(February 6, 2014 at 2:05 pm)Lek Wrote: Matthew and John were both apostles and their gospels were written within their lifetimes. The other writers were close associates of witnesses. Mark was a companion of Peter, who also wrote two books proclaiming the resurected Christ. It doesn't matter what language they were written in. We read them in English or whatever language we speak. Since the new testament writings were not only addressed to the Jews it would have made sense to write in the prevailing language of the day which was Greek.

None of the Gospels claim to have been written by anyone in particular. They are anonymous.

Luke can be dismissed immediately because he states that he wasn't an eyewitness.

Matthew mentions Joseph's dreams. Does this seem plausible for someone that is an apostle of Jesus decades later? This a literary tool, not something that someone relaying an account of the life of someone he meets decades later would do.

How did the Gospel writers know what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus was alone, right? The Disciples were asleep, right?

Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source. There are too many instances of verbatim similarity. This kind of congruence (wording, sentence structure, etc.) does not come from independent eyewitness testimony or oral interviews

Mark and John differ so much, that they both can't be right.

Quote:Mark was a companion of Peter, who also wrote two books proclaiming the ressurected Christ.

There is no evidence that Mark and Peter traveled together. This is nothing more than later church tradition.

DeistPaladin is the expert on this stuff. Hopefully he'll chime in on this.

There are different opinions on when and by whom the gospels were written. The early church passed on the information and traditions verbally and it wasn't untill around 300AD that the church made the decision about what writings to include in the new testament. So it was a matter of the church deciding which books were inspired based on the already accepted doctrine handed down through the generations. Another criterian was who was determined to be the author. According to my understanding, a necessary factor was whether the person had known Christ directly or had direct access to those persons. What was written in those books was already accepted as prevailing belief and was taught before it was included in the canon of scripture.

Mathew and Luke did rely heavily on Mark for their gospels or they all relied on some othe common source. Obviously, they agreed with Mark and capitalized on his work or went to the same source Mark used. They were presenting the gospel to different audiences than Mark's and were relaying already written information.

As for the question in one post about how they could know what Jesus said in his moments alone -they're probably not word for renditions. Jesus could have told them during the 40 days he was with them after the resurrection.

As for the comment concerning my formatting - yes, it does suck.

The universe is just the universe it isn't God. It can contain and is contained by God but that doesn't mean it is God in itself that would pantheism. If God and the universe are the same thing that's the same thing as God not existing.

(February 6, 2014 at 8:21 pm)Lek Wrote: There are different opinions on when and by whom the gospels were written. The early church passed on the information and traditions verbally and it wasn't untill[sic] around 300AD that the church made the decision about what writings to include in the new testament.

Right, so you're saying that you trust in a 300 year old game of telephone to get things perfectly right sans evidence? This is why 'faith' is synonymous with 'gullibility'.

(February 6, 2014 at 8:21 pm)Lek Wrote: So it was a matter of the church deciding which books were inspired based on the already accepted doctrine handed down through the generations.

Then how come these selected works quote from other works that were not the selected or inspired works of god or the apostles?

(February 6, 2014 at 8:21 pm)Lek Wrote: Another criterian[sic] was who was determined to be the author. According to my understanding, a necessary factor was whether the person had known Christ directly or had direct access to those persons. What was written in those books was already accepted as prevailing belief and was taught before it was included in the canon of scripture.

Right, so we already believe in this without evidence, and that counts as evidence for accepting the books as authentic? Doesn't sound nearly as reasonable when you spell it out like that, now does it?

(February 6, 2014 at 8:21 pm)Lek Wrote: Mathew and Luke did rely heavily on Mark for their gospels or they all relied on some othe[sic] common source. Obviously, they agreed with Mark and capitalized on his work or went to the same source Mark used. They were presenting the gospel to different audiences than Mark's and were relaying already written information.

That still doesn't explain why a supposed eyewitness (Luke) based his eyewitness account on Mark's, who was not an eyewitness and just got his information second hand from Peter. For fuck's sake dude, it's hearsay layered upon hearsay even within your own flawed and baseless assertions...

