Bart D. Ehrman - The Bane of Fundies!

[Godscreated]

So is that a recognition that the content of the bible is not a rigorous literal truth, but a much more divinely sloppy "spiritual" truth? That is improvement. Religious minds usually seem too inertia driven to profit much from where this leads, but let's call it improvement nonetheless.

No, the scriptures are truth period, why would you think that literal and spiritual truth are not the same truth. You all are so biased in your thinking you will see only what you desire when you read anything and this leads to one being decieved.

[Jaysyn]

No, the scriptures are truth period.

The old saying is true, there is one born every minute.

You all are so biased in your thinking you will see only what you desire when you read anything and this leads to one being decieved.

And we can add that to the long list of things you have no proof of.

[Godscreated]

Careful, G-C. They'll throw you out of the fundie club. They have a zero tolerance policy!

The fact remains that whoever the author was ( it would a mere coincidence if the guy was named "John.") he DID place the event at the beginning, Chapter 2... ( and then goes on to describe other later events. I have to give that round to Ehrman. He clearly knows a lot more than you.

Still....glad to see you backing away from a literal reading. That's a sign of progress. Maybe we're rubbing off on you?


( And I don't mean that in a sexual context!)

I believe that the truth is truth whether literial or spiritual. He maybe more intelligent than I am but I see his bias in his writtings which makes him at the very least deceptive. He does have a way with words that would lead one to believe what he says is the complete truth, if one is not careful to analyze his work. No one has disproven that the authors of the gospels are not who christians believe them to be. What does it matter where John placed the event, he was conveying a spiritual truth and a literal truth as to how Jesus felt about the temple event. What makes you believe that John has the event in the wrong place in the life of Jesus. Because we do not have the original copy of John's gospel we have no idea where he placed this event. When the gospel was being copied by others this event may have been placed where it is today instead of where John had originally placed it.

If they kick me out that's OK I still belong to the Club Jesus.

No sexual context taken.

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No, the scriptures are truth period.

The old saying is true, there is one born every minute.

You all are so biased in your thinking you will see only what you desire when you read anything and this leads to one being decieved.

And we can add that to the long list of things you have no proof of.

Proof, proof, proof just read what you write or maybe better said what most of you copy from each other.
It may be better stated that one is reborn every minute Praise God!

[Minimalist]

None the less, your position that "John" was not meant to be a chronicle fails by a simple reading of the text.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...ersion=NIV

Chapter 1

29The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him

35The next day John was there again with two of his disciples.

43The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.

Chapter 2

1On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee

12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.

(The famed temple cleaning exercise)

Chapter 3

22After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside

and so on and so on.....

Ehrman is correct in that this 'gospel' seeks to lay out a story in chronological fashion and he is correct in his assertion that this tale is different from the others. In fact, 'John' is largely out of step with the others but I'm sure we'll get to that.

[Anomalocaris]

So is that a recognition that the content of the bible is not a rigorous literal truth, but a much more divinely sloppy "spiritual" truth? That is improvement. Religious minds usually seem too inertia driven to profit much from where this leads, but let's call it improvement nonetheless.

No, the scriptures are truth period, why would you think that literal and spiritual truth are not the same truth. You all are so biased in your thinking you will see only what you desire when you read anything and this leads to one being decieved.

I told you you are to inertia driven to ever profit from any insight.

[Godscreated]

What makes you think that John had to place the event, cleansing the temple, at a certain place in his writings.

Because he's supposedly an eye witness (Even though the author wasn't born when Jesus died), and if his memory is that fucking terrible that while putting it into writing he gets it completely wrong it seriously damages the credibility of the testimonial (though it's just a story).

You make no sense, an eye wittness but was not born yet, let's straighten you out here John was a disciple of Jesus so your first notion is correct he was an eye wittness. Why do you think he got it wrong John tells the event like it happened regardless of where he placed it in his gospel of Jesus, John was giving a testiment to the life of Jesus not a time line of His life.

John's gospel is not one written to convey a straight line historical account. Only Luke's gospel tries in any way to tell a historical account and this was not his main intention. All four gospels were written as a wittness about Jesus and the order of the events are not that important, the spiritual truth is the great importance of the gospels.

