RE: Evidence for a god. Do you have any ?
October 13, 2018 at 9:32 am
(This post was last modified: October 13, 2018 at 9:35 am by GrandizerII.)
(October 12, 2018 at 2:56 pm)SteveII Wrote: No but having 27 documents that carry the same basic message and churches the believe that same basic message BEFORE the documents adds to the probability of the reliability of the accounts--as they would in any series of ancient documents for any events.
Emphasis mine. That there is one of the many problems with the NT. The Gospel message isn't consistently the same throughout the 27 books. Prime example being James' salvation through works vs. Paul's salvation through faith. Only a biased Christian mind sees the opposite.
Quote:That theory would contradict Acts. We have no reason to believe Acts is not as it claims to be: a history of the early church. You can't just throw out theories without thinking about how you are going to deal with this or that evidence. More below on Acts.
No reason? Considering that the historicity of Acts has been called into question, with scholars themselves pointing out various contradictions regarding the depiction of Paul in Acts vs. the Pauline epistles, your statement is clearly unwarranted. Again, you only say this because of your strong theological biases.
Quote:What are you talking about? You did not get any "authenticity" problems from what you just quoted. You cataloged a couple of interesting points if you were really really into church history and the life of Paul. You are taking leaps because you actually don't understand the references being made. Read it again, no one thinks that Acts was revisionist. In fact, minor differences are evidence of authenticity. A revisionist account would have cleaned up the little discrepancies or questions that you would expect an investigative reporter (Luke) would write down a few years later.
Revisionism is exactly what "Luke" did himself by rewriting history to favor the unity of the early church. Do read that paragraph from Wikipedia again.