Contradictions within the Gospels?

Fanny Cradock

JimiTime wrote: »

I just made that point, but in my usual rambling style:) I don't actually believe you were plagiarising, I was just extremely annoyed and frustrated that you got 2 thank you's and I only got 1!!:mad:*



*May not actually represent how I was feeling:)

:pac: In your face. Actually, I didn't read your post so we can share the thanks.

JimiTime

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

:pac: In your face. Actually, I didn't read your post so we can share the thanks.

A likely story, I know you hang on my every word!:)

Pompey Magnus

Soul Winner wrote: »

Mark's account doesn't say that the never told anyone ever after. The reason Mark gives for them not saying anything to any man was because they were afraid. But would they have been afraid to tell the disciples? No.

It says they said nothing to any man, not any man apart from the disciples. You are re-writing Mark to suggest otherwise.

Maybe someone reading it later on added the extra information because they viewed it as an incomplete record and just wanted to finished it off. But whatever might have happened we will never know but you cannot accuse the inspired writer of fraud when it had nothing to do with him in the first place.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean here as I never suggested the forged endings were perpetrated by the author of Mark.

And you can't accuse the one who added it on as adding falsities to the account unless you can show that what he added didn't actually happen.

Completely ridiculous thinking. I will show you why by doing exactly the same as what the person who added the ending to Mark did. Here is my ending to Mark:

"Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid...On their way home from the tomb a time machine appeared before their very eyes and out jumped a man by the name of Albert Einstein sitting on the back of a velociraptor, and this man explained to them the wonders of the Universe and they all lived happily after."

So by your reasoning the burden of proof is now on you to disprove that this ridiculous scenario actually happened and until you can do so we have to accept it as being true simply because someone wrote it down? Sorry but you are very, very wrong.

If that is your attitude I would love to know how you can defend not following the teachings of the Gnostic Gospels, heck someone wrote them down and they have never been proved beyond doubt not to be holding true teachings so why not?

JimiTime

Jakkass wrote: »

Jimi - I thanked ye both

Choose a side damn-it!!

Pompey Magnus

Soul Winner wrote: »

t happen and therefore Jesus couldn't have had any kind of dialog with them after His death. You're bias is laid bare for all to see.

To be honest its not like I ever exactly hid the fact that I don't believe the resurrection, so it wouldn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to uncover that little detail.

Anyway I am working from a historical point of view and a historian can never accept a miracle as being a historical fact, he can believe it as a matter of faith by all means but he can't assert it as being a historical fact which should be accepted as such, so if you want Christianity to remain in the comfortable domain of dusty theology then fair enough, you can all sit around and debate how many angels fit on the head of a pin, but if you want your religion to sit among the big boys of academia and the leaders of human thought then you will have to play by the established rules, not your own.

Fanny Cradock

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Or how about this mad alternative...Mark made it up?

Yes, that is a possibility. IF you want to believe it's all a bunch of lies then bully for you. But now you are shifting goalposts. You made an accusation in the form of a question and you have - to my mind - received a reasonable response.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

How did Luke know exactly what Jesus' prayed, his demeanor and the visitation of an angel when the disciples present, the only witnesses, were all asleep?

Unless the disciples fell asleep within the time it took Jesus to utter the words “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”, I imagine that Luke is recounting only a small portion of the evening. Assuming you take verse 44 to be original - and I would be stunned if you did given your colours - Luke tells us that Jesus went on praying earnestly after he uttered these words.

philologos

Pompey Magnus - It's not an issue that you don't believe in the Resurrection. The issue is that you are claiming contradictions on the basis of your non-belief rather than actually looking at the situation impartially.

This isn't an intellectual issue, it is that you have already decided, and you refuse to even consider the idea that Christianity is true.

Fanny Cradock

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

a historian can never accept a miracle as being a historical fact

I'm curious if there is some agreement a historian must sign off that prevents them from accepting a miracle as a "historical fact" (whatever "historical fact" means)? Presumably the agreement must also encompass metaphysical beliefs, specifically the a priori assumption that miracles aren't allowed.

As for the rest of your post, it's nothing more than naked intellectual snobbery.

Soul Winner

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

It says they said nothing to any man, not any man apart from the disciples. You are re-writing Mark to suggest otherwise.

Then how did Mark himself find out?

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Completely ridiculous thinking. I will show you why by doing exactly the same as what the person who added the ending to Mark did. Here is my ending to Mark:

"Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid...On their way home from the tomb a time machine appeared before their very eyes and out jumped a man by the name of Albert Einstein sitting on the back of a velociraptor, and this man explained to them the wonders of the Universe and they all lived happily after."

So by your reasoning the burden of proof is now on you to disprove that this ridiculous scenario actually happened and until you can do so we have to accept it as being true simply because someone wrote it down? Sorry but you are very, very wrong.

If that is your attitude I would love to know how you can defend not following the teachings of the Gnostic Gospels, heck someone wrote them down and they have never been proved beyond doubt not to be holding true teachings so why not?

Not at all. The ending in Mark that we read in our Bibles today is simply not supported by the oldest manuscripts which suggest that it more than likely wasn't part of Mark's account. But maybe Mark's account doesn't end at verse 8 either, maybe there was more. In any case, our faith is not based on whether Mark 16:9-16 is true or not, our faith is based on what all the accounts agree on, and that is that He rose.

