SteveII Wrote:You might consider that Paul never encountered any 'historical Jesus', so nothing he wrote (discounting that some of 'his' letters were likely not written by him) counts as an eyewitness testimony concerning Jesus; and the identity of the Gospel authors is unknown (but almost certainly not the disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John), so it is difficult to claim they are reliable. Also, Matthew, Luke, and John seem to be largely copied from Mark, with additional miracles that grow the farther in time from the supposed events the books were written.Quote:Are you defending the charge of circular reasoning and/or are you saying the 27 books/letters are not reliable? If so, why should I believe them to be unreliable and not, in general, what they purport to be?
I lean about 51% toward there having actually been a Yeshua who came to a bad end at the hands of the Romans for sedition whose sayings were collected and referred to by Mark, but almost nothing about him in the Bible can be considered reliable using normal historical methodology to determine such.
If you want to know more, there are books on the topic.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.