raindog, are you actually reading what tom is telling you? The writers of the Gospels were not eyewitnesses, save perhaps for the slimmest of possibilities in the case of John.
tomndebb said:
Once again, this is not supported in the biblical record.
1)The notion that the Jews, (Ok, Ok…“some” Jews…) including the Jewish leaders (Ok, Ok…“some” Jewish leaders…) wanted Jesus dead is well documented. It is even well documented that there were plots to kill him from “some” Jews long before the occasion of his death.
2)There is no corresponding biblical record to support that the Romans had a similar ax to grind with Jesus.
3)The issue before him was violation of religious laws, not secular Roman laws. There is no record that the Romans would have cared about that.
4) Read the Gospels! The Jews seized him, brought him to the Sanhedrin, convicted him in a mock trial and brought him to the Romans where they made a case for capital punishment. The record shows just how ambivalent Pilate was about the whole thing. Still, in the end the Romans executed him.
So in the end, both “some” Jews (Can you see how silly that is?) and the Romans share culpability for the death of Jesus. Yet you would have me believe that that fairly straight forward record is a lie; or simply a propaganda toll, or in some other way just not true?
I’m doing my best. Among the many things he has stated as fact, and to me look like a set of opinions and speculation, is that “fact.” It would offer me tremondous comfort if he could use the bible as a source! Further, I have seen nothing, even in the things he has cited, that would show me that the bible writers were wrong.
Really?
Matthew was not an eyewitness. The Gospel of Matthew was written by someone in the late 70s to early 90s who copied extensively from Mark and a separate source of sayings, adding some clearly non-historical stories of his own.
Luke was not an eyewitness. The Gospel of Luke was written by someone in the mid 70s to mid 80s who copied extensively from Mark and the same list of sayings that Author of Matthew used, adding some stuff that may have been related by Mary (if the legends are true) or may have been introduced from other places.
Mark was not an eyewitness. The Gospel of Mark was written in the mid 60s to to mid 70s by someone who does not even claim to have been an eyewitness (although later, unsubstantiated, tradition claimed that he wrote down the recollections of Peter) without having actually seen Jesus, himself.
With John we finally have an author who might, conceivably, have been an eyewitness. However, the coy phrasing in chapter 21 about the beloved disciple is very careful to not actually make the claim that the author was John the Apostle and there is a certain amount of evidence that suggests that he was not. If it was John, he was relying on 60+ year old memories of events.
Claims are made that Matthew the Apostle wrote a gospel, but the “sayings” that Papias attributes to Matthew are clearly not the same Gospel that we currently have.
The earliest attestation for the author of the Gospel of Luke (the Muratorian Canon in the late 2d century) expressly claims that Luke had never seen Jesus and the story that Luke got information from Mary is much more recent than that.
The strongest claim for Mark is that Eusebius (300 years after Jesus) quotes Papias (100 years after Jesus) as claiming that Mark wrote down the recollections of Peter (from memory, himself, several years after the death of Peter).
Your “eyewitness” claim is not supported by anything that we actually know about the evangelists.
The reason that I do not quote the Gospels (particularly on historical points) are that the statements in the Gospels for this discussion are pretty clearly in error, historically. Midnight trials on prohibited days to bring false charges should hae been mentioned clearly by the Gospel writers–to demonstrate the perfidy of the accusers of Jesus, if nothing else. The fact that most of the evangelists are gentiles who never saw Jesus and who were not familiar with Jewish law makes their testimony on these points less than valuable. (If, for example, John was actually John the Apostle, I’d have thought that the very illegality of the trial he portrays would have been of significant importance, bolstering the view that Jesus was totally innocent and that even the procedures were unjust.)
You absolutely have to be kidding.
tomndebb quote:
You have offered me nothing to disbelieve the accounts as written. While you are long on conjecture and opinion, you have given me nothing to accept the basic biblical premise that the Jews, or some Jews, were culpible in the death of Jesus. (In concert with the accomodating Romans)
That Jesus fell at the hands of the Jews, his own people, is clear in the biblical account. I asked you, as a matter of faith, to use the bible as the basic premise to discuss this. (lest we forget, the basic question was fairly straightforward: Who killed Jesus?)
I specifically asked you, in bold and more than once, to show me from the scripitures. You’ve not done this. You have given me more and more speculation and opinion with no biblical references to supprt your views. The other references you googled up do not offer any proof that the biblical account was inaccuarate. It’s just more speculation.
In the end, the disagreement is clear. I believe the account is trustworthy and accurate as written. You seem to believe that the bible accounts were wrong.