Pompey Magnus

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I'm curious if there is some agreement a historian must sign off that prevents them from accepting a miracle as a "historical fact" (whatever "historical fact" means)? Presumably the agreement must also encompass metaphysical beliefs, specifically the a priori assumption that miracles aren't allowed.

Historians work on reconstructing what probably happened, its not an exact science as no detail from history is 100% certain so historians make do by reconstructing the past by using the best methods at their disposal. A miracle, by its very definition, is an event which is completely improbable. Therefore a historian worth his salt won't go around saying 2,000 years ago Jesus and Peter probably went walking on water, or that the pagan Appolonius of Tyana probably had extra sensory perception to predict the exact time of the murder of the Emperor Domitian, or that the Jewish Honi the Circle Drawer was probably able to bring rain when he wanted.

Maybe these things did happen, we can't go back in time to see for certain, but from a historian's point of view he can't say that actually yeah, they are probably true. When putting a miracle against any other explanation, eg the witnesses were mistaken, they lied or that the entire story was invented later, a historian has to decide which is more likely:

(A) one of every other possible explanations or
(B) the least likely explanation given the boundaries set by the discipline which is historical research.

I don't think I am being in any way unfair in suggesting that a lot more people tells lies than can walk on water or exactly predict the murders of an emperor.

As for the rest of your post, it's nothing more than naked intellectual snobbery

Yeah you are probably spot on with this, I was a bit rash with the rest of that post I must confess.

PDN

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

I don't think I am being in any way unfair in suggesting that a lot more people tells lies than can walk on water or exactly predict the murders of an emperor.

But you are being rather irrelevant since we only believe a tiny number of people walked on water. :rolleyes:

Pompey Magnus

PDN wrote: »

But you are being rather irrelevant since we only believe a tiny number of people walked on water. :rolleyes:

I said historians work by establishing what probably happened, its irrelevant whether you believe two people walked on water that day or two million people did.

In the universe we live in whereby a human body always exerts more force on water than can be countered by surface tension resulting every single time in the body breaking through the surface and sinking it is just not possible for a historian to say that a few words written in an ancient book take precedent over the entire body of scientific knowledge relating to the physical behaviour of fluids to such an extent that it can be safely claimed that a human has ever been supported on the surface of water. That is a claim that a theologian is free to make, but not a historian.

Soul Winner

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

I said historians work by establishing what probably happened, its irrelevant whether you believe two people walked on water that day or two million people did.

In the universe we live in whereby a human body always exerts more force on water than can be countered by surface tension resulting every single time in the body breaking through the surface and sinking it is just not possible for a historian to say that a few words written in an ancient book take precedent over the entire body of scientific knowledge relating to the physical behaviour of fluids to such an extent that it can be safely claimed that a human has ever been supported on the surface of water. That is a claim that a theologian is free to make, but not a historian.

What if you heard on the news tomorrow that 12 people prefered to suffer ostracism, rejection, ridicule, loss of home, job, family, and suffer torture and death because they refused to renege on a story that they say they were eye witness to, would you still conclude that the story must be false?

You might say that in the case of Jesus' disciples that they were genuine believers in what they reported but were just mistaken because they were hallucinating due to the immense grief that they suffered as a result of His untimely death. But in that case why not just show them the body of Jesus which must have still been in the tomb were they left him?

If you then say that they stole the body in the first place then they were hardly truth sayers and carers of the truth to begin with and definitely did not believe what they were reporting, which means that they all died for a lie that they knew was a lie. A lie that they knew would not please the God they claimed to serve and hence they knew that not only were they going to die horrific deaths, but that they would not be going to heaven either because liars will not get in, especially those who are false witnesses of God. Claiming that He raised Jesus from the dead when they knew quite well that He didn't.

These are the options. Only people who do not believe in miracles going out the gate will believe anything else over what the reporters originally reported and died reporting. So it all boils down to whether they were lying or telling the truth as they seen it. I don't believe that under the kind of persecution and pressure that these guys were under that if they were lying they would not have reneged, at least one of them would have. You find the one. Not one of them ever did. He rose, get over it.

Pompey Magnus

Soul Winner wrote: »

What if you heard on the news tomorrow that 12 people prefered to suffer ostracism, rejection, ridicule, loss of home, job, family, and suffer torture and death because they refused to renege on a story that they say they were eye witness to, would you still conclude that the story must be false?

Fair enough, lets do this properly so using the situation you describe. I turn on my TV tomorrow and lets call it Good News TV is running this amazing story about these 12 men. Well my first reaction would be that these people must have really believed deeply what they claimed was true. I would also decide that this news story deserves some further examination.

Upon doing some investigation into the news story I discover that the Good News TV channel is actually owned and run by friends and associates of these guys. I would be quite concerned at this detail. I would look around the other news channels to see how they reported the deaths of these men and I would realise that its not being covered by any other channel, just the one that I now know has an agenda.

Okay I would be forced to rely on Good News TV, so I would look at the information that they can provide me with. This is when the massive big warning bells start going off, I discover that what they are reporting isn't "news" at all, the sources they are using were compiled not hours, days, years or decades after the event, but centuries. For example the dominant member of the 12, Peter, his suffering and death is recorded in a source written over 100 years after the event itself supposedly happened, and what is worse is that even Good News TV rejects the majority of this source as being unreliable and pure fiction for the life of this chap except for the details relating to his death. And what is worse this is pretty much the most reliable of all the accounts of the deaths, and its barely reliable at all.