None of them are witnesses buddy, Mark was the first gospel and was written around 55AD, Luke and Matthew use about 90% of Mark verbatim in their accounts, ruling out the possibility of them all being primary sources. It's clear that whoever wrote Matthew was using Mark and had a very Jewish influence, while whoever wrote Luke also had Mark and wrote from and had a more Alexandrian approach to Christianity.

Well pal seems to me you are the one denying the authorship of the gospels so prove it, find the originals and prove what I believe wrong. They were eyewittnesses except maybe for Luke and he searches out the eyewittnesses to give a historical and spiritual account of the life of Jesus. You might want to consider this, truth has a way of repeating itself with very little deviation from the original so what you see as copying from one gospel, to write the others, could be an example of how the truth will remain in tack when stated by others.

Matthew being Jewish would have a jewish tint to his gospel and Luke being a physician could have had a Greek education giving his gospel a more alexandrian flavor so what's the big deal here, these men were writting in a style that was suited to them.

John is something somewhat removed from the textural history, it appeared from much more contrived sources some time later, almost 30 years after the authorship of Mark and is fairly clear intended for preaching, it's much more poetry and enticement that the other 3.

John was only a teenager when called by Jesus to be a disciple so the world and religions of the day would have had less influence on him and he would have developed a more spiritual nature than the others as a follower of Christ.

If you will look at the gospels the events are not always in the same order from gospel to gospel Mark and Luke are the ones with close time lines. We actually do not know which events happened when so as far as the event cleansing the temple is concerned John may have it in the proper order.

Wait, you've just decried the difference by saying that John wasn't intended to be a historical account, and now you've said John may be the one who is correct? Do you want to explain all this flip-flopping?

Yes I stated that John was not a historical time line of events in the life of Jesus but that does not mean that the temple cleansing event as recorded in John was not in it's proper place in the life of Jesus.
All of this flip-flopping, I've not flip-flopped anything it's your narrow mindness that has you seeing things in a way that was not intended.

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None the less, your position that "John" was not meant to be a chronicle fails by a simple reading of the text.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...ersion=NIV

Chapter 1

29The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him

35The next day John was there again with two of his disciples.

43The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.

Ok Min these days are consecutive and relate to a single event with episodes of different activities.

Chapter2 V.1On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee

12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

On what third day, if you are trying to tie this in with the days above then someone needs to learn how to count.If you count the day before verse 29 then you have four days before the wedding begins, so this third day most likely refers to the third day of the week.
There is some time not recorded here because Cana is south of Capernaum so Jesus could not have gone down to Capernaum, Jesus at this time must of been north of Capernaum.

13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.

Now if Jesus went to Jerusalem from Capernaum and He went up (north) then He took the long way around and would have crossed both poles. So again there is time and places not recorded since Jesus was south of Jerusalem it's the only way He could have gone up to Jerusalem.

Chapter 3

22After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside

[quote='Min']and so on and so on.....

Ehrman is correct in that this 'gospel' seeks to lay out a story in chronological fashion and he is correct in his assertion that this tale is different from the others. In fact, 'John' is largely out of step with the others but I'm sure we'll get to that.

Seems to me Ehrman needs to learn more about places and his position in relation to those places before he tries to set a time line for anyone. Bet he got lost a lot.

[Minimalist]

All of the events took place in Galilee until your boy decided to trot down to Jerusalem. That is crystal clear.

Also, at no point does this ( or ANY ) of your gospels even claim to be written by "eye-witnesses." These are anonymous accounts written much later with 2 ( matthew and luke ) derived from the first ( mark ). The names were not assigned until late in the 2d century when the concept of "apostolic authority" got to be commonplace among xtians. "John" has significant differences to the other 3.

Don't worry. We'll get into all that. If you can't handle this simple one I shudder to think how you will twist yourself into knots when we get to the tougher ones.

Basically, you need to stop believing fundie bullshit and face the reality of what these texts say.

[theophilus]

Some readers have thought that Jesus must have cleansed the Temple twice, once at the beginning of his ministry and once at the end. But that would mean that neither Mark nor John tells the “true” story, since in both accounts he cleanses the temple only once.

Mark and John both say that Jesus cleansed the temple. Neither of them says that he only did it once so both are telling the true story but are telling different parts of it.

