In reincarnation supported by the Bible?

Great Debates
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In fact, in general, your own source accepts the authorship of Luke, even! :dubious:

However, I agree- your cite is “spurious” and is “no longer taken seriously by the mainstream” :dubious:
[/QUOTE]

What are the CV’s of your precious Oxford scholars? What are their areas of expertise? What are their formal arguments for traditional authorship?

ALL arguments for traditional authorship are based on 2nd century patristic tradition. Religious traditionalists accept these traditions at face value (except perhaps for Matthew which is impossible to defend even for conservatives). Mainstream NT scholarship has concluded that the patristics do not hold up to analysis and cannot be taken as serious evidence for those authorship ascriptions. I can’t comment on the particular staff of scholars you keep referencing without seeing their CV’s and their specific arguments. Bible translations tend to be sponsored by churches, not by groups of critical scholars. I’m betting that most of those involved in your Oxford book are employed as translators and theological exegetes, not as historians or for expertise in other critical disciplines.

Did you read the whole thing? How about this?

The piece also mentions some of the other elements which undermine the tradition that the author of Mark was a confidant of Peter (such as Mark’s mistakes about Palestinian geography). I can also name several other reason why traditional authorship is not tenable but I don’t want to hijack this thread anymore.
On a personal note, DrDeth, I’d like to say that despite our vociferous disagreements, I always enjoy these exchanges and appreciate the work you put into them. You keep me on my toes. I just want to let you know that I bear no ill feeling or resentment about our disputes. Engaging in heated debates with people who couldn’t disagree more with what I have to say is one of the things that’s always drawn me to this board.

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I have posted them before, and once I get home, I can post more. Several of Kysar’s strongest arguments are “blown out of the water” by the fact that Oxford (and even the Catholic enclopedia to an extent) accepts the nigh certainty of a redactor, or even several later editors. Which is why neither I (nor Oxford) claim John is the author per se of that Gospel, but rather it’s source, or rather that John dictated it to his disciples (perhaps over years, and perhaps while John was somewhat senile, even. He was around 90!). There is no doubt at all that the Gospel comes from John’s disciples. I personally do not doubt that much of that Gospel comes from John, albeit not all.

Sure- more or less. But that tradition can be right too, of course.

Indeed, it does cast *some doubt * upon Marks authorship. But in general, iyour source seems to accept it- as the best hypothesis. And, Mark is possibly an eyewitness to some parts of Jesus’s life. (I have some doubts, myself)

Yes, DtC, I enjoy these exchanges also. You are clearly intelligent and well educated. Your problem lies mainly in stating as an absolute FACT something which is highly debatable and debated. You only see in Black or White, not even gray. If you had even said “Many experts doubt that any of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses”- I would have let it pass. But there is no doubt that you know what you are talking about- just how you say it! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Just as a note on sources, the problem with using the Catholic Encyclopedia as a source is that it’s 95 years old, so it’s not going to be up to date on some of its sources…:slight_smile:

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Cosmosdan

A few points on the debate thus far

  1. It looks like to me that your actual beliefs aren’t Christian in any real sense of the word at all. It looks like that your beliefs are really from the new-age movement that you express in Christian terms. While the term “Christian” is fairly broad, re-incarnatnation and karma are traditionally excluded from being called Christian

  2. It seems that you get a lot of your quotes about the Spirit and such from John’s gospel. Even a cursory reading of John’s gospel (or the others for that matter) would show that your message is not what Jesus is recorded to have taught. Jesus in several places quite clearly says that only those who accept the Son are the children of God (and by implication have hos Spirit), and those who do not accept the Son do not.
    It seems that what you are doing has little to do with objectively studying the bible and what it says. It appears what you are doing is just picking passages that you agree with and ignoring the rest. I pointed out to you how the passages that you quote don’t support your conclusions, yet your response seems to be one of just claiming that you are right regardless. And you are free to do that if you want but it hardly seems like a logical or well thought out thing to do. All you are really doing is just creating God in your own image.

  3. I think that your ideas of people being lead by the Spirit to truth is contrary to all Christian tradition, and is in of itself illogical. If people were being lead by the spirit you would expect large groups of people being lead to mutually compatable points. This is not the case. People who claim to follow their own logic as you end up in a range of mutually incompatable places. So much so that it can only be concluded that if you are following a spirit that it is not a spirit of truth and unity, but one of lies and confusion.

  4. The bible consistently presents God as the creator and sustainer of the world, and therefore is deserving of worship by his creation. The bible also consistently argues that not worshipping God is a grevious sin. I don’t know how you can argue that there are some non-Christians have God’s Spirit when they refuse to worship him. Your whole premise of there being “good” people who don’t worship God. The bible consistently says that only the fools and the wicked people refuse to worship God.