So when I weigh up all these details I would not be convinced that these guys really did "suffer ostracism, rejection, ridicule, loss of home, job, family, and suffer torture and death because they refused to renege on a story that they say they were eye witness to". So thats my answer to your question, I suppose I'd like to throw it back at you and ask why are you convinced that these men actually did suffer as you believe they did?

PDN

I've been away in Nigeria all week - but looking over the thread it doesn't look like anyone found any contradictions for us then?

Soul Winner

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Fair enough, lets do this properly so using the situation you describe. I turn on my TV tomorrow and lets call it Good News TV is running this amazing story about these 12 men. Well my first reaction would be that these people must have really believed deeply what they claimed was true. I would also decide that this news story deserves some further examination.

Well that's a good start. We've established that if it was true that they did suffer such deaths in such circumstances at least your willing to admit that they just might have been telling the truth.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Upon doing some investigation into the news story I discover that the Good News TV channel is actually owned and run by friends and associates of these guys. I would be quite concerned at this detail.

Yes and you would try to look for alternative sources that might report things differently. Did you find any? No. So what do you do? You give the benefit of the doubt until contrary news reports surface or you simply disbelieve the story until you get corroborating reports, but what you can't say is that the first reports are unreliable. Conflicting reports might come from the Bad News TV channel, along with testimony from reliable sources that the disciples actually did renege on their testimony and they stopped preaching their message that Jesus rose from the dead and that they saw Him alive and vital for many days hence and actually saw Him ascend into heaven with the promise to return one day to set this world right. Did that happen? No evidence that it did at all.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

I would look around the other news channels to see how they reported the deaths of these men and I would realise that its not being covered by any other channel, just the one that I now know has an agenda.

Again no evidence that would refute the story being run on the Good News TV channel. Nobody interested enough to foresee that in years to come these testimonies (unto death) would be proof enough for many believers to put faith in Jesus as a result. If the original reports were lies then someone would have reported it somewhere. Especially the ones executing them. Why go to the bother of executing them if not to record it somewhere should they renege? Do we have such a record? Nope we don't. More credence to the stories passed down.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Okay I would be forced to rely on Good News TV, so I would look at the information that they can provide me with. This is when the massive big warning bells start going off, I discover that what they are reporting isn't "news" at all, the sources they are using were compiled not hours, days, years or decades after the event, but centuries. For example the dominant member of the 12, Peter, his suffering and death is recorded in a source written over 100 years after the event itself supposedly happened,

Well Suetonius and Plutarch both wrote biographies of Julius Caesar over 100 years after he died. Would you be so quick to throw out these records as unreliable based on the criteria you gave above? I don't think so. Again your bias is starting to stink to high heaven at this stage. And not a whiff of objectivity at all.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

and what is worse is that even Good News TV rejects the majority of this source as being unreliable and pure fiction for the life of this chap except for the details relating to his death. And what is worse this is pretty much the most reliable of all the accounts of the deaths, and its barely reliable at all.

Not at all. All the disciples deaths are well attested to and sometimes even multiple attestations can be cited. For instance, both Hippolytus and Eusebius record that Peter was crucified under Nero's reign. Are they both bad historians? Are they both unreliable? If so then what do you base that judgment on? Were these historians also making up stories even a hundred years later? What had they got to gain from that? If you have good reasons to believe that they were not accurately reporting the facts then I would like you to point out why.

Handy link describing the fate of the other disciples here. Again if you can link us to some good historical sources that refute these reports then I would really like to see them. And in the absence of any refuting evidence that contradicts what tradition and histories that have hitherto been passed down to us today, why should we be skeptical about these sources? We need better reasons than atheistic bias, sorry.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

So when I weigh up all these details I would not be convinced that these guys really did "suffer ostracism, rejection, ridicule, loss of home, job, family, and suffer torture and death because they refused to renege on a story that they say they were eye witness to". So thats my answer to your question, I suppose I'd like to throw it back at you and ask why are you convinced that these men actually did suffer as you believe they did?

See above.

Fanny Cradock

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

A miracle, by its very definition, is an event which is completely improbable.

I'm not sure what the "completely" of "completely improbable" means. It seems to me that that is just your shorthand way of saying that miracles don't happen. This is a perfectly reasonable position to take - but it is a particular metaphysical outlook informs your reading of history. Besides, what has improbability got to do with the truth? Our existence is incalculably improbable - as is all of life the universe and everything - and yet here we are.

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Therefore a historian worth his salt won't go around saying 2,000 years ago Jesus and Peter probably went walking on water

Your slavish insistence that anyone who doesn't conform to your metaphysical worldview makes an unwelcome return. I'm sure that there are many historians worth their salt who think that Jesus was resurrected or Lazarus was raised or whatever. If you want to condescend and poo-poo professional historians merely because they happen to be Christians (or Muslims or Jews or just about any world view other than atheist or agnostic) who hold to the notion that miracles are a valid explanation for an event, I suggest you'll go down better in the A&A forum.

RGDATA!

PDN wrote: »

I've been away in Nigeria all week - but looking over the thread it doesn't look like anyone found any contradictions for us then?

