(July 7, 2016 at 11:09 am)SteveII Wrote:Not small.... third largest in the region, by some accounts.(July 7, 2016 at 8:58 am)pocaracas Wrote: The wikipedia article... lol...
Maybe you should have looked into this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher_of_Righteousness
But... wiki... we all know how biased it can be...
Maybe historians are better at explaining things?
http://www.shareintl.org/archives/M_emer...eacher.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsou...19666.html
http://www.ida.net/graphics/shirtail/deadsea.htm
On belief, thank you for the definition. This one you gave is a bit too inclusive... to the point where knowledge must be defined as "justified true belief". How about we leave this philosophical definition and use the common understanding?
belief - to think that something is the case, without evidence to attest it.
knowledge - to think that something is the case, with evidence that attests to it.
What does a leader of a small Jewish sect that was killed prove? The Jews were looking for a messiah because one is promised. It does not follow that the mistaken identity of one person has any bearing on the truth of another being the messiah.
I'm not talking about a mistaken identity, am I? Maybe I hinted at that, before.... I don't know...
I'm just saying that the notion existed well before the alleged time of Christ. Tales grow with time. (it is known)
Writing crystallizes them at a particular point of time... Tell me, how do you know to when the tales of the NT refer?
Do they all agree with the timeframe?
Having been written decades after the alleged arising from the dead, and centuries after a similar notion was floating by the region, how can you trust those tales not to have been an evolution of that underlying and popular theme?
(July 7, 2016 at 11:09 am)SteveII Wrote: No, belief has a very common meaning. If you want to change the definition of belief, you are going to confuse everyone.
I'm using the common definition of belief.... not the philosophical one.
But I can use the philosophical one, if you'd like... we'll have to keep tabs on how we're applying the word, then, because it carries at least two distinguishable meanings.... similar, but not the same and their differences are relevant.
When I say "I believe my wife is not cheating on me", what do I have to go on, but her say so? (or not even that... just plain trust) How many wives have cheated on their trusting husbands (and vice-versa). This is an example of a belief without evidence to attest it.
When I say "I believe this pen will fall, if let it go from my fingers", then I have a whole bunch of past experiences informing me about the tendency of all bodies to fall to the ground (this at the most basic medieval level of understanding). No body has ever floated away, so why should I not expect the pen to fall? This is an example of belief with evidence to attest for it.
In this case, I can and might as well say "I know this pen will fall, if I let it go from my fingers".
When you say that you believe that the NT writers were trustworthy, you have no evidence to attest that belief.
At most, you can point to the existence of people, at the time, who also believed in their tales.
Knowing about the Essenes, you can even point to a group of people who were primed to receive such tales. They were conditioned to find them in line with their own reasoning... their own beliefs.
Or maybe they were the creators of the tales... the group grew and so did the tales... probably keeping up with the times... it's more impressive if the villain is someone the audience can identify, someone recent, but already deceased, instead of someone from 200 years ago...
Until someone put them in writing, thus freezing the timeframe of the tales...
But others put them in writing, too... others who may have not been aware of the first freezing and these others present a similar story, with a slightly different timeframe. Why? simply because it was written at a different time. The story had grown.
Important details change.... some get added...
It is the normal unfurling of folklore.
But, for some reason, believers are blind to that feature of their tales... but keenly aware of similar features on other mythologies.
