The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Minimalist]

There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn’t. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if he did not, then it is sheer nonsense.


H. L. Mencken

And what is the absolute best the fuckers can do?  An allegedly empty tomb....or tombs...since they have more than one candidate.

[robvalue]

Coming back to what you said Pyro, I agree that it appears there can be no evidence or arguments for any supernatural event or causation, by the very definition. (By my definition, anyway.) But I'm open to being shown I'm wrong about that, if anyone is up to the challenge Again, just saying I'm wrong isn't enough I'm afraid.

[Mudhammam]

One more question though: Are supernatural things possible?

What exactly is a "supernatural thing"? A thing that operates without causes and wherefore constraints? Sure, that may be possible, but why call it supernatural? Why not simply allow, if we absolutely must, that some natural events occur due to spontaneous generation? And even then, no justification could ever be given without appeal to rigid experimentation that has exhausted all other possibilities, which from our standpoint, in a serious attempt to acquire knowledge into the unknown, must always exclude supernatural as a most implausible explanation. Aside from Hume's devastating critique of miracles, which Pyrrho already mentioned, interpretation of ill-defined or misunderstood phenomenon should always be mindful of Lucretius' wisdom that "ignorance of their causes constrain men to submit things to the empire of the gods, and to give over to the gods the kingdom of the universe," which obviously prevents real insight where it may be within reach. 

[dyresand]

Coming back to what you said Pyro, I agree that it appears there can be no evidence or arguments for any supernatural event or causation, by the very definition. (By my definition, anyway.) But I'm open to being shown I'm wrong about that, if anyone is up to the challenge Again, just saying I'm wrong isn't enough I'm afraid.

Well a cheap tap recorder or even a mp3 go into quote on quote haunted area's  EVP recordings.
More or less that is the direct way of proving or disproving it even if it has been debunked it wouldn't hurt trying. 
Shows like TAPS etc those are all set up and are pretty much frauds. 

[Thumpalumpacus]

We have evidence of this shit in the 2d century....although it takes until much later for some church fuck to attach the names to it.  But in the first century?  Nada.  A gap so embarrassing that they tried to forge some which is a dead giveaway about the total bullshittery of jesusism.

Second century, eh? 


By AD 107, Ignatius of Antioch could already refer to the Christian Church as the Catholic Church and to the hierarchy of bishops, priests and deacons.

Beg pardon, but -- 107AD is the second century.

Just thought you'd like to know that ... since you clearly didn't.

---

As I explained in the OP, the translations that we have to day are made from demonstrably accurate copies of the Greek manuscripts which are scattered about in museums and churches all over the world. The autographs themselves are lost.

Ah, I see ... copies of copies. Kind of like how people whisper a message from one to the other and see how far it gets distorted ... what was that game called again, Randy? Help a brother out, I'm old and my memory is fading.

Jerome translated from the Greek to the Latin, but beyond this, I could not say. However, modern English translations are not taken from the Vulgate.

You missed my point here, which is that we've got two documented linguistic translations, and then many, many handwritten transcriptions throughout the Dark Ages.

It's Greek > English. No intermediate steps.

How do you know you have the original Greek texts?

[robvalue]

If only there was someone who could come clear up all this confusion, eh?

[Thumpalumpacus]

If only there was someone who could come clear up all this confusion, eh?

Yeah, like someone you could talk with directly, without having to go through intermediaries, or interpret the words written by other humans, or without having to rely on your Spidey-Sense® in order to grok the concept.

[robvalue]

That would be awesome. It's kind of like a sheriff that was around a long, long time ago and used to keep order. He got everyone thinking they had to behave or they'd have him to answer to. Pretty soon, they were just living by his rules. When anyone was watching, anyway. It was second nature, and they taught all the rules to their kids.

They didn't even notice when he left town, they preserved his rule book. They had to keep writing it out for new people and over time it got twisted... what would the sheriff think? Does it even resemble what he started? Did he die, or is he at another town?

[abaris]

It's Greek > English. No intermediate steps.

How do you know you have the original Greek texts?

I included the Randy quote, since I can't be bothered to look up the original that was posted overnight.

But it's much more complicated than determining if the Greek texts are original. In one of my earlier posts, which Randy ignored, I said that I don't expect the campfire tales building the foundations of the Greek texts, being in Greek. The authors, whoever they were, since the historicity of the names they go by cannot be confirmed, collected tales that were floating around at the time and the region. So if they reached the region or regions where these authors were based, they already made quite a lenghty journey from ear to ear and probably got embellished with every person telling them before someone sat down to write about it.

And then we enter the scientific field again, with the definition the word history and it's understanding had in these days. Ehrman brushes over the fact, that history wasn't what we understand it to be today. It was meant to paint an ideal and less a collection of facts. Actually facts don't play any role in these days. It was mostly oral history, collections of texts that cam earlier, but without checking their authenticity as we would do today. That's true for the Roman and Greek historians of the day and that's certainly true for the authors of the NT, whom we don't even know as historic persons.

And that leads me again to the fundamental question of why. Why did they sit down and write about what they heard? Most people couldn't write at the time, so we're already talking about an elite. And then, why did they write in Greek? Well, maybe it's as simple as the authors actually being greek, but it's well to remember that Greek played the same role French did in the 18th century. It was the language of the elites. Next, in these days, it wasn't that everybody could pick up a sheet of paper and a pen and scribble at their leisure. The materials were expensive and not available to everyone. So maybe it was a commissioned work that someone paid scribes to do.

[DeistPaladin]

Oh but wait, Yahweh wouldn't just speak to an entire crowd of people like that because something something free will, right?




Luke 3:22