I don't have a problem with the four different portrayals of Jesus (not that any major contradiction has been pointed out). But what about the other accounts? Was it just an editorial decision by humans to confine it to four accounts? How did it become "the word of the Lord"?

marty1985

marty1985 wrote: »

I understand that different accounts give different emphases, but there are some incidents that to my mind contradict each other, and both cannot be true at the same time. Another one that bothered me is the particular day that Jesus died. Was it on the day of the Passover meal or the day of preparation? Isn't the reason John didn't mention the meal with the disciples because he is maintaining that it was not the Passover meal. I understand this has significance, as it can mean that Jesus himself became the sacrificial lamb on the day of Passover. This runs throughout the story of the crucifixion. I stand to be corrected here, but I think the trial before Pilate involves a lot of running in and out by Pilate to address the crowds and then to talk to Jesus, because the high priests could not enter on the day of preparation for the Passover meal. I know the Gospel according to John is imbued with symbolism, but I guess I am looking at this (for the time being) from a perspective that is not devotional. I am looking for contradictions, so I can find the truth and the
reasons for the them. John obviously wants to teach us something, but isn't
still a contradiction? .

this still hasn't been addressed for me. PDN has said that both the washing of the feet and the last supper happen together, which would mean that he washed their feet and had the Passover meal with them right? But this doesn't add up for me with the rest of John's account which says he died on the day of the Passover meal. I know it gets a little complicated as the Passover meal happens after nightfall of the previous day, so to speak. But I still see this as a contradiction.

Everyone explains it to me like this: "look, if I met Gerry at Super Valu and we both told you the story independently you might find some differences, haha. You know what Gerry is like." This argument seems condescending. I'm sure people here have masters in thelogy or similar qualifications, and I feel like I'm brushed aside as they don't want to explain it to me because I should go study it myself, or use my imagination to get around it.

This, in itself, will not harm my faith. I think that some people won't get into the debate because they think someone like me just wouldn't understand it and sign up for Richard Dawkins' newsletter.

There are other differences in the passion narratives that make me wonder, such as the time of day it was when he died. For me, the biggest contradiction is the day he died. After all, it's a murder scene and these details matter. So if I get the answer about Gerry at Super Valu it just won't do. Some of you will state that there is absolutely no contradiction, but to me that's your view because your faith is so strong that you can't understand why I can't understand, which is an answer I have pretty much already received.

So, in short, PDN said we still haven't found a contradiction. Well, I believe I had already pointed this story out, and the answer I got was that I just hadn't read the Bible properly moreorless. The poster then added later that he hadn't noticed this chronological difference before. Then, I kept checking back and it wasn't mentioned again. So, can anyone tell me why this isn't a contradiction?

PDN

marty1985 wrote: »

this still hasn't been addressed for me. PDN has said that both the washing of the feet and the last supper happen together, which would mean that he washed their feet and had the Passover meal with them right? But this doesn't add up for me with the rest of John's account which says he died on the day of the Passover meal. I know it gets a little complicated as the Passover meal happens after nightfall of the previous day, so to speak. But I still see this as a contradiction.

I think you're making a bit of a mistake in assuming that religions are uniform and therefore follow exactly the same practices and traditions at exactly the same times.

If you look at modern Christianity, for example, Russians celebrate Christmas in January, whereas we celebrate it in December. And even among those who follow it in December, we follow different traditions. So for example, many Poles and Romanians eat their Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve.

So, in 2002, for example, one person could truthfully report that I preached on Christmas Eve to a Romanian congregation in Dublin, and then went back to one of their houses and shared their Christmas Dinner with them.

Another person might truthfully report that I preached in a service in Drogheda the next morning (Christmas Day) but that I said I would only preach a very short sermon because everyone would want to get home in order to finish preparing their Christmas Dinners.

Now, you could come along 2000 years ago and think that someone must be lying. After all, there's a contradiction, isn't there? Did I preach in Drogheda the day after the eating of Christmas Dinners? Or did I preach in Drogheda before the eating of Christmas Dinners? In fact, as we know, there is no contradiction because both are true due to the difference between Irish and Romanian traditions.

Within Judaism you had various groups, all gathering in Jerusalem that Passover week. The Galileans would do things a bit differently from Jerusalem people, and those from the further reaches of the Roman Empire would have their own distinctive practices as well. Now factor in the added complication that each Gospel writer was writing to different people, in different locations and different cultuiral settings. It would be no surprise at all that John, writing to a group who already saw themselves as being separated from mainstream Judaism, used a slightly different method of referring to dates and times.

marty1985

In John, Pilate announces the sentencing on "the day of preparation, and it was about noon." In Mark, Jesus had lived through that day and had the disciples prepare the meal, then he was arrested and executed at 9am on the Passover day. But in John, Jesus dies a day earlier, sometime after noon. This is a contradiction, whether we can use trust and reasoning to get around it or not.

I have heard before that different sectarian groups celebrated Passover on different dates. But your example of Romania and Ireland falls down because Jesus is not outside Jerusalem with a sectarian group of Jews. He is in Jerusalem where the lambs are being slaughtered. And I have read that in Jerusalem there was only one day of Passover a year. The odd calendar of a few sects wouldn't be tolerated. We can see also the differences in behavior of the Jewish leaders. In Mark, the trial before Pilate all happens in one place but in John they cannot enter Pilate's headquarters to avoid ritual defilement so they can eat the Passover that evening.

