!

So, when Jesus is saying things they like, and otherwise making sense, he's the really real deal. When he stops making sense, that aspect of him is sketchy bullshit. But not the rest of it. Just the parts they don't like.

I sort of get this from my wife. She's willing to throw out 90% of the Bible to try to keep her world consistent and to absolve God from some of the nastier parts of the Bible. This begs the question: why believe the other 10%?