Is it? Then why do the four gospels so strongly contradict each other? Why does only one even mention Jesus being born in Bethlehem, or touching upon specific acts He would need to in order to match the Messiah prophecies?
Demonstrate how a person manipulating a story to their own purposes is even more impossible than people predicting events a thousand years in the future.
Why? Firstly, this comes from a time where there was no easy communication and no media. Writing a story and spreading it around as if it were true when it is nearly if not literally impossible for other people to verify (and in fact, most people are not even educated enough to be able to read) would have been pretty simple. In fact, it happened all the time. That’s how myths and religions spread back then. Almost everything immediately after Jesus died that spread to the general population was word of mouth.
Secondly, they would hardly be playing along with a lie if they didn’t know it was a lie, because their education/world experience of the time did not give them the tools to make those conclusions. Were people who believed in werewolves or that the earth was flat merely playing along with a lie? Were the superstitious merely playing along with those lies, or did they genuinely believe those things because they didn’t have the resources or education to question them?
It’s NOT hidden from history. Again, we KNOW certain things did not happen, despite the gospels and the bible claiming they did.
Why do you think none of them ever question those things? On what are you basing that?
Again, which Jews? When? Where?
And why does the fact that Jesus may have existed as a man and may have been killed by Romans lend any truth to the rest of the tale?
I’m not claiming he didn’t live, I’m claiming that if He lived, that alone does not substantiate proof that the stories, all the stories, about Him in the bible are unquantifiable, inarguable fact.
Regardless, the burden of prove is not on me to disprove anything. The one making the claim of existence is always burdened with proving said existence. It is never on anyone else to prove a negative, which cannot be proven.
And I never said that was an impossibility. I never denied that He lived or might have lived and was crucified. What I said was that didn’t ipso facto provide proof of the rest of it.
I notice you didn’t cite me a single contemporary written witness account for either of my two requests, despite claiming them numerous. Would you please do so? Merely stating ‘secular scholars agree’ does not proof make.
And I accept that may or may not be so, however you have not yet provided anything to back up this claim, nor explained how – if this is true- it provides any kind of proof the rest of it is true as well.
Yes, we know (and I’ll ignore the fact that there is no evidence Jesus Himself ever made such a claim at all) However, you are here making the matter-of-fact statement that He is who YOU are claiming Him to be, and stating unequivocally that anyone would come to the same conclusion based on obvious and blatant facts and proofs. None of which you have actually provided, and all of which is your burden to provide if you want your statements to be taken seriously and the same conclusion to be reached.
That Jesus was a historical figure doesn’t bother me. His moral teachings were excellent, and I expect that if drank beer, he’d be an excellent person to have one with.
But I’m not convinced that he ever claimed to be the miraculously-conceived child of the lord of hosts or to have superpowers, and I certainly don’t believe he died and rose again. And this position is not born out of ignorance of what the Bible claims. I was raised as a Pentecostalist Christian and was required to study the Bible intensively, though not with a critical eye. Reading the Bible with a critical eye – that is, without the preconception going in that every word of it is literally true – is quickly destructive to faith in its literal truth. Which is almost too bad. A world in which Jesus (a) actually claimed to be the figure Biblical literalists say he claimed to be and (b) was right would not be a bad world.
But then, a world in whch Jor-El and Lara sent their only son rocketing away from the doomed planet Krypton, and he landed on Earth to become a beacon of hope, paradigm of virtue, and history’s greatest hero would be nice too.
We have a contextual problem here … Paul had presented the mystery of grafting a branch of a wild olive onto the trunk of a domesticated olive … so here we have the letter to the Church in Rome beseeching them to be more accepting of the Gentiles, or the pagan worshipers. Paul is just comparing the situation in Rome to the one in Jerusalem …
Which, again, is not what the Messiah is supposed to be anyway. Some OT passages call him “Son of God,” but that’s just a title the kings of Israel and Judah used, it only means “chosen of God” or “favored of God.” The Messiah would be a man with a human father – and not, himself, anything to worship or pray to.