John is also the only one to say that Jesus is the lamb of God. So for John, he had to die on the day of preparation, after noon when all the Passover lambs were being slaughtered.

So, from what I can see, John, writing many years after Mark, has created a contradiction deliberately to make an obvious theological point. Both cannot be true at the same time. But if we try to use our imagination to reconcile the two, then we miss John's point.

Pompey Magnus

Soul Winner wrote: »

Well that's a good start. We've established that if it was true that they did suffer such deaths in such circumstances at least your willing to admit that they just might have been telling the truth.

I didn't say that, I said they believed what they claimed was true which is very different. Just because someone is willing to die for something does not mean what they believe is true. For example I don't believe that as the members of the Heaven's Gate Cult decided to commit suicide once the comet Hale Bopp came closest to the Earth in 1997 that this in any way supports their claim that there was a UFO following the comet which collected the souls of these people. I'm sure you don't believe their willingness to die for this belief in any way makes their belief more plausible, so at least I am being consistent here.

Yes and you would try to look for alternative sources that might report things differently. Did you find any? No. So what do you do? You give the benefit of the doubt until contrary news reports surface or you simply disbelieve the story until you get corroborating reports, but what you can't say is that the first reports are unreliable. Conflicting reports might come from the Bad News TV channel, along with testimony from reliable sources that the disciples actually did renege on their testimony and they stopped preaching their message that Jesus rose from the dead and that they saw Him alive and vital for many days hence and actually saw Him ascend into heaven with the promise to return one day to set this world right. Did that happen? No evidence that it did at all.

The problem is that these were nobodies. There are no non-biased sources for their deaths, even the canonical texts of the Christian religion did not feel that these guys deaths were in any way noteworthy. As you know the fifth book in the New Testament canon is called The Acts of the Apostles. It is a book devoted to portraying the lives of the Apostles after the death of Jesus. It only mentions the deaths of one of the twelve and that is Judas. If it didn't regard the details of their deaths as being in any way worthy of being recorded for posterity then I would have to wonder why.

Again no evidence that would refute the story being run on the Good News TV channel. Nobody interested enough to foresee that in years to come these testimonies (unto death) would be proof enough for many believers to put faith in Jesus as a result. If the original reports were lies then someone would have reported it somewhere. Especially the ones executing them. Why go to the bother of executing them if not to record it somewhere should they renege? Do we have such a record? Nope we don't. More credence to the stories passed down.

Well if they weren't executed in the first place then there would be nobody who would put two and two together to think of recording this detail. If Peter died of a heart attack in his sleep as an old man in Jerusalem there would be no opponents who would have thought "We better make a record of this in case somebody in 100 years decides to claim that Peter actually was crucified upside down in Rome."

Well Suetonius and Plutarch both wrote biographies of Julius Caesar over 100 years after he died. Would you be so quick to throw out these records as unreliable based on the criteria you gave above? I don't think so. Again your bias is starting to stink to high heaven at this stage. And not a whiff of objectivity at all.

Nonsense to compare the two.

Julius Caesar: the greatest general of the late Republic, Pontifex Maximus, conqueror of Gaul, a five time consul of Rome, dictator.

Simon Peter: an illiterate Jewish peasant.

Source of the death of Caesar: Seutonius and Plutarch, two very learned men of Senatorial rank who had access to the great imperial archives to research the massive amounts of contemporary accounts detailing the assassination of Caesar.

Source of the death of Simon Peter: the Acts of Peter (author unknown), a book which contains stories of talking dogs and resurrected herrings.

Yeah, the two examples really are comparable.

Not at all. All the disciples deaths are well attested to and sometimes even multiple attestations can be cited. For instance, both Hippolytus and Eusebius record that Peter was crucified under Nero's reign. Are they both bad historians? Are they both unreliable? If so then what do you base that judgment on? Were these historians also making up stories even a hundred years later? What had they got to gain from that? If you have good reasons to believe that they were not accurately reporting the facts then I would like you to point out why.

It seems that Hippolytus did not make this claim, its found in Pseudo-Hippolytus' account of the lives of the twelve. I am open to correction on this but it seems it was someone who pretended to be Hippolytus who made this claim.

As for Eusebius, he wrote about Peter's death circa 324 so that is too late to lend much credence to. The Acts of Peter were long written by this stage so Eusebius and Pseudo Hippolytus do not make for multiple attestations, they are later sources who were repeating a single earlier source.

Handy link describing the fate of the other disciples here. Again if you can link us to some good historical sources that refute these reports then I would really like to see them. And in the absence of any refuting evidence that contradicts what tradition and histories that have hitherto been passed down to us today, why should we be skeptical about these sources? We need better reasons than atheistic bias, sorry.

See my point above on no contemporary, even Luke, being bothered enough to record the deaths of the twelve. Why would they if there was nothing unusual about their deaths? You seem to have the assumption that from the start Christianity was some massive shockwave that tore through the Roman Empire and that the highest of provincial officials were at loose ends trying to stem the flow of this new superpower religion which was growing at an enormous rate.

Sorry to dispose of this bad Hollywood fiction but for a long period your religion was a teeny tiny blip, a nothingness, not worthy of a second thought to the powers that be.