Bob Seidensticker, Cross Examined blog at Patheos Wrote:How do we know that Mark wrote the gospel of Mark? How do we know that Mark recorded the observations of an eyewitness?

The short answer is because Papias (< 70 – c. 155) said so. Papias was a bishop and an avid documenter of oral history from the early church. His book Interpretations was written after 120 CE.

Jesus died in 30, Mark was written in 70, and Papias documents Mark as the author in 120 (dates are estimates). That’s at least 50 years bridged only by “because Papias said so.”

But how do we know what Papias said? We don’t have the original of Papias, nor do we have a copy. Instead, we have Church History by Eusebius, which quotes Papias and was written in 320.

And how do we know what Eusebius said? The oldest copies of his book are from the tenth century, though there is a Syriac translation from 462.

Count the successive people in the claim “Mark wrote Mark, which documents an eyewitness account”: (1) Peter was an eyewitness and (2) Mark was his journalist, and (3) someone told this to (4) Papias, who wrote his book, which was preserved by (5) copyist(s), and (6) Eusebius transcribed parts of that, and (7) more copyist(s) translated Eusebius to give us our oldest manuscript copy. And the oldest piece of evidence that we can put our hands on was written four centuries after Mark was written.

That’s an exceedingly tenuous chain.

The sequence of people could have been longer still. Papias was the bishop of Hierapolis, in western Asia Minor. Mark might have been written in Syria, and no one knows how long the chain of hearsay was from that author to Papias. No one knows how many copyists separated Papias from Eusebius or Eusebius from our oldest copies.

It gets worse. Eusebius didn't think much of Papias as a historian and said that he “seems to have been a man of very small intelligence, to judge from his books” (Church History, book III, chapter 39, paragraph 13). Evaluate Papias for yourself: he said that Judas lived on after a failed attempt at hanging and had a head swollen so large that he couldn't pass down a street wide enough for a hay wagon. Who knows if this version of the demise of Judas is more reliable than that in Matthew, but it’s special pleading to dismiss Papias when he’s embarrassing but hold on to his explanation of gospel authorship.

Even Eusebius’s Church History is considered unreliable.

The story is similar for the claimed authorship of Matthew. A twist to this story is that Papias said that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew (or perhaps Aramaic), which makes no sense since Matthew used Mark, Q, and the Septuagint Bible, all Greek sources.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamin...s-account/

(February 6, 2014 at 8:21 pm)Lek Wrote: As for the question in one post about how they could know what Jesus said in his moments alone -they're probably not word for renditions. Jesus could have told them during the 40 days he was with them after the resurrection.

Then if they were being honest, why didn't they ever say that? There is a huge difference between a third person narration that consists of 'this is exactly what happened' and a first person 'later Jesus told us this is what happened while we were asleep'. If you grant that this is because of artistic license, how and when do you determine when this happens? How do you know when the Gospels 'authors' stop recording 'literal truth' and start embellishing things to make it sound better?

Was the crowd of 500 who supposedly saw the risen Jesus just another artistic license? What about the rending of the Temple veil, the earthquakes, the darkening of the Sun, the risen Jewish saints walking through Jerusalem? Considering no other historians alive in that time and place mentioned it, is this just more artistic exaggeration? How about in the Gospel of John after the woman found in adultery is brought before Jesus and the 'those without sin toss the first stone' bit happens and the Gospels say that the crowd dispersed leaving Jesus and the woman alone. If that is so, then surely the author wasn't there and this is another artistic embellishment?

(February 6, 2014 at 8:21 pm)Lek Wrote: As for the comment concerning my formatting - yes, it does suck.

Good, something we can finally agree on.

(February 7, 2014 at 8:03 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: The universe is just the universe it isn't God. It can contain and is contained by God but that doesn't mean it is God in itself that would pantheism. If God and the universe are the same thing that's the same thing as God not existing.

Close, but not quite. If god and the universe are the same, it's not the same as god not existing. If god is the universe, and the universe exists; then clearly god exists. However this just makes god irrelevant, because he's no longer the anthropocentric, interventionist, voyeuristic, judgemental, genocidal sky-daddy.

