The New Testament....More accurate than your history book :P

Originally posted by daskakik

Originally posted by ServantOfTheLamb
i am not gonna argue prophecy on this thread.

You sure didn't have a problem with it when you thought you had something.

Accurate to the original does not equal historically accurate. Why did you ask those in your other thread to check this one out if there wasn't going to any proof here either?

There was proof you chose to turn a blind eye. I recognize that and stop trying.

Originally posted by ServantOfTheLamb
There was proof you chose to turn a blind eye. I recognize that and stop trying.

Even when you have been shown why your offerings don't constitute proof you want to blame others.

We didn't start these threads on a public forum and we can't help it if your claims don't stand up to scrutiny.

reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb


Unless you have evidence that Tyre was not built again, I'd have to say you are the one turning a blind eye to the facts.

Lol, we will see gentleman, I love you both hope you find your way some how, but I don't have the time to go over everything that I know with everyone, I wish I did.

reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb


Sooooooo....... you don't have any evidence to back up your claims? I'm sure you still think you're right though, somehow.

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb

 

listverse.com...

So this is literal history!?!?!?!

What a sick piece of *%&^ your god is.

edit on 4-9-2013 by Wertdagf because: (no reason given)

Did you even read the link you sent? What exactly do you have a problem with and why?

Originally posted by ServantOfTheLamb
Lol, we will see gentleman, I love you both hope you find your way some how, but I don't have the time to go over everything that I know with everyone, I wish I did.

This is just more of the same in a condescending tone. What you did go over with us was shown to be wrong. What makes you think that the people on ATS have not already gone over much, if not everything, that you know?

any discussion of the NT historical accuracy has to include :

1 - the fantasy cencus

2 - the jerusulem zombie appocalyse

3 - the city of tyre

there are others - but those are the top 3

Click here for more information.

Originally posted by ServantOfTheLamb

So for all you atheist who like to bash the historical accuracy of the Bible.....um most likely what you have found is less reliable based on evidence.....the video offers more information hope you enjoy.

I SHOULD MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THE POINT OF THIS POST IS TO PROVE THE BIBLE IS ACCURATE TO ITS ORIGINAL TEXT, AND MORE SO THAN MOST OTHER HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. I AM NOT CLAIMING THIS PROVES THE INFORMATION IS ACCURATE, ALTHOUGH I BELIEVE IT IS.

edit on 4-9-2013 by ServantOfTheLamb because: (no reason given)

edit on 4-9-2013 by ServantOfTheLamb because: (no reason given)

edit on 4-9-2013 by ServantOfTheLamb because: (no reason given)

yawn.. this old song and dance?
so does this mean the torah is the most reliable? or the little red book?
all you did was show that a lot of people made copies of the text and people cared enough about the text to preserve it.
what about buddhism? islam? judaism? you are comparing works of history to a RELIGIOUS TEXT.
do you for one second see the difference?
people back in the past took religious reverence with their religious texts, while no one cares as much about the history texts.
if the library of alexandria was full of bibles or korans, do you think the christians or the muslims would have burnt the library down? i doubt it.

the problem with this inane argument is that it turns how we treat books into an argument about their truth. it also shows a terrible understanding of how historians analyze ancient texts.
the number is only important if you are analyzing the way the text was translated, transliterated and understood throughout the history of christianity, it's useful in study of intertextual differences, there are a lot in the bible. more in the OT than the NT, but there are some pretty big theological ones.

are you trying to justify the claim of historical accuracy or consistency of copies throughout time? because one doesn't equal the other.
the bible has some history, but the MAJORITY of the text is supernatural, and history has nothing to do with the supernatural, other than to understand beliefs about it.
so basically, the bible can have a million copies, perfect down to the dotted i's and it still wouldn't mean jesus was born of a virgin or rose from the dead.

history matches what we know of reality, and a guy rising from the dead is not possible, neither is a woman being born out of a guys head or a king turning everything into gold.
which is why greek mythology isn't taken as history either.

i would like to point out that historians don't rely solely on books as evidence, take for example caesar's gallic wars: in it caesar describes the supposed celtic practice of the "wicker-man". where the tribe would take a prisoner or volunteer and shut them in a giant man made of wicker, then light it on fire as a sacrifice to the gods.

now here is the thing, had we just stuck to a single book or set as our source of knowledge about the celts, we would believe that grisly story, but other forms of evidence show that caesar was lying. there is no evidence that the gauls burned people alive in wicker-men. the only reason he put that in there was because it sounded like something the gauls would do in the minds of the romans. after all "celt" is an english translation of the latin word for barbarian.

truth is not bound by the number of voices saying it, but bound by how much it matches reality.

reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb


Right I am already a believer though have had a contest in myself between my scientific education and my faith but am not becoming more and more convinced that some science is totally wrong, the radiation decay rings around deep polonium isotope particles are a point in question were the decay rings are more likely to indicate a younger age of the crustal rock than is accepted by standard geological models.