[Minimalist]

Oh good, another apologist. Now we get the Gospel According to Theophilus!

This should be entertaining.

[theVOID]

You make no sense, an eye wittness but was not born yet, let's straighten you out here John was a disciple of Jesus so your first notion is correct he was an eye wittness. Why do you think he got it wrong John tells the event like it happened regardless of where he placed it in his gospel of Jesus, John was giving a testiment to the life of Jesus not a time line of His life.

My Parenthesis () was the reality, the rest was addresses at the specific conclusions of fundamentalist assumptions, in either situation you are fucked as far are reliability of testimony is concerned, though when you consider the fact that NONE of the authors are eye witnesses it's even worse for you.

The author of John is not John the Apostle from the stories, firstly, the author is clearly not from a Jewish descent, secondly, the author uses examples of people becoming confused by Jesus's preaching on multiple occasions, by using common comprehension problems, like similar words with different meaning, that ONLY WORK IN GREEK. It's like someone getting confused between Teacher and Teeter in a conversation, you translate that into Chinese and the confusion is inapplicable.

There are many other reasons why the Author John and the other Gospels could not have been eye witnesses, but i'm not here to school you, go read a book that contains something other than ad hoc apologetics.

Well pal seems to me you are the one denying the authorship of the gospels so prove it, find the originals and prove what I believe wrong. They were eyewittnesses except maybe for Luke and he searches out the eyewittnesses to give a historical and spiritual account of the life of Jesus. You might want to consider this, truth has a way of repeating itself with very little deviation from the original so what you see as copying from one gospel, to write the others, could be an example of how the truth will remain in tack when stated by others.

1. We don't have the originals

2. We don't have "very little deviation", we have fucking bucket-loads of it.

3. Eye witness testimony from multiple sources NEVER ends up verbatim, their use of language will be similar, as will the description, but to have 90% of the texts being identical to Mark in Matt and Luke is NOT what we get from different eye witness testimony. Not only that, but eye witness testimony doesn't have events out of order by A DECADE from it's contemporaries.

They were not eye witnesses, Matthew and Luke are 90% word-for-word with Mark, it's a blatant case of copping, the differences they have (such as the birth narrative and the genealogy etc) are ALL in places where Mark had nothing to say about the matter. This is what is to be expected when a story becomes geographically isolated to a large extent in two very different communities, the Jewish community of Matthew and the Alexandrian community of Luke. Each filled in the blanks with the stories that had spread to and changed inside their communities.

Matthew being Jewish would have a jewish tint to his gospel and Luke being a physician could have had a Greek education giving his gospel a more alexandrian flavor so what's the big deal here, these men were writting in a style that was suited to them.

The book of Luke is anonymous, the author is believed to have been a Gentile travelling with
Paul who also wrote the book of Acts. The only way that it got the name luke is by saying (in 170CE) "Oh, this guy seems to have travelled with Paul, He must be Luke, we'll name his work as such" and that is quite literally everything they made that decision based upon. The first Gospel we have to bear the name Luke is from 200 CE.

It's not just the writing style, which is 90% identical where copied from Mark, everything original they disagree on, from the resurrection and who was there, to the genealogy to the story of why Jesus was born in Bethlehem, none of it matches. This is exactly what you get from two isolated communities filling in the blanks by themselves, they have the same outline, but the details are WAAAAAY different.

John was only a teenager when called by Jesus to be a disciple so the world and religions of the day would have had less influence on him and he would have developed a more spiritual nature than the others as a follower of Christ.

Except John the apostle is not or never claims to be the author of John. Someone a few hundred years later simply decided that he was.

Yes I stated that John was not a historical time line of events in the life of Jesus but that does not mean that the temple cleansing event as recorded in John was not in it's proper place in the life of Jesus.

Well which one is right then? Surely if you have a defualt assumption that Luke is more historically accurate there is no reason to accept the account in John unless you have good reason to do so, then I ask you, what is this reason?

All of this flip-flopping, I've not flip-flopped anything it's your narrow mindness that has you seeing things in a way that was not intended.

Oh yeah, someone who spends heaps of time studying an opposing position is clearly narrow minded right? Dream on, you don't get to claim that I am narrow minded while my points all stand.