I’ll post it here" All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made"
God made everything, including the bible, but because God made everything you should not place one work of creation over another, as you also are a work of creation and by the standard you judge you will be judged.
Everything is divinely inspired and for God’s reason and purpose and to His Glory. In that ultimately our learning.
You find that the prophecies are fulfilled accurately in this one work of God. I find the repeating patterns that God wants us to see, for us to finally recognize them, so what you see as a fulfillment, I see as things that have been, are now and will come, nothing new under the sun as King Solomon put it. Those who God has allowed to see the patterns can easily predict the future because it has happened many times, is happening now and will happen again.
If you doubt this look at the plagues in Egypt compare it to the plagues in Revelation, they are basically the same though the order is a bit mixed up, even the mark of the beast mentioned in both, though only revealed as such in Rev, but the mark itself is clear as described in Exodus. But for that mix up look at the 3 versions of the 10 commandments, or the 3 written accounts of Jesus visiting Saul/Paul - they are not exact, nor do they need to be, but they are the same, as God is Spirit but not legalistic nor bound to our definitions.
The fact there are over 35,000 different branches of Christianity on the face of the planet and none of them agree on what exactly the bible says, I don’t think it’s anywhere near that simple. You can claim this is because most people do NOT read the bible, but to make the suggestion that over 35,000 founders and powers of that many churches and branches of a religion all just only read sections of the bible and that’s why they don’t agree is really rather reaching.
And how did you come to that conclusion? What is ‘a lot’?
Well, firstly, we have extensive records of the region and the Roman Empire of the time and literally none mention what would have been the equivalent of everyone in the US suddenly packing up and travelling the world just in order to be taxed and censused. We have records of Herod’s rule and when he lived and what he did, and none coincide with what’s stated in the Bible as having happened during Jesus’ life, including the slaughter of the boy children. The fact that this is not only an illogical and logistical impossibility is one thing- the idea that literally NO ONE in those governments or those varying populaces recorded it happening outside of stories in the bible and literally NO EVIDENCE of such mass travel/murdering slaughter has been found archaeologically yet somehow it did happen is even more impossible.
That literally no records outside the bible exist of huge cataclysmic events such as three days of worldwide darkness, massive earthquakes, or dead people rising and walking through the streets talking to others, across hundreds if not thousands of civilizations worldwide, says it either didn’t happen, or for some inexplicable reason the entire world took no notice.
We also DO know that the earlier versions of the Gospels and the earlier sources of Jesus’s life not only contradict one another, but have been changed extensively. We can actually compare them. We DO have records of Herod that showed the dates are all wrong for him to be where he was claimed to be and do what he was claimed to do in the bible, AND that the slaughter of the boy children never happened.
Just saying ‘wrong again’ and ‘read post #120’ is not actually an argument. Your cite that secular humanists may or may not agree that Jesus existed as a real man again still doesn’t provide any sort of proof the REST of what is claimed about Jesus is true.
It also doesn’t provide any proof, just as I stated, that your conclusions and claims are the correct ones.
Where? In what scripture does Jesus flat out say “I am the Son of God?” I’ll wait.
Then how come the oldest versions of the gospels we have don’t match the gospels we have in the new versions you can pick up at the bookstore today?
How come there are over 2000 versions of the gospels and the bibles in existence today? Are they all identical?
So prove it. I’ll wait.
1- The Dead Sea Scrolls don’t contain the Gospels. They predate the gospels.
2- There are books that used to be in the bible and aren’t any more. There are books that were kept out of the bible that are now there. How is this not a change?
3- Saying it again because it’s so important- the Dead Sea Scrolls have nothing to do with the Gospels.
That, and the fact that the gospels literally contradict each other in numerous places, and the writings of Paul (and those attributed to Paul) does its best to contradict the Gospels says a lot.
Matt 16:15-17
15 He said to them, “And who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 **And Jesus answered him, “You are blessed, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven!” **