Just to weigh in some more on the whole concept of biblical scholarship

  1. Historically the Liberal position (ie: the one DtC advocates) is anything but mainstream. Many of the positions rejected by Liberals were held as true for the first 1900 years of Christian history. While Liberals love to paint those that disagree with them as religous nutbags, it is worth remembering that it is the Liberal side that is the reactionary side, and that if any claims were to be made of fitting truth to ideology, then it should logically go to them.

  2. That while DtC claims that it is the conservatives that ignore evidence, in many ways it is the other way around. The historical record is clearly on the side of the conservative. Nearly all of the accounts of biblical history that we have from antiquity are one the side of the conservatives, or taken as a whole are inconclusive. One of the things that is remarkable about many of the Liberal beliefs about scripture is that as best we can tell they are the only ones in all history who believe them. Liberals in many cases are not siding with monority opinions from history, they are actually making their own opinions that no-one in history apart from they thenselves have believed.
    This is interesting as it reveals I think a fundamental arrogance in Liberal scholarship. It also goes against the fundamental principle of history that someone writing closer in time to an event to you probably knows more about it. In this regard it is the Liberals, not the conservatives, who are the enemies of history.

  3. Much of the “evidence” that is presented by Liberals in support of their arguments is really just speculations based on literary analysis of texts. In many cases they are not bringing anything new into the discussion, or bringing in anything that wasn’t already known. So the Liberal position on the biblie is not based really on modern archeology that has revealed a lot of new information that was not available to previous generations.

  4. The division of scholarship into “Liberal” and “Conservative” itself is pretty dubious. As much as Liberals love to categorise scholarship into the rigourous “mainstream” and the “lunatic religious fringe”, this simply does not fit where many are at. While there are significant numbers of people at both ends there is also an extensive middle ground as well. Theology is not just two positions, but a spectrum of thought.

Joey Jo Jo.

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The *on-line version * is copyrighted 2003, and “updated 6 Oct 2005”.
It’s actually a damn good source. For example on the dating of Christmas, it even accepts- as the best hypothesis- that Dec 25 (of various calculated dates, mind you. Dec 25th was sincerely- and likely incorrectly- calculated by several early Church fathers) was selected from a choice of several possible dates as it would come near the date of the Solstice and the holidays related unto that date.
It shows suprisingly little bias and quite a bit of very good scholarship. It’s a good cite, IMHO.

Note that it also shows quite a few of the arguments about the authors of the Gospels.

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Right. The online version is copyrighted 2003 and “updated 6 Oct 2005”, but it’s a transcription of the book version that’s dated 1913. The 2003 was when the people at the New Advent site started copying it online. The 2005 update was to the “List of Popes” to add Benedict. Which is why you get articles like this:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02121b.htm

And why, under the article “Pope Pius X”, it can say:

The Catholic encylopedia is a good source. It’s just not a very modern or up to date one, and it can generally give a good description of theological matters at the time it was written…just not neccesarily now.

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Yes, but the Bible also tells us of the birth of John the Baptist. Even if Elijah was caught up into heaven and never experienced physical death in his previous body, that doesn’t make it impossible for his spirit to reincarnate as John. The Bible aslo says that Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. If Elijah was taken withoout the ynpleasent experience of physical death, it’s likely he still gave up his physical body to dwell in a spiritual realm.

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Some more thoughts on what the bible reveals about JtB:

  1. John himself never actually says that he is Elijah. Jesus is the only one that makes that connection. In fact in John’s gospel JtB flat out says that he is NOT Elijah in John 1:21. So if JtB is the re-incarnated Elijah, he must be so without his knowledge, which kind of makes you wonder what the point is.

  2. JtB does say in John’s gospel, (and in others) that he is the one to come before (in John 1:23 and John 3:28). This fits in with the figurative understanding of Elijah from Malachi, as the role of Elijah in Malachi is to come before the great day of the Lord.

  3. The references around Elijah all seem to point to a resurrection or re-appearance of Elijah was expected, not a re-incarnation. Another example is in the crucifixion accounts. When Jesus cries out those around him say that he is calling out for Elijah. Since JtB was dead at this point they obviously didn’t expect him to show up. And an on the spot re-incarnation wouldn’t do much good because Jesus would be long dead before we was no longer an infant. It seems that the people expected Elijah just to appear, which would mean that he would either come back from heaven where he went up, or that he would rise from the dead. This also fits into Lukes account where the assumption is that if Jesus was one of the prophets, he would have been raised from the dead, not re-incarnated.

