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

[Mstricky]

OK, you just go on believing that.

I will, I can recognize truth.

GC

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To the OP you said there is no doubt that Jesus was crucified but in Acts. Peter says four times that they killed Jesus by hanging him from a tree. Paul says once that.... when they took him down from the tree.....
I'd love to here your excuse as to the contradiction. He was either crucified or hung from a tree. One can't really have both.
Also Matthew Mark Luke John were all written by anonymous writers not the desciples.

They are one and the same, different ways of expressing what happened. Besides the Romans were very efficient in their method of killing. Prove the apostles did not write the NT.

GC

I absolutely cannot believe your excuse. Crucifixion is crucifixion as the disciples were well accustomed to so why would they say they hung him from a tree. You are clutching at straws. Hanging from a tree is definitely not being crucified and Peter/Paul would definitely have known the difference

[Godscreated]

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I will, I can recognize truth.

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GC

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They are one and the same, different ways of expressing what happened. Besides the Romans were very efficient in their method of killing. Prove the apostles did not write the NT.

GC

I absolutely cannot believe your excuse. Crucifixion is crucifixion as the disciples were well accustomed to so why would they say they hung him from a tree. You are clutching at straws. Hanging from a tree is definitely not being crucified and Peter/Paul would definitely have known the difference

It's no excuse, they were referring to the crucifixion.
1st Corinthians 1:23-written by Paul.
1st Corinthians 2:2-written by Paul.
2nd Corinthians 13:3-4-written by Paul.
Galatians 3:1-written by Paul.
John 20:24-29-Peter was present at this meeting.
It is you who is clutching, not at straws but ignorance.

GC

[The Reality Salesman01]

I absolutely cannot believe your excuse. Crucifixion is crucifixion as the disciples were well accustomed to so why would they say they hung him from a tree.

[DeistPaladin]

I absolutely cannot believe your excuse. Crucifixion is crucifixion as the disciples were well accustomed to so why would they say they hung him from a tree. You are clutching at straws. Hanging from a tree is definitely not being crucified and Peter/Paul would definitely have known the difference

Remember, you're talking to the guy who reads in Luke that Jesus tarried to have dinner and thinks this tarrying could have lasted 40 days.

[Godscreated]

I absolutely cannot believe your excuse. Crucifixion is crucifixion as the disciples were well accustomed to so why would they say they hung him from a tree.

That's not my quote, now who's looking dumb?

GC

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I absolutely cannot believe your excuse. Crucifixion is crucifixion as the disciples were well accustomed to so why would they say they hung him from a tree. You are clutching at straws. Hanging from a tree is definitely not being crucified and Peter/Paul would definitely have known the difference

Remember, you're talking to the guy who reads in Luke that Jesus tarried to have dinner and thinks this tarrying could have lasted 40 days.

I was enjoying our debates, but if you're going to stoop to such low levels I will lose interest quickly.

GC

[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.

[Mstricky]

That's not my quote, now who's looking dumb?



GC

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Remember, you're talking to the guy who reads in Luke that Jesus tarried to have dinner and thinks this tarrying could have lasted 40 days.

I was enjoying our debates, but if you're going to stoop to such low levels I will lose interest quickly.



GC

I still can't understand your reply, you have not answered what your opinion is about the conflicting info. He tarried 40 days doesn't answer which is correct.... He hung or was he crucified

[DeistPaladin]

I was enjoying our debates, but if you're going to stoop to such low levels I will lose interest quickly.

I lost interest when you suggested Jesus' dinner date with his disciples could have lasted 40 days in order to reconcile the contradiction with Acts, even though the narrative of Luke 24 spells out everything happening within a 24 hour period.

It was at that point I just wrote, "you just go on believing that". That's not a concession. It's an expression of "I'm wasting my time trying to reason with you."

[xpastor]

They are one and the same, different ways of expressing what happened. Besides the Romans were very efficient in their method of killing. Prove the apostles did not write the NT.

Actually, the burden of proof is on you to show that the apostles, or eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry, did write the New Testament.

Even the most conservative commentators acknowledge that we do not know for sure who wrote the four gospels. Nobody signed them and the authors never explained their connection to the subject matter. The headings "According to Matthew, According to Mark, etc.) were added decades later on the basis of traditions handed down by the Church Fathers.

We are reasonably sure that Paul wrote half of the epistles attributed to him. As for the others, like it or not, Ehrman is quite right that forgeries were common enough in the ancient world. Galen, the pre-eminent physician in 2nd century Rome, was outraged to find a book for sale under his name, which he had never written. Tertullian, a very early Church Father, records that a forger tried to pass off a third letter to the Corinthians. You have no way of knowing that a forger did not slip by Ephesians or 2 Thessalonians, which appear to differ in style and content from the other epistles. Anyway, what authority does Paul have as a witness? He saw Jesus in a vision? Do you accept all the "visions" which modern Pentecostals throw out?

However, on the dispute about crucifixion vs. hanging on a tree, I will side with the Christians. Although the NT is riddled with self-contradictions, this is not one of them. It is one of those silly, out-of-context references to the Old Testament which pop up in the NT. Matthew and Paul are especially fond of doing that.

In Galatians 2:20 Paul says "I have been crucified with Christ" but then in the next chapter he says "But by becoming a curse for us Christ has redeemed us from the curse that the Law brings; for the scripture says, 'Anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God's curse.'" (Gal. 3:13) which is a reference to Deuteronomy 21:23. In Paul's mind crucifixion and hanging on a tree are equivalent so that he can see the crucifixion as foreshadowed in the OT.

[The Reality Salesman01]

That's not my quote, now who's looking dumb?

Dammit. It's me! I'm the one!