Pompey Magnus

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Your slavish insistence that anyone who doesn't conform to your metaphysical worldview makes an unwelcome return. I'm sure that there are many historians worth their salt who think that Jesus was resurrected or Lazarus was raised or whatever. If you want to condescend and poo-poo professional historians merely because they happen to be Christians (or Muslims or Jews or just about any world view other than atheist or agnostic) who hold to the notion that miracles are a valid explanation for an event, I suggest you'll go down better in the A&A forum.

Oh I know without doubt there are historians who "believe" Jesus was resurrected, I said already that this is perfectly fine. But what would not be fine is for them to go into a lecture hall and using their authority as a historian to teach students that Jesus "probably" rose from the dead or that Mohammed "probably" ascended to Heaven on a horse. They can believe it as a theology, they can't assert it as history. I suggest you do some research on the disciple in historical reconstruction if you think that such claims are valid in the discipline.

Pompey Magnus

marty1985 wrote: »

I have heard before that different sectarian groups celebrated Passover on different dates. But your example of Romania and Ireland falls down because Jesus is not outside Jerusalem with a sectarian group of Jews. He is in Jerusalem where the lambs are being slaughtered. And I have read that in Jerusalem there was only one day of Passover a year. The odd calendar of a few sects wouldn't be tolerated.

This is spot on, the sects that did not recognise the Jerusalem Passover also did not recognise the Temple cult and thus would not make the journey to Jerusalem. The people who did go to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover, like Jesus, were the ones who abode the timing of Passover as observed by the Temple priests. They would have therefore ate the Passover on the same day as the priests.

It is also worth noting that John the only Gospel never claims the last supper was a Passover meal. Lets not forget that the Gospels were written individually for separate communities. John did not intend his Gospel to be read side by side with the synoptics, his was a stand alone book. His readers would have had no reason to think that the last supper was a passover, it is not said to be a passover meal in the gospel and later we read the Jewish Priests thought it was the Day of Preparation.

Festus

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Sorry to dispose of this bad Hollywood fiction but for a long period your religion was a teeny tiny blip, a nothingness, not worthy of a second thought to the powers that be.

Who are the posers that be?

Pompey Magnus

Festus wrote: »

Who are the posers that be?

The powers that be, in other words anyone with any form of political or military power in the Roman world. The Christian religion was small, growing at an unremarkable rate likely to have been about 40% every decade, in other words a small Christian community with 10 members in the year 100 AD would have had 14 members in 110 AD.

It was not the case that massive conversions were popping up all across the Empire causing massive panic to the pagan emperors and provincial governors. It is just a Christian re-writing of history to suggest this and the idea that the Roman establishment had the twelve apostles silenced in an attempt to stem the flow of Christianity is a claim worthy of no better than a bad 1970s Hollywood film.

This simply began as a widely used tactic of Christians to make up for the lack of interesting stories relating to their early leading figures. So long after the events happened Christians made up stories for example the brave martyrdom of the apostles and the equally fictitious story that Paul and Seneca regularly exchanged letters with one another, in which Seneca was astounded at just how super brilliant Paul was. Early Christians simply made a whole lot of stuff up. I'm sure there isn't a regular poster in this forum who could deny this fact.

Fanny Cradock

You're sounding more the axe-grinder and less the objective armchair historian with every post. Your words cement the image.

JimiTime

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

The powers that be, in other words anyone with any form of political or military power in the Roman world. The Christian religion was small, growing at an unremarkable rate likely to have been about 40% every decade, in other words a small Christian community with 10 members in the year 100 AD would have had 14 members in 110 AD.

It was not the case that massive conversions were popping up all across the Empire causing massive panic to the pagan emperors and provincial governors. It is just a Christian re-writing of history to suggest this and the idea that the Roman establishment had the twelve apostles silenced in an attempt to stem the flow of Christianity is a claim worthy of no better than a bad 1970s Hollywood film.

This simply began as a widely used tactic of Christians to make up for the lack of interesting stories relating to their early leading figures. So long after the events happened Christians made up stories for example the brave martyrdom of the apostles and the equally fictitious story that Paul and Seneca regularly exchanged letters with one another, in which Seneca was astounded at just how super brilliant Paul was. Early Christians simply made a whole lot of stuff up. I'm sure there isn't a regular poster in this forum who could deny this fact.

I must say, its refreshing to see such a great unbiased historian posting here. To observe someone who doesn't have a vested interest in anything but historical truth and fact. A bastion of honesty.*

*May contain sarcasm.

Pompey Magnus

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

You're sounding more the axe-grinder and less the objective armchair historian with every post. Your words cement the image.

If you want to point out flaws in my points then fair enough, if you want to engage in petty name calling then that won't get us very far.

Festus

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

The powers that be, in other words anyone with any form of political or military power in the Roman world. The Christian religion was small, growing at an unremarkable rate likely to have been about 40% every decade, in other words a small Christian community with 10 members in the year 100 AD would have had 14 members in 110 AD.

Interesting math. By 700AD that's 5.8 Billion Christians.
World population then was about 200 million.

You're making this up...

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

I'm sure there isn't a regular poster in this forum who could deny this fact.

JimiTime

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

If you want to point out flaws in my points then fair enough, if you want to engage in petty name calling then that won't get us very far.

To respond to your 'point' would be the equivalent in trying to reason with someone who argues the world is flat and is held up by an elephant and seven turtles. No point in laying down wood for your axe tbh.

Pompey Magnus

JimiTime wrote: »

I must say, its refreshing to see such a great unbiased historian posting here. To observe someone who doesn't have a vested interest in anything but historical truth and fact. A bastion of honesty.*

*May contain sarcasm.