  4. The point about flesh and blood is not that in God’s kingdom we won’t have bodies. The point is that the current body != our resurrection body. The quote comes from 1 Corinthians 15:50 and is said in the context of the question in verse 35 as to what the resurrection body will be like. To understand what Paul means, look at the full section

What is being discussed here is not the taking off of the body to eneter heaven. What is being discussed is the transformation of the body from perishable to imperishable. If anything this contradicts your argument as if Elijah had already entered heaven he would have put on his resurrrection body. Why then would he want to be re-incarnated back into an earthly one?

Joey Jo Jo

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If you’re interested, you may want to look up, “transmigration” (of souls), which is mentioned in Oxford’s Annotated Bible. (I’m not saying that it’s in the Companion, I’m just suggesting a lead.) See my prev post #45.

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Just to throw this into the mix.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed, (c) 2001, states, “Who wrote this Gospel? Tradition says it was the apostle John. Scholarly opinion has long held that it was composed by a disciple of John who recorded his preaching.” The work also dates the final editing of John to 80-90 C.E. Some of the source material may date to before 70 CE, since its descriptions are apparently consistent with recent archeological finds (re: The Temple). A “longer period of theological gestation and symbolic development” is observed within the text by most scholars.

I’m curious about whether DtC believes that this is an accurate depiction of scholarly consensus.

I’m gathering that John’s disciple didn’t live to see the final “editing” completed, but that’s just my impression. (A little math shows that I may be mistaken: if John was 20 in CE 30, that would make him 70-80 in CE 80-90. Life expectancy at age 20 was about 55 in Roman Times: cite. If John’s disciple was 20 years younger, that would have had him born in CE 30 and living until CE 85 on average. If John survived to age 45, his life expectancy would shift up to about 65, with a death in CE 75.)

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The consensus date is more like 100 CE and perhaps as late as 120 CE in its final form.

GJohn is believed to have been composed in multiple layers. Most think the core is what is referred to as a “Signs Gospel” (basically a series of seven miracle stories). There are some long discourses wrapped around this and (this is where the possibility of genuine apostolic tradition comes in), a passion (probably derived from post Marcan oral tradition) and a few anecdotal fragments which may have come from very early oral tradition. There is also an appendix which was added after the body of the text was finished.

So the belief is that even if some authentic anecdotal material survives from an apostle, it is embedded under several other layers of composition (which would include the miracle stories).

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That question makes no sense at all. The passage can indee dbe interpreted as describing the transformation of the body from perishable to imperishable. However the passage also says that Jesus was in heaven, and thus had an imperishable body, and that he came to Erath in an earthly one after that.

Quite simply, if we interpret the passage the way you do then we also need to acknowledge that it says that people have incranated into earthly bodies after having incorrupitble spiritual bodies in heaven. If Jesus could undergo such an incarnation for the greater good then certainly Elijah could manage the same trick.

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Legends say that John lived to be about 90.

The Oxford Companion sez: “None of the proposed restorations takes the problem seriously or resolves it adequately. A third (and more plausible) explanation…” They then go on to describe a 3 stage composition- 1. John the Apostle transmits orally to his followers… 2. John & his disciples move to Ephesus, disciples “commit to writing” what John said. 3. After the death of John there is a final edited version. They explain and deduce these stages with a very long paragraph for each, each backed up. Then “if some such process was involved in the making of Johns Gospel, it explains many of the features of it’s composition already discussed.”

And, what you posted there seems to be the VERY short version of what the Companion says.

In the first two pages of contributors (that’s a little less than half), I counted no less than 8 Professors of History- and the Archbishop of Canterbury, no less!

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No, it doesn’t. You seem to assuming that we exist in some pre-incarnate state in heaven in which we have a resurrection body, then we are incarnated into a physical body, and then after we die we go back to a resurrection body. I don’t think that we exist in any form of pre-incarnate state. In fact the passage speaks against that as it states that it is the natural (incarnate physical body) that is first, and then following that the spiritual (post incarnate resurrection body)

The only difficult question is what was Jesus pre-incarnation. John’s gospel is clear that Jesus (or the Word) existed in a pre-incarnate state before becoming man. All John describes it as is “the Word became flesh” without going into specifics. As best I can tell the bible doesn’t really describe what Jesus was like in his pre-incarnate state, so it remains as a mystery. I think though that the point of the incarnation is that Jesus takes on flesh, rathar than changing flesh. It therefore seems unlikely that Jesus in his pre-incarnate state had a resurrection body. There is a definite sense in the bible that Jesus post-resurrection is not the same as Jesus pre-incarnation.