Not just the New Testament but as Christ said of it "Your word is truth" also the old testament.
Look at this short video (Sorry I do not know how to embed but it is better expanded anyway,
www.youtube.com...

Here is a thread on the polonium
www.ichthus.info...
And here is one that is attempting to refute the claim by casting doubt on his competence, if you read between the lines you can see the character assassination at work, www.talkorigins.org...

Archaeology of bible land and times is notoriously hard, made harder by the fact that Jesus was in the Roman world not very important. He did not have statues erected to him, coins printed with his face on, so proof of Tacitus "Agricola" is far easier by the legacy left. Indeed only one person has actual physical proof from the NT - Pontious Pilate.

Good point about the census -that would be documented elsewhere in Roman manuscripts and is quite keen to place the messiah in Bethlehem.

reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb


Having read and been handed quite a few works of apologetics on the new testament I can say that none of them have come anywhere close to convincing me to become a Christian again.

Even if we accept that there is good evidence for a historical Jesus, as many scholars do, I've seen no evidence supporting the supernatural claims made about him. Comparing him to Plato or Caesar is irrelevant. Accepting that someone existed based on historical evidence is one thing but accepting supernatural claims.

You could show me archaeological evidence that Odysseus really existed, that he really did get lost after the Trojan war and returned home disguised as a beggar and I would still be skeptical when you tried to tell me about his interactions with Athena, the spite of Poseidon and the magical bag of winds that was meant to get him back to Ithaca.

The old apologetic "the Bible mentions real places and Jesus was a real person so the Bible is proven to be accurate" trick gets old very quickly. It doesn't matter how many times you send me a postcard from New York, I'm not going to start believing in Spider-Man based on the fact that its a real place.

The saddest part by far is when they start going on and on about the empty tomb, oh apologists wet themselves with joy about how empty Jesus' tomb was. Except that we don't even know where the tomb is to check if its empty. No one knows where it is, as if the followers of Christ fell into so deep a depression after his ascension that they didn't bother to keep track of it. The only source we have for the tomb of Jesus even existing is the Gospels themselves and yet apologists still love to do their make-believe forensics about Jesus death, placement in the tomb, and Resurrection.

So even granting the existence of Jesus and granting that the mundane details of his life in the gospels might be somewhat accurate there is still the supernatural claims to contend with. Even if the gospels had been written down by Jesus himself as a diary there would still be no good reason to believe any of the supernatural claims.

Imagine if someone had written down that Socrates had heat vision, that he used it to start fires and keep people warm in the winter, that he helped Archimedes by becoming his legendary death-ray. Imagine if a cult had grown up around these stories and combined Socrates' alleged teachings with these myths of his supernatural ability to shoot fire from his eyes. Would you have any reason to accept these claims as true even if you were willing to accept Socrates as a real person in history?

Many apologists would call my view an anti-supernatural bias. I tend to agree with them. I am compelled to doubt the supernatural far more so than I would doubt a natural or mundane claim. If you tell me you had a sandwich for lunch that sounds reasonable and I have little reason to suspect you are deceiving me. If you tell me your sandwich spoke to you with the voice of an angel and commanded you to build an ark however than I will reject your claim. The sad fact is that these apologists criticize anti-supernatural bias but they possess the exact same bias against the supernatural, they merely apply it to other religions and neglect to apply it to their own.

So I'll keep my history books if its all the same and keep the Bible where it belongs, as folklore and mythology.

reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb


The detractors have no problem accepting the historicity of Buddha or Socrates.. hmph.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull

The Gospels were written as Apocrypha (meaning to both hide and reveal), with a layering on the historical with myth and metaphor. They were not intended to be read in a purely literalist, historical manner.

They tell us as much about Jesus and the context of his life and his struggle and triumph by what they hide as what they reveal.

To write it all off as pure nonsense without any basis in historical reality is well, ignorant.

Titen-Sxull
reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb

 

Having read and been handed quite a few works of apologetics on the new testament I can say that none of them have come anywhere close to convincing me to become a Christian again.

Even if we accept that there is good evidence for a historical Jesus, as many scholars do, I've seen no evidence supporting the supernatural claims made about him. Comparing him to Plato or Caesar is irrelevant. Accepting that someone existed based on historical evidence is one thing but accepting supernatural claims.

You could show me archaeological evidence that Odysseus really existed, that he really did get lost after the Trojan war and returned home disguised as a beggar and I would still be skeptical when you tried to tell me about his interactions with Athena, the spite of Poseidon and the magical bag of winds that was meant to get him back to Ithaca.

The old apologetic "the Bible mentions real places and Jesus was a real person so the Bible is proven to be accurate" trick gets old very quickly. It doesn't matter how many times you send me a postcard from New York, I'm not going to start believing in Spider-Man based on the fact that its a real place.

