The FAILUREs of the Christian oral tradition

Originally posted by rubbertramp
reply to post by troubleshooter

 

interesting, i'd like to read that.
there's also the other theory that the romans drugged him with certain herbs before crucifiction. i for get the herb names, but it is true that certain ones slow the heartbeat enough to make one appear dead.
actually, i believe this concept was mentioned in one of dan browns books.

Actually you can hear him speak on the subject...
"Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?"
www.jamesgregory.org...

Originally posted by Kapyong
Yes, but as I showed above, that alleged method failed in numerous cases.

But you just ignored all those facts.

Originally posted by Kapyong
Once again, you preach faithful beliefs and just completely IGNORE the evidence I posted.

You'll never actually address those problems I posted above, will you?

Faithful beliefs? I'm approaching this from a historical point of view. I don't know where you get that from. I've already said that I'm an atheist. I'm trying to be as dispassionate and objective as possible. You, however, are failing to do so, by attempting to apply the "apologist" label to me, or suggest that I'm posting "faithful beliefs", in all likelihood to discount what I've presented. Let's just stick to the topic, mate.

Likewise, I'm not ignoring the specific items you posted above. I read and absorbed and accepted them. I'm not even disputing them! The massive point of all this that you continuously, steadfastly, and conspicuously fail to understand is that the differences, errors and variations within the New Testament writings and manuscripts are spectacularly inconsequential when compared to the corroboration that they instead provide to each other.

The Dead Sea scrolls found in a cave at Qumran corroborate original, ancient manuscripts that date from within 40-60 years of Christ's death. This is nothing short of monumental in the field of textual criticism, of determining the veracity and integrity of the latter as historical documents.

Originally posted by Kapyong
10,000 copies of the writings of the Monk Han-SHou exist.
Huge numbers of copies of the Book of Mormon exist.
Millions of copies of the Lord of the Rings exist.
So what?

The NUMBER of copies of a book has NOTHING to do with the truth of it's contents.

Can you explain WHY on earth YOU think it does?

This section of your post most starkly illustrates the shortcomings in your methodology for approaching the subject matter, as well as highlighting the fact that you are almost deliberately blinding yourself to the reality of what all these documents represent...

- Google doesn't reveal anything to me about a monk named Han-shou, so I'll leave that alone for now.
- The Lord of the Rings is a novel written in the 20th century. It is one of the most popular books of all time, and has been reproduced over and over.
- The Book of Mormon was written inside of 200 years ago, long after the invention of the printing press. It is therefore expected that there are millions of extant copies.

Here is the important bit: Neither of the latter two documents contain historically-verifiable events, and the time difference between them and the New Testament writings is astronomical. They are not remotely in the same class of manuscript as the New Testament writings. The comparison is, in short, irrelevant.

Next, the debate here is not whether Jesus Christ walked on water or raised the dead, and never has been. Ancient "true believers" have included such miracles in their testimonies since time began. I'm not concerned about this, nor do I believe that such events occurred.

If you want to talk about "facts" and "evidence", they are as follows:

- A comparatively huge number of original ancient manuscripts exist referring to the person we know as Jesus Christ, who lived in the Galilee region of Roman Palestine.
- Despite the utter rarity of 1st century document manuscripts in general, we have numerous fragments dating from this time, again referring to Jesus.
- A huge proportion of the content of the New Testament manuscripts is corroborative. Given the geographical and chronological disparity of the found physical documents, this is widely considered to be phenomenal within scholastic circles, the Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran (found in the 1950's) being the best example.
- Historical events and persons, as well as geographical place names that are referred to in these manuscripts can be verified by secular sources to a significant degree.
- The vast majority of modern historians, far better equipped to judge than you or I, and possessing extensive and specialised knowledge in the field of textual criticism, accept that there are authentic, multiple, and congruent pieces of evidence that this person Jesus Christ existed and lived in Roman Palestine (irrespective of the miracles, deification ect).

Cheers.

reply to post by Kapyong


Go debate it with the archaeo-historical branches. I simply put the information in there. If you have a problem with how archaeological findings are considered relavent to history or not, take it up with them, not with me. I'm not the ultimate figure on whether something is HISTORY or not.