Joey Jo Jo.

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No, I make no such assumption. I simply read the passage as written.

If we follow your ‘logic’ then Jesus must have had a physical body in heaven, since he couldn’t have a had a spiritual body before he gained a natural body on Earth. Is this what you are claiming, that Jesus prior to incarnation had existed as a physical body?

If that is not what you are claiming then quite clearly we can not read natural precedes physical as an absolute.

First off you are now arguing aginst your own position.

If Elijah or Jesus was already in heaven and had put on a resurrrection body why then would they want to be incarnated into an earthly one? You seem to have tied yourself in knots. Either a being with a resurrection body is willing and able to be incarnated into an earthly one, or they are not. You can’t logically adopt the position that it is plausible for Jesus but not for Elijah without a shred of evidence. That’s just special case pleading and it invalidates your entire position.
Secondly you just said that the natural body must always precede the physcial body. Yet now you seem to want to claim that Jesus had a spiritual body before he had a natural body. You can’t have it both ways, does the natural always precede the spiritual, or can some entities like Jesus have a spiritual that precedes the natural? Or are you attempting to argue that the ressurection body is on fact anatural body?

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OK, the reason that I assert that humans move from a physical body to a resurrection body and that they do not enter heaven as disembodied spirits is because that is what the bible says. In biblical terms people enter heaven with a resurrection body. The option of entering as purely spirits is not given. Therefore I agree that it is not so much that it is a priori impossible for any spiritual being to be in heaven. What I am arguing is that the bible gives a natural progression from birth to death to resurrection that excludes any idea of re-incarnation.

In terms of what Jesus was in his pre-incarnate state I cannot say with any certainty because the bible doesn’t say. To be honest I can’t tell you the exact nature of God the Father either for the same reason. All I can say is what the bible says. which is that when he was incarnate Jesus had a physical body, and that when he was resurrected he had a resurrection body. Jesus may have been entirely “Spiritual” (whatever that means) in his pre-incarnate state. I don’t kjnow the bible doesn’t really say with any certainty.

This does not go against the original argument that death is universally represented in the bible as being followed by resurrection, (either to condemnation or eternal life) with exacly zero references to anything that would support re-incarnation. You can try and cram re-incarnatnion in there, but it simply doesn’t fit.

Joey Jo Jo.

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[QUOTE=Joey Jo Jo]
Cosmosdan

A few points on the debate thus far

That’s correct. I am not nor do I claim to be a Christian in any traditional sense of the word. I am a spiritual seeker who reveres the teachings of Christ more than the traditional teachings of man. In fact although I understand and in some cases respect tradition, when people cling to traditon over truth I think they are not following what Christ taught. I don’t care about labels. Christian, Wiccan, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Atheist Agnostic. They don’t say much about the quality of the person or their priorities. The Bible says seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened. James 1: 5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Can I trust this promise? To me it means that God who discerns the true hearts of all people will commune with any who sincerely seeks, no matter the label.

really? I notice you have chosen to ignore the other scriptures I mentioned and asked you about. Show me the scriptures that say only those who accept Christ as savior are the children of God and only they have the Holy Spirit, and I’ll show you other scriptures that indicate that is not true and your interpretation is incorrect.

Are you cognizant of the fact that you are doing exactly what you accuse me of?
Honestly, the fact that I don’t find your arguements convincing or compelling doesn’t lead to the conclusion that I am illogical or simply ignoreing the obvious truth. I understand your literary representative arguement and how names are not always literal. My point is that your arguements are not** proof**. They may indicate that your conclusions are one reasonable possiblity but they do not mean that there are no other reasonble conclusions. I hope you are getting my point here.

Actually I didn’t say following my own logic did I? I said I believed in following the guidance of the Holy Spirit which is exactly what Jesus instructed isn’t it? PLease honestly examine your own logic here. Christianity doesn’t agree with itself. There are various doctrines, beliefs and theories, some mutually incompatible, all under the umbrella of Christianity. Does that mean Christianity should be cast off as irrelevent? Who of all the Christians that disagree are actually following the Holy Spirit? Only the ones that agree with you evidently. Even Paul recognized that we only know part of what there is to know. “Now I see as through a dark glass. Now I know in part” The truth is that many people who sincerely worship God and seek the truth will not agree on everything because we are still on the path to understanding and like apostle Paul, we only see in part. It is wisdom and humility to realize the limits of our knowledge and understanding.

