Challenge to atheists: I find your lack of faith disturbing!

[Aractus]

It's not the translation that's relevant to our discussion. It's their research as outlined in their annotations.

I've also read many books by Christian apologists (Strobel, McDowell, et. al.) and none of them are so bold as to push the Gospel dates as early as you do (which you know they would if they thought they could get away with it). I know you don't like being called "fringy" but that's what you are, even by apologetic standards, never mind academic standards.

Well just a second ago you claimed that 1/2 of Paul's epistles are dubious - who's fringy now?

Sorry, but it is. I just love how Christian apologists fawn all over Ehrman when he insists there is a historical Jesus but gloss over his more serious research on pseudo-epigraphy, interpolation and changes in the Bible.

Ehrman is incredibly fringy on these topics, I suggest you don't look to him for that "majority view" that you're after. He rejects Ephesians, for instance, even though most "secular" scholars do not.

I would say otherwise, given the theological mistakes in Mark that Matthew corrects but you are welcome to your opinion. That "thud" you just heard was the burden of proof landing in your backyard.

No, it is not impossible.

You have given no clear reason, and your appeal to my intellect shows you can't back up your claim. Almost all of Mark is found within Matthew, yet the same is not true with Luke. Proponents of the two-source hypothesis claim that Matthew "favoured" Mark and that Luke "favoured" Q.

The problem with the argument, well one of them, is the fact that Luke can not have been written until c. 60 AD and that's too late for Matthew. Matthew is written to a Jewish audience, not a Greek audience, and for that reason it can not have been written later than c. 45 AD and most probably (if there was no Mark Gospel) you wouldn't date it later than 40 AD.

And the first Spiderman movie ends with Spiderman landing on the World Trade Center towers, so I guess the events in that movie happened during the 90s at the latest.

What? Spider-man never touches the twin towers in Spider-man 1, they can be seen in the background of the film because it was filmed entirely before 11-09-01, but they certainly didn't draw attention to them (ie, having spider-man on them). What you're talking about is from the teaser trailer before the WTC's were destroyed. Now, you could tell me that "Gang of New York" ends in the present with the twin towers intact, and that is, bizarrely, true, even though it's a 2003 movie!

Let's at least agree to stick to canonical works just to avoid opening a completely different discussion. Really, it works to your advantage that we don't also talk about the wild variety of early Christianities that existed in the first few centuries.

It works to my advantage? LOL!

I'm aware of this apology and there are numerous and glaring problems with it.

No there really aren't, there just isn't concrete external proof, but there are not "numerous and glaring problems".

However, before we get into that, can you name for me one (1) single translation of the Bible that uses the word "before" and not "when" or "during" in the body of the translation in Luke 2:2? Not a footnote of the "controversy" but a translation that actually sides with your interpretation? I've have read 20 different English translations and two German translations and can't find one.

I can show you that most translations (except for instance for the KJV which is why you have KJO nutters) in their prefix make it explicit that no translation is perfect, no translation can exactly convert the Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic texts into another language.

If you can, then we can discuss which translation is correct. If you can't, you're way off on the fringe again and should explain the conspiracy that thousands of different Bible scholars, all working independently of one another, all come to the same conclusion on what you believe to be the false translation. Afterwards, you can present your translation for peer review and become famous in the academic community. Good luck.

No I'm really not, because numerous translations do have it as an alternative in the footnotes. There's a passage in the Bible that talks about feeding a camel through the eye of a needle - had that passage been written in Aramaic instead of Greek we would have translated it as rope and put camel in the footnotes (as the Aramaic word for rope also means camel). In the same way, Greek has - and so does English for that matter - words with dual-meaning that can mean one thing or another in the correct context. In the clear and certain context that Quirinius administered only one census and one only, the reading "first" is clearly nonsensical, and Luke has to be referring to an earlier census.