Okay, my points in this post were:

1: Christianity is believed to have grown at about 40% per decade. I will refer you to the work of sociologist Rodney Stark if you wish to contradict this claim.

2: Christianity was a fringe religion within the Roman Empire for the majority of its existence up to Constantine. There was no continuous state policy at Empire wide suppression of the religion except for a number of relatively brief examples e.g. under Diocletian and Domitian.

3: It is indisputable historical fact that Christians produced an awful lot of lies and falsehoods in the formative years of the religion. If you wish to disagree you are free to defend as historically reliable The Acts of Paul and Thecla, The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of Peter, the letters between Paul and Seneca, the Epistle to the Laodiceans, Pseudo Matthew etc etc etc etc

So there are my points in that post. You have three to chose from, I await eagerly to discover which of three you decided bears the marks of a biased historian. Please be willing to back your criticism up though within the boundaries of historical scholarship.

Festus

JimiTime wrote: »

To respond to your 'point' would be the equivalent in trying to reason with someone who argues the world is flat and is held up by an elephant and seven turtles. No point in laying down wood for your axe tbh.

No, no, no. It's ONE turtle and FOUR elephants.

Opps, sorry, wrong thread

Festus

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Please be willing to back your criticism up though within the boundaries of historical scholarship.

I suppose in the interests of scholarship you will at some time present your own supporting annotated bibliography, citation and reference listing or perhaps if you can stretch to it a link to some of your sources?

Pompey Magnus

Festus wrote: »

Interesting math. By 700AD that's 5.8 Billion Christians.
World population then was about 200 million.

You're making this up...

As I was referring to Christianity prior to it becoming established I must have made the mistake of assuming people would not think I was referring that figure of growth as being from the inception of the religion to infinity so I guess I will have to clarify: the figure was up until the time of Constantine.

A reasonable assumption is 1,000 Christians in the year 40 AD
The best estimate for the number of Christians by the time of Constantine is roughly 10% of the empire, so roughly 6 million people.

40% per decade gives:

7,530 by 100 AD
217,795 by 200 AD
6.3 million by 300 AD.

Your move.

Pompey Magnus

Festus wrote: »

I suppose in the interests of scholarship you will at some time present your own supporting annotated bibliography, citation and reference listing or perhaps if you can stretch to it a link to some of your sources?

Here is a start, I can give you more once you get through these:

Christian growth estimates: Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity, a Sociologist Reconsiders history. Please refer to Chapter 1, Conversion and Christian Growth.

Christian forgeries and pseudopigripha: Ehrman, Bart. Lost Scriptures, Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament.

The irregular and sporadic persecutions: Any half decent history book dealing with the period of the Roman Empire, this little detail is easy to find, you don't need me to help here.

Festus

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Here is a start, I can give you more once you get through these:

Christian growth estimates: Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity, a Sociologist Reconsiders history. Please refer to Chapter 1, Conversion and Christian Growth.

Christian forgeries and pseudopigripha: Ehrman, Bart. Lost Scriptures, Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament.

The irregular and sporadic persecutions: Any half decent history book dealing with the period of the Roman Empire, this little detail is easy to find, you don't need me to help here.

Neither appear to be unbiased and at least one appears to be overly self serving. Not the kind of "historians" I'd care to waste money on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_stark

Festus

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

As I was referring to Christianity prior to it becoming established I must have made the mistake of assuming people would not think I was referring that figure of growth as being from the inception of the religion to infinity so I guess I will have to clarify: the figure was up until the time of Constantine.

A reasonable assumption is 1,000 Christians in the year 40 AD
The best estimate for the number of Christians by the time of Constantine is roughly 10% of the empire, so roughly 6 million people.

40% per decade gives:

7,530 by 100 AD
217,795 by 200 AD
6.3 million by 300 AD.

Your move.

Reasonable assumptions. To assume. To make an ass of u and me.

Any scholarly work that is based on assumption has to assume that any criticism is prepared to accept the assumption or otherwise assume there is a limit to the scholarliness of the article.

Fanny Cradock

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

If you want to point out flaws in my points then fair enough, if you want to engage in petty name calling then that won't get us very far.

I'm not sure where the alleged name calling is to be found. I didn't actually say there were flaws in your posts. What I'm criticising is your tendency to mix facts with your opinion and pass the result off as an all or nothing package.

You now talk about staying within the boundaries of historical scholarship, but all I've seen from you is the outright rejection of views that don't square with yours. In dong so you have defined what a historian is and what their accompanying metaphysical axioms should be (conveniently these just so happen to align with yours).

So what if Christianity started out small? I would have though it obvious for even the most casual reading that it started with just a handful of people. What impact does this have on truth? Presumably you believe that your atheistic world-view is correct. Yet to-date it is a minority world-view - albeit a sizeable one. And what of lies and fabrications? Are we to believe that Christians are alone amongst men in telling porkies? The fact that Orthodox Christianity rejects the Gospel of x, y and z as heterodox fabrications would lead some people to suggest that Christianity actually successfully applied standards to root out the bad. Not you, however. Never. Never. Never. You're an atheist, you think it's all a load of crap and each and every one of your posts is dictated by this. That is why I say you look more and more like the axe-grinder.