The Bible consistantly says that the sincereity of our worship is revealed in our actions not merely with our words. Wouldn’t you agree? I already asked you and you failed to answer. How would you explain the people who exhibit what Jesus called the fruits of the Spirit, and yet do not believe as you do? Isn’t God the well from which all love is drawn? When God looks into the hearts of people to discern their true intent do you suppose it matters to God whether they call him, Lord, Jehovah, Yaweh, Allah, Great Spirit, or simply Love? What I’m saying that an act of sincere Love,* is* worshiping God and the scriptures back me up.

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Well, yes. It’s from a 2 page introduction to the Book of John. Six paragraphs in total. I don’t want to imply that the author of the introduction was providing a precis of the Companion though.

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[QUOTE=cosmosdan]

To be honest I am getting tired of this debate because it is becoming increasingly clear that you don’t seem to care of your position is consistent or not. Since you believe that scripture is fundamentally inconsistent then there is no way that I can demonstrate to you that your position does not fit with what the bible says, since you can just say that any inconsistency with the bible and you is because of the bible’s inconsistency, not your misunderstanding.

For what it is worth I think that your position is fundamentally strange in that you believe in things that are at best not directly taught by the bible or Jesus (such as re-incarnation), your beliefs are much more new-age than Christian, yet you insist on holding onto the bible as some sort of guide. Ultimately though since you shy away from saying that all of the bible is the word of God you end up just picking buts and pieces that you like, and then try to justify it by claiming to be following Jesus. You are free to do what you want, but if you are just going to follow your own ideas of spirituality you should at least have the courage to admit that rather than hiding behind Jesus.

In terms of people woeshipping God without following Jesus, well Jesus as he is recorded in the bible would disagree with you. A read though the gospel of John alone provides these passages which talk about people having faith in Jesus being justified, and those that do not are not.

And all of that is just from one of the gospels. The other gospels and the epistles contain much more. Explain it away if you want, but the Jesus of the bible CLEARLY expected his followers to worship him, and that he was the only way to having relationship with God.

Which leads me into the point about the spirit and being justified by works or by faith. I know most of the “saved by works” passages that you would quote. The logic behind these is best summed up in John 6:29, that the work of God is to believe in the one that he has sent. The assumption behind these passages is that everyone who has faith in Christ has done good, and all those that have not had faith in Christ have done bad.

I simply don’t know how you can say that it is OK to follow your own path and not acknowledge God (ie: Jesus) when Jesus himself says that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your being. The idea that there are many paths to salvation and that different religions represent different paths is NOT an idea found in the bible anywhere. In fact hugh chunks of the OT is devoted to God telling off the Israelites for following other Gods and not him. He even goes so far as to call the nation of Israel a whore in Hosea and in Ezekiel. The logic behind this is that it is God who created the world and it was God who was sustaining their lives. For them to then go off and worship other Gods that not only gave them nothing but that weren’t even real is incredibly insulting to God. And he calls them out on it.

And in terms of the original discussion about re-incarnation, I understand that sometimes passages have more than one logical interpretation. My point is that JtB is literally Elijah re-incarnated is NOT a reasonable interpretation of the passage. Given the context the figurative name hypothesis is far more likely, and failing that the JtB was Elijah returned from heaven seems much more likely. Sure, the passage doesn’t say explicitly that Elijah wasn’t re-incarnated into JtB, but there is exactly zero evidence in the text itself or in the wider bible that re-incarnation is how we are to understand that passage. You could just as reasonably argue that aliens implanted DNA from Elijah into Elizabeth creating a clone of Elijah that was JtB. That makes absolutely as much sense as JtB being the re-incarnated Elijah.

Joey Jo Jo

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Let’s be clear. Karam does** not ** teach that you don’t help people because they deserve what they are getting. I have no idea why you think Karma is more harmful to the poor and uneducated. I can’t make any sense of that. The wheel of nature in reincarnation isn’t much different than the old saying, “What goes around comes around”

A report card is not how I meant it. It is more the consequences of our own choices. Honestly, I am unsure how Jesus fits in. I have a suspicion that Christianity doesn’t quite get Jesus either. The problem is too many really think they do. I am content that in seeking to understand love and truth I will come to understand Christ as well.

A fair assessment

Rest assured that it is a subject I seek to understand. A good example is a vast understatement. Jesus altered the spiritual plateau of the world and has touched the lives of millions to move them toward spiritual growth. What I don’t believe is that the physical death of Christ was somehow a bloody atonement for the sins of all mankind, in a similar way to how the Jews used to treat goats. It’s the spiritual nature of the event that matters more than the physical.