RE: Why be good?
June 10, 2015 at 6:53 pm
(This post was last modified: June 10, 2015 at 6:58 pm by Randy Carson.)
(June 10, 2015 at 11:34 am)Parkers Tan Wrote:(June 9, 2015 at 4:59 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Um...
You're exactly right, Parkers. There is NO reason whatsoever to think that any individual Church, whether in Rome or some far-flung corner of the empire, ever changed the title of one of the Gospels.
Instead, they have been known universally and unanimously by all the congregations as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from the moment the ink dried on the papyri, and we still know them by their original names to this very day.
Thanks for pointing that out to everyone.
[emphasis added -- Thump]
You seem to have forgotten that you were arguing that those names had to be true because everyone around the world agreed upon their use. To put this back into context, you argued:
(June 8, 2015 at 5:22 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: AND THE NAMES ARE THE SAME WHEREVER YOU GO.
It's not as if the Church in Thessalonica called the first gospel, the "Gospel According to Matthew" while a Church in Alexandria referred to it as the "Gospel of Andrew". The Church in Rome did not refer to the last gospel as the "Gospel of Phillip" while that same book was known as the "Beloved Disciple's Gospel" in Antioch.
So the honest thing to do would be to acknowledge conceding the point, which you've clearly done with your latest reply. The names being the same don't matter at all as for veracity, because as you yourself acknowledged, they were written and shared.
I'm not following this at all. Sorry.
Let me be clear. The Church knew from the beginning who wrote each of the gospels. When the first copies were made (and this was probably within days of the originals being completed) and sent out to churches in various cities around the Roman empire, the knowledge that "This was written by Mark" or "Luke, Paul's companion, wrote this" traveled with the document.
Imagine that you are the leader of the Church in Corinth. One day, a man arrives with a bundle in his knapsack. Taking it out and carefully unwrapping it, he unrolls the first few feet of the scroll. "What is this?", you say as you begin to read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....". "It is the story of Jesus according the John the Apostle," the messenger says. "I have just come from Ephesus where this copied was made."
Seriously, do you think that YOU as church leader would have authorized the reading of anything in Church on Sunday WITHOUT knowing who wrote it?
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I don't think so, either.
(June 10, 2015 at 11:35 am)Jenny A Wrote:(June 10, 2015 at 12:20 am)Randy Carson Wrote: Just out of curiosity, what proof of the supernatural WOULD be sufficient, and how would or could it be provided?
So in short, to prove the supernatural you must describe it in a falsifiable way, and then prove it by replicable experiment.
And how would you go about this with the resurrection of Jesus...if you were a believer?