Lek.. please READ A BOOK... u are soooo wrong.. stop being lazy and look for urself.. stop listen to people who dont know shit..evolution and sword are telling the truth

(February 7, 2014 at 9:18 am)EvolutionKills Wrote: Close, but not quite. If god and the universe are the same, it's not the same as god not existing. If god is the universe, and the universe exists; then clearly god exists. However this just makes god irrelevant, because he's no longer the anthropocentric, interventionist, voyeuristic, judgemental, genocidal sky-daddy.

It would just be a technical difference in terminology if you're just calling the universe something else. But God generally implies an intelligence and purposeful nature, in the case of the Biblical God you have the basis of good and evil and the supreme eternal justice system as well the Moral Law as it's known and the eternal Creator of all time and space and matter. In Christianity you don't have to worry about God judging you as your sins have been forgiven preemptively through Christs death on the cross and his resurrection to the fullness of life and all that business. Once you accept this gift of salvation the idea is you won't feel the need to sin or do evil so it works in reverse to the traditional Works based faith.

(February 7, 2014 at 9:37 am)Sword of Christ Wrote:

(February 7, 2014 at 9:18 am)EvolutionKills Wrote: Close, but not quite. If god and the universe are the same, it's not the same as god not existing. If god is the universe, and the universe exists; then clearly god exists. However this just makes god irrelevant, because he's no longer the anthropocentric, interventionist, voyeuristic, judgemental, genocidal sky-daddy.

It would just be a technical difference in terminology if you're just calling the universe something else. But God generally implies an intelligence and purposeful nature, in the case of the Biblical God you have the basis of good and evil and the supreme eternal justice system as well the Moral Law as it's known and the eternal Creator of all time and space and matter. In Christianity you don't have to worry about God judging you as your sins have been forgiven preemptively through Christs death on the cross and his resurrection to the fullness of life and all that business. Once you accept this gift of salvation the idea is you won't feel the need to sin or do evil so it works in reverse to the traditional Works based faith.

Of course at this point I'd have to point out that any supposedly supreme being who thought that the best recourse for his own mistakes was the drown the entire world with a magical flood, has absolutely no fucking moral ground to judge anyone; ever.

Also, why didn't accepting salvation stop the numerous wars and genocides precipitated by Christians? If you're saved, and that removes your desire to sin, what's with all the killing?

(February 7, 2014 at 10:01 am)EvolutionKills Wrote: Of course at this point I'd have to point out that any supposedly supreme being who thought that the best recourse for his own mistakes was the drown the entire world with a magical flood, has absolutely no fucking moral ground to judge anyone; ever.

In the fleshed story the human race had been degenerated by interbreeding with fallen angels at that point and the creation as a whole was in a state of general decay the only way to purge them was to wipe the slate clean and start a fresh. It's largely a myth that was based on the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh which may have been based on a real event. There's an interesting book on the subject that has recently been published.



But it's probably best to see it as a parable for inner spiritual struggle against sin and reconciliation with God and that kind of thing.

Quote:Also, why didn't accepting salvation stop the numerous wars and genocides precipitated by Christians?

You can put that down to the flawed nature of humanity and sin but these wars will have been largely political in nature even the Crusades. Christianity began life as a persecuted minority of pacifists who revered an executed humble Galilean carpenter as the living embodiment of God not with a great leader of vast armies.

Quote: If you're saved, and that removes your desire to sin, what's with all the killing?

If you mean Christians such as Anders Breivik they aren't really interested in what Jesus said or did they just have an extension of their own ego and attach the God label to it.

(February 7, 2014 at 10:29 am)Sword of Christ Wrote:

(February 7, 2014 at 10:01 am)EvolutionKills Wrote: If you're saved, and that removes your desire to sin, what's with all the killing?

If you mean Christians such as Anders Breivik they aren't really interested in what Jesus said or did they just have an extension of their own ego and attach the God label to it.

Oh, so close but unable to land the dismount. No True Scotsman Fallacy...

Recognizing that god may be the entire universe is generally the penultimate step before recognizing we don't need both words.