Pompey Magnus

Festus wrote: »

Neither appear to be unbiased and at least one appears to be overly self serving. Not the kind of "historians" I'd care to waste money on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_stark

Aaaah I see, so a historian can only be unbiased if they are Christian. Damn, I must have missed that memo.

Or perhaps you want to clarify your point why one former Christian preacher turned agnostic and one scholar who is unsure but wants to believe are, as you described, biased. Why are the works of these two highly respected scholars are not worthy of your time and effort? I am at a loss to understand.

Do you see some massive flaw in the figures Stark produced? Perhaps you do believe that Paul and Seneca were buddies, in contrast to what would be found in Ehrman's book.

Fanny Cradock

Festus wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_stark

In fairness to Rodney Stark, form what I have seen of him he does seem to be reasonable. Indeed, I seem to recall that he described himself as a sympathetic non-believing friend of Christianity. Or am I thinking of someone else

Pompey Magnus

Festus wrote: »

Reasonable assumptions. To assume. To make an ass of u and me.

Any scholarly work that is based on assumption has to assume that any criticism is prepared to accept the assumption or otherwise assume there is a limit to the scholarliness of the article.

Fine, criticise so instead of throwing out empty catch phrases. Do you suggest that the start figure of 1000 was too small, in which case Christianity would have grown at a slower rate than 40%. Do you suggest that the end figure of approx 6 million is too low? What then would you suggest is a more realistic figure for 300 AD. Or are you, as I believe, just criticizing for the sake of it? Give something positive instead of sniping from the bushes.

Fanny Cradock

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Or perhaps you want to clarify your point why one former Christian preacher

Ehrman, a former preacher?

Pompey Magnus

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Ehrman, a former preacher?

Yeah, I think it was during his time at Moody Bible Institute, it may have been after that though.

Fanny Cradock

I thought he more more in the scholarly line of things? Ah well!

JimiTime

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

What I'm criticising is your tendency to mix facts with your opinion and pass the result off as an all or nothing package.

On the money! From when the posters user name was Charco, that has been my beef. Opinion, mixed with elements of history and presented articulately as fact. If a poster was genuinely interested in engaging us in historical study, their posts would not be so littered with anti-Christian sentiment. Though tbh, I prefer to know someones mindset. It helps decide whether to engage or not.

I'm glad its not just me that seen this though.

Pompey Magnus

JimiTime wrote: »

On the money! From when the posters user name was Charco, that has been my beef. Opinion, mixed with elements of history and presented articulately as fact. If a poster was genuinely interested in engaging us in historical study, their posts would not be so littered with anti-Christian sentiment. Though tbh, I prefer to know someones mindset. It helps decide whether to engage or not.

I'm glad its not just me that seen this though.

Where has my "anti-Christian sentiment" been here? Is it that I don't recognise Christianity as having been a major player on the world stage from the start? I don't think there is much doubt about this at all.

Is it my suggestion that the Acts of Peter is not a reliable historical document? Forgive me for finding a book written 100+ years after the event which also recounts dogs having conversations with humans and cooked fish being resurrected to be perhaps slightly suspect.

Is it my downplaying of the Christian persecution? Again this is accepted historical knowledge, this is not a controversial fringe opinion. The idea that Christians were this underground movement for 300 years having to draw fish symbols to identify themselves to fellow believers while constantly avoiding officials out to get them, this just isn't true. There were persecutions, but they were usually localised, sporadic, and more often than not instigated by normal citizens who despised the Christian cultists, not by the Emperor or provincial governors.

Is it my opinion that a miracle claim can never be sufficiently attested so as to make it worthy of being considered "historical fact". If this is where your problem with what I say lies then can you find me a relatively up-to-date academic history textbook in use in a respected university written by a respected historian in which miracle claims such as the resurrection or Mohammed's ascension to Heaven on a horse are defended as being probable historical truths. I certainly have not come across anything comparable in any history book I have read, and I read an awful lot of history books. But maybe I'm reading the wrong history books, perhaps the resurrection or Mohammed's ascent to Heaven is now consider probable and is being taught to history students today, I would like to see where though.

So I ask again. Where is my anti-Christian bias? There is anti-miracle bias no doubt, but as I say I think you will find any historian worth his salt will have an anti-miracle bias when making truth claims about the past.

Where is my "anti-Christian sentiment" which you think would not be an opinion shared by the vast majority of historians today? Please just point it out.

JimiTime

Pompey Magnus wrote: »

Where is my "anti-Christian sentiment" which you think would not be an opinion shared by the vast majority of historians today? Please just point it out.

Your anti-Christian leaning oozes from your 'historical analysis' constantly. Your input here is only ever to belittle Christianity. What you say or conclude doesn't actually bother me. You are welcome to conclude whatever you like. Its how you present your 'historical analysis' as matter of fact.

Pompey Magnus

JimiTime wrote: »

Your anti-Christian leaning oozes from your 'historical analysis' constantly. Your input here is only ever to belittle Christianity. What you say or conclude doesn't actually bother me. You are welcome to conclude whatever you like. Its how you present your 'historical analysis' as matter of fact.

Might I suggest that you may need to read more history books and actually research the early years of Christianity within the context of the Roman Empire if you feel I am saying anything that is not widely accepted. If you can provide me with some historical research on any of these things which contradicts what I have said I would genuinely be delighted to know about it.

Galway K9

Read the Gospel of St.Thomas....amazing writing.