This impasse will not be bridged, so it’s best to call it a day.
raindog, if you are going to insist that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses and allow only the Gospels themselves as verifying document, the argument is pointless. I’m going to put it to you simply: the Bible is just one more document. An inspired one, but just one more document. If in the light of reason a different pile of documents leads me to a conclusion different from what is says in the Bible, then the Bible is wrong.
For the last time, raindog:
tom is saying that the Bible might be wrong in its account of Jesus’ trial, and so demanding that he support this contention using the Bible is absurd.
His non-biblical references such as the Mishna are primary historical sources, peerless in their veracity.
You are shifting the burden of proof and arguing from ignorance.
ummm…
My “Really?” was to your bald assertion that the scripture accounts are of eyewitnesses. Three of the evengelists were clearly not eyewitnesses. The fourth evangelist was most likely not an eyewitness. Claiming that they were eyewitnesses does nothing to support your position.
I do not doubt the theology of the Gospel accounts. I challenge their history.
You are free to accept all the Gospel accounts as literally true (despite their external and internal contradictions), but I reserve the right to point out to the audience at home that your claims that
are not supported by historical evidence and that the theologcal works on which you rely for history were never written as history.
JRDelirious said:
I’m not insisting anything really. The question is a simple one: Who killed Jesus?
As the bible writers were the closest to the event, and wrote as eyewitnesses, it is logical that the bible would be the place to start to answer that simple question. That the bible is “an inspired” document would not be insignificant to many believers.
In court, “the rules of best evidence”, would require that that the primary source be given preference if available. Well, we have the bible, and those writers wrote as eyewitnesses. I have been asked to believe that the primary source is just plain wrong. Further, I have been asked to believe this by posters who seem unwilling to use the bible at all in their argument. (Preferring Googe it would appear)
For me to accept that premise I would like something more than pure speculation. Read the explanations! For example, the notion that the Sanhedrin wouldn’t meet on that day doesn’t mean that they didn’t hastily convene a court for the purpose of convicting Jesus. There is nothing in that speculation to refute the biblical account. It is just speculation. If, OTOH, an eyewitness account were to say that they never convened, that’s another story.
Also, it is stated that the charges of blasphemy against Jesus were false, and so it is not likely that a trial ever took place. That is absurd! That his trial was a farce and a mockery of justice is patently obvious. Would any believer, regardless of whether justice came from the Jews or Romans (oops…“some” Jews…) accept that he was convicted correctly and that he desreved to die? C’mon.
The bible is a document, but for the purpose of determining the answer to the question of who killed Jesus it should be considered the primary document. I’ve been asked to essentially throw it out, for the purpose of ansering that fairly straightforward question, because it is unreliable. but all we’ve been given is second, third, fourth or worse speculation. I would need more than that to acceot that they were lying.
Can you direct us to any evidence which casts doubt on the contention that the Gospels were written several decades after Christ’s death?
You have stated that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts so many times that I am compelled to believe that you must have secret evidence that explains why none of the eyewitness accounts were published within the lifetime of any eyewitness. Could you assist biblical scholars by letting them know where the documents were in the 39 - 65 years that they remained unknown.
First off the High Priest served at the whim of the Procurator. Cite
Secondly the operations of the Sanhedrin, as we understand it, contradicts with the trial proceeding as mentioned in John 18-31 where the Sanhedrin claim no ability to try a capital crime. Cite
bolding is mine.
And here’s another indication that the Gospels are inconsistent not only with themselves but with further aspects of the Bible.
Again bolding is mine. Note that suddenly the Sanhedrin is allowed to kill people for various capital crimes that can be found in Mishnah 7.4.
St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:8 states that Jesus was killed by the “which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” This seems an expansive declaration if only the Jewish authorities were to be blamed.
So we have inconsistent accounts from the gospels, incorrect information in one that could potentially be from an eye witness and further inconsistencies between books of the New Testament. You can see why my views on the credibility of the Bible as a historical document are jaded.
I do not know. And it is certainly conceivable that the authors didn’t write down their accounts until a few decades after the fact. Is it then logical that, given a delay of 40+years, the bible writers would have assigned complicity to the ( doggonit…“some Jews”) Jews that they hadn’t earned?
The OP dealt with whether the Jews were responsible (in concert with the Romans or not) for Jesus’s death. How would the time delay before the accounts were written change the answer to that question? And, if the delay changes the truth what is your non-googled up reasons for believing this?
You know if you just wrote “complicity to Jews and Romans” that would save you having to type “the” all the time. It also has the benefit of being more accurate.
It is in fact very inