What would you consider documentation? Was there a form that needed to be filled out in triplicate and notarized?
Anything at all. Any primary or secondary claim.
Don’t get ridiculous. How about something written down along the lines of “I, Joeus Blowus, saw Jesus turn water into a bottle of Sangria.”
I’m basically thinking of the developed world. I do not think that most people of the developed world attribute every event as from the Gods, whereas the people of the ancient world did.
If your average driver gets into an accident, I do not think that they are more likely to say that it was the will of the Gods as opposed to a simple accident. Further, I’d say that most people of the developed world would say that there are natural laws that govern most things as opposed to the will of the Gods.
My phrasing was a bit ambiguous - yes, there are multiple sources for the Gospels - for example, the Gospel of Matthew derived from Q and Mark - however I was thinking more along the lines of eyewitness accounts or independent accounts - the Gospels are neither eyewitness accounts nor independent of each other. I admit that my phrasing was a bit muddled here.
On what basis do you doubt, though?
Do you find Josephus reliable? How about the other historians I listed?
I’m not sure how to take this - can you apply it to a concrete example (in the NT, preferably). I suppose I’m looking for what constitutes not ‘completely wrong’.
He didn’t witness anything in the Gospels, so he could not corroborate them. So I’m not sure how he could be used to support the miraculous nature of Jesus.
Frankly speaking, I’m not entirely sure how he could be so confident that what he experienced (with regard to meeting Jesus) was actually Jesus.
How should I take this - that all accounts of miracles are genuine miracles? How can I tell a ‘fake’ miracle from a genuine one - are their fake miracles?
Jesus’s miracles are attested to worse than Vespasian’s. The deciding factor for you is what others have claimed Jesus was - correct?
Why could Vespasian not be what Jesus was claimed to be?
I’m not sure this is a fair extrapolation from DtC’s post. There’s no first hand accounts of the miracles of Jesus.
Now, perhaps one could argue about the first hand accounts of the miracles of Paul (I believe he claims a few in his letters), but Jesus?
This is the part that always gets me scratching my head about Exodus. Moses and Aaron turn a stick into a snake – and the unimpressed Pharaoh has a couple of guys come out and do likewise. And so we get the miracle of water turning into blood – and the Pharaoh’s guys of course do likewise. So cue the plague of frogs, and, uh, cue the Egyptian response in kind.
And then comes the dust-into-lice miracle. Ah, say the rival miracle-workers, we can’t do that one.
I don’t know what that means.
Probably no Christian in the world believes in the miracles of Jesus just because they were written down. After all as the OP points out ancient texts are full of supernatural claims that no one today believes. The reason people believe is because there is something in the Bible that resonates with them and they act on what they belief and it gives them comfort. This feeling of comfort makes them predisposed to believe the other things that are in the Bible are true. This is how faith works you start with a claim that if you accept Jesus as your Lord you will feel him at work in your life. If you accept that claim and you feel him at work in your life that builds credibility for more fantastical claims such as miracles.
Now we know that Vespasian was a man and that men can not perform miracles so we disbelieve those claims. We have experienced that Jesus is more than a man so when claims are made of miracles, we believe those.
If I told you I could win the Indy 500 in a go cart, you would not believe me, but if I told you Bill Brasky could you would believe me. Not because of the source of the claim but because of what you already know about Brasky.
But all we know about Jesus is from the Bible. If the only information we had about Bill Brasky and his career came from you, we would be as likely to accept those claims as fact as we would claims about yourself. Without the Bible there would be no faith in Jesus.
I’m not quite sure what you’re looking for me to say other than what I have said. The accounts of supernatural events mentioned in your OP may have happened or it may not have happened. They are too far back in history and the documentary evidence is too thin to pursue any meaningful investigation into them. I merely say that I see no a priori reason to dismiss them.
The only argument I’ve ever seen for dismissing the possibility of supernatural events in ancient times is the claim that scientific experiments and tests have supposedly proved that such things never occur in modern times. Firstly, I’m not so sure about that. Secondly, though, no amount of experimentation in modern times can rule out the possibility of something happening in ancient times. In modern times we don’t see anyone making slaves fight each other and wild animals to the death for public entertainment. Yet I’ve never seen anyone argue that this didn’t actually happen in ancient times. We have no trouble believing that some act of savage cruelty was committed in ancient times even if we don’t see it in modern times. It’s only when somebody suggests that someone in ancient times did something positive and uplifting such as healing the sick or raising the dead that certain people insist it can’t be true.
What a load.
I have never seen anyone insist that miracles didn’t happen because they were positive and uplifting-miracles are doubted because they defy known science, period. Can you provide a single serious cite for someone on this board going down that road?
That there are people trained by God in all disciplines that have answers to the different questions. Also that God has such training for everyone, but each person won’t be a expert in everything.
I claim I don’t know if the pagan miracle that was stated was true, but i know that it is well within God’s power to do so, and within His pattern that it could be true.
As for actual fakes, such as made up, it really doesn’t matter, it is outside my discipline and the writings I know how to use. If it’s important for me to know God will proved the resources. If not, I can assume if God did something similar in scriptures there is no reason to suspect He can’t do what is claimed in this case pagan scared writings.
There are also counterfeit miracles. Which are real miracles where another person takes credit, though God worked through another person.
If the preterist view that the Roman Emperor was AntiChrist is correct, it would not be beyond belief at all to see such miracles now & again. A major difference with Jesus is there is no claim that an Emperor went around healing as a major part of his work.
There are no contemporary claims that Jesus healed at all. There are contemporary claims that Vespasian did.
Yeah, that’s a bit…weird… I wonder if there was some cultural thing back then that would explain it. I haven’t read the Exodus accounts in a long while though, so my general memory of it is a bit foggy. I know that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, which also makes no sense to me.
I haven’t been a Christian for many years now and the distance makes me appraise the situation radically differently than I once did. I’m still fairly confident that while I was a Christian, it was always a lot easier to critique various other religious claims - while mine was always immune. So I would probably say something similar to what you’ve said here - that I had this ‘inner’ truth that told me the Christian claims were correct, even though the evidence for them is worse than the evidence for Vespasian.
This, of course, is vastly unsatisfying. Had I been a Muslim or a Zoroastrian, the Christian claims would obviously be lacking.
We can’t even be confident of what Jesus claimed exactly to the same degree that we can be confident about what David Koresh claimed. Were I a Christian I would like to think that this would trouble me from a critical perspective. I suspect it wouldn’t though.
Okay, so you are agnostic towards them. What differentiates these claims from the Christian claims? From a reasonable point of view, as opposed to a subjective personal experience point of view.
Well, why was it possible/more frequent in ancient times as opposed to modern times then?
As to your modern time examples (slaves and wild animal fights) we actually do still see such things today (an NFL player got sent to jail for this, his name escapes me).
So, I’d say your comparison isn’t true - the fact is, we have seen horrific acts (holocaust, human experiments, etc) in modern times.
So you are agnostic towards Pagan claims? Perhaps the Pagan gods gave Vespasian power to perform miracles? Would this be acceptable to you?
How can fakes not matter?
If faking a miracle is possible, then how do you know that miracle X is not a fake? You seem to simply presuppose your religion - which makes it immune to critical inspection. I’m not sure how you can be secure in such beliefs.
As to counterfeit miracles - that muddies the water entirely. How can you be secure in your Christian faith with such possibilities? How can you be sure that Ahiriman is not poisoning your mind with Christian miracles to draw you away from Ahura Mazda?
If I believed in such things I would think that my religious views would be agnostic - I’d believe in “God” but could have no certainty as to what religious views were true. It would be a fairly empty concept.
Perhaps the early Christians were having Jesus take credit for Vespasian’s miracle?
This would be in the same vein as Kanicbird suggests…
Yet, I’m almost sure he doesn’t believe this is a remote possibility. If this is true, I’m curious as to why.
As I believe I’ve mentioned here and elsewhere the reason I’m so concerned about this is that it’s one of the primary factors that led to my deconversion.
I seem to be getting responses of ‘it’s possible’ with regard to the Vespasian miracles, or people being agnostic to them. No one firmly believes them.
Yet they constitute better evidence than what is found in the Bible. This doesn’t seem to be any problem among believers here. This was a significant problem for me.
So where’s the disconnect?
I dont agree with that assesment at all.
But it’s also not religion if so. It doesn’t lead anywhere; it doesn’t say anything useful. If true, it tells you precisely nothing. It does not suggest you do one thing or another. Even if it is true, the true-iest true thing ever, it is no more than a footnote. Christianity is not so. You can deny it, but you cannot deny its importance. It says something specific about the universe, and what it says is both terribly comforting and terribly disturbing.
Edit: That’s not all that unsual, either. C. S. Lewis once wrote about someone who had a possible divine experience and felt that “religion” was so shallow and fake next to it. Lewis agreed, but first, not everyone is given that experience, and second, religion is a guide and a map, and is a lot more useful if less fun and exciting than “experiences.”
