(January 28, 2015 at 11:31 am)SteveII Wrote:(January 28, 2015 at 11:17 am)IATIA Wrote: Evidence of what? It is, at best, our interpretation of someone's interpretation of someone else's perception of what they may or may not have seen and experienced. It is called hearsay and is not evidence by any stretch of the imagination.
The events described in the gospels and Acts are the best attested to set of individual events in ancient times. There are 4 sources (with supporting documentation from Paul) easily within a lifetime of eyewitnesses AND subsequent historical chain of events that support them.
So is the bible primarily of interest to you as an historical account of the activities of the person named Jesus from that time period? Do you accept it all as being equally reliable or do you think the compiling and editing that went into putting the bible together may have had a filtering effect? If the very same reportage was to be made today I'd expect to find it in one of those super market rags and would have no trouble dismissing it out of hand. I doubt any neutral person would buy it unless they were raised by adults who did the same.