The saddest part by far is when they start going on and on about the empty tomb, oh apologists wet themselves with joy about how empty Jesus' tomb was. Except that we don't even know where the tomb is to check if its empty. No one knows where it is, as if the followers of Christ fell into so deep a depression after his ascension that they didn't bother to keep track of it. The only source we have for the tomb of Jesus even existing is the Gospels themselves and yet apologists still love to do their make-believe forensics about Jesus death, placement in the tomb, and Resurrection.

So even granting the existence of Jesus and granting that the mundane details of his life in the gospels might be somewhat accurate there is still the supernatural claims to contend with. Even if the gospels had been written down by Jesus himself as a diary there would still be no good reason to believe any of the supernatural claims.

Imagine if someone had written down that Socrates had heat vision, that he used it to start fires and keep people warm in the winter, that he helped Archimedes by becoming his legendary death-ray. Imagine if a cult had grown up around these stories and combined Socrates' alleged teachings with these myths of his supernatural ability to shoot fire from his eyes. Would you have any reason to accept these claims as true even if you were willing to accept Socrates as a real person in history?

Many apologists would call my view an anti-supernatural bias. I tend to agree with them. I am compelled to doubt the supernatural far more so than I would doubt a natural or mundane claim. If you tell me you had a sandwich for lunch that sounds reasonable and I have little reason to suspect you are deceiving me. If you tell me your sandwich spoke to you with the voice of an angel and commanded you to build an ark however than I will reject your claim. The sad fact is that these apologists criticize anti-supernatural bias but they possess the exact same bias against the supernatural, they merely apply it to other religions and neglect to apply it to their own.

So I'll keep my history books if its all the same and keep the Bible where it belongs, as folklore and mythology.

I was going to say something along similar lines, but this is so well articulated that I let it stand sans par distraction.

If you tell me your sandwich spoke to you with the voice of an angel and commanded you to build an ark however than I will reject your claim.

It is one thing if I tell you my sandwich spoke to me. Further still into plurality of risk is if my neighbor's great grandson, after I am dead, made a living by recounting this tale as to how a sandwich spoke to me 80 years ago, to everyone he knew.

My confidence in that data is very low, no matter how many times it is written down.

There is plenty of physical evidence to support past documents and even the old testiment. We even have evidence of what it was like millioins of years ago.

I find it peculiar that we have nothing during the time of the New Testiment. We don't even know when it was written and there is no link to a time period. Even the church can't (or won't) show any verification for it.

There is not one legal document reguarding any of the characters and the Romans were good record keepers.

Christian history will be classified as Christian history. Roman history as Roman history. Greek history as Greek history. And so on.

No, the bible wouldn't be reliable at all.

First of all the existence of "Jesus" is very very questionable. No prominent writers during the time he supposedly lived had any records pertaining to him. A few mentioned the word "Christ" but that word had it's own meaning, they weren't talking about a actual person in the context.

It's funny how people are so quick to dismiss other religious books, and favor their own much more. In high school we had a class called "Mythology." It was a class pertaining to the Greek and Roman gods, and the stories that surrounded their culture. But at the time, people actually believed in the gods and the stories. They weren't considered "myths" to them, they truly believed in these things.

And the whole "It's been said so many times it must be true" thing isn't credible whatsoever. If I start a rumor about you based on no evidence, and it spreads enough to the point where numerous people believe it, it doesn't make it a fact. The fact in the matter is that a lot of people are quite gullable.

You have to take into consideration that a vast majority of people a few thousands of years ago didn't know how to read or write. Usually the people who were literate were either the wealthy or religious priests, clerics, etc. I don't understand why people say the bible is "The word of god" when it was obviously a compilation of writings from multiple people, all of which were humans. "Jesus" had no part in writing the book. Who's to say that some religious leaders and political hustlers didn't make a set of arbitrary rules and spooky stories to keep the masses in check? Maybe they took some stories that have circulated around for awhile and imposed them into the book to get people to believe them more easily.

Since most people didn't know how to read or write, it seems logical to say that the information they would receive would be pretty biased. We all know that religion and the wealthy have been 100% honest over the years (sarcasm.)

Usually people who weren't literate, would tell stories that have been passed down from them over the years. African tribes, native Americans, and many other groups of people have done this. The problem with this is that people may exaggerate a story, or they may accidently, or may even purposely include material to make it more interesting. Or they may use different words than the original story. And after time the story can be quite different than the original. So it's pretty hard to take it 100% seriously. Plus if a story talks about irrational things it hurts the credibility.

If the bible were just as accurate if not more accurate than a history book, you may as well except any other religious or cultural books/stories as facts. You can't be egotistic and only assume the books or stories you follow are facts, that would simply be wishful thinking.

reply to post by ServantOfTheLamb


I have never doubted the New Testament because their original intended purpose was as letters (epistles). The writers were writing from the heart and did not have a "book" in mind.