[I had a big post to respond to previous questions, but honestly, the board ate it and I don’t care to rebuild the whole thing.]
Now I’m the one who doesn’t agree with an assessment. Why does it not lead anywhere? Josephus (apparently) claimed that Vespasian was the Messiah.
From here:
As to relative importance, I’d say the spread of Christianity and the demise of Paganism has led to Christianity being a dominant force in history. The spread of a religion has, IMO, more to do with it’s followers than it’s initial claims. Most religions seem to die out and it seems to me that those that do not have more than a charismatic founder as the source.
So why not trust Vespasian’s experience and follow whatever religion he had, since he purportedly could do miracles?
I can sympathize, that happens quite a bit more than I’d like with my own posts…
I’ve started replying to another’s line of questioning accidentally which helps with the questions you asked with me so I’m leaving them:
From a reasonable point of view, as you put it, absolutely nothing. Human wisdom alone is not enough to differentiate or prove any of them. A person ‘on the outside’ (meaning have not been taken by the hand by God and shown yet) has no way of finding out - though the person can be hopeful that such things are possible and can start down the road to God teaching them on faith.
My own take on it is it’s not more frequent back then. Scriptures clearly point to things seen by some people but not all - it is very common in scriptures and also today.
One way to understand this is some people have claimed that the Native Americans actually could not see the Spanish Ships that Columbus used because their minds could not understand such large vessels. It was only when the Spaniards boarded small landing rowboats that the Natives could see them as their minds could understand men in small water crafts. It is much the same way with the things of God, if God has taught you to see you will see, if not the miracles will go unperceived.
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I really don’t know who Vespasian is, but yes it’s acceptable to me.
As I understand it agnostic is assuming untrue unless more information comes to challenge it. I would say I am ‘un/agnostic’ with it, assuming true if it lines up with scriptures I know, but try only to use it only in the context that I believe I have been trained in.
The reason that I can accept it is the acts of God in scriptures are universal (God does not change), they happen throughout all peoples and through all faiths many times. It would be unreasonable to assume that it didn’t happen, so the default is it did.
I presupposed that God chose to teach me personally to use the scriptures (OT and NT), I don’t presuppose any religions, nor do I consider myself religious (so I have no religion to presuppose). It was just the tool He used with me, and I believe there are people trained by God to use Pagan, Native American, Wicca, Buddha, Islamic sacred writings and that is their area of expertise. Because theirs is not mine I use mine in interpreting and would expect them to use theirs.
As for a fake claim of a miracle, if it is in line from how I know God acts I can accept it because it happened. Now that doesn’t mean I will place faith in the teller of the story, but there is no reason to disbelieve God acts in the way He is known to act.
Counterfeit miracles do muddy the waters, but it seemed close to the fake miracles that I wanted to make sure you weren’t referring to them. The best example of a counterfeit miracles would be a very charismatic faith healer like we see on TV. In such cases, when a actual healing happens, it is not the faith healer, not the prominent or obvious person, but a humble person in the audience who’s heart goes out to the afflicted - and God hears that heart and heals. The prominent person gets the credit, and God who is working though his humble servant gets the shaft.
Yes if you held ‘religious’ views it would be the same as my first paragraph in this post. I’m not talking about religion, but training from God in a discipline that can be used across all faiths.
Had some extra time while the mods work to restore access. With claims in other faiths, there are people of God (discipled in those other faiths) who can fill in those details. It is much like perhaps a chemist deferring to a physicist in matters of physics when they meet personally. The chemist knows enough interdisciplinary skills to accept the physicist explanations because he sees enough of that person’s knowledge to place faith in him.
For a comparison for the purpose of understanding - a ‘strict chemist’, who believes that chemistry is the only way would automatically reject all physicist on that basis alone - this is the trap of religion. Beyond religion there is a interchange of ideals and faiths that can be learned when disciples trained in different faiths get together.
What about the deification of Emperors during the Roman Empire - or of Egyptian Pharaohs before them or Japanese Emperors in the modern period, or even North Korean dicators now. All have mythologies, theologies and miracles attributed to them. Does that make them important.
Frankly, the claims of Christianity are neither comforting or disturbing to me. I view them as just another mythology, no more significant than stories about Anasazi the Spider.
This seems to be what it always boils down to for believers. Personal revelation. The thing I always have to ask about this is how a believer in one revelation is able to explain revelations experienced by others which are equally as powerful and completely contradictory to the revelations of the first seer. The Angel Gabriel told Muhammed that Jesus was not God. What was different, or less legitimate about Muhammed’s revelation than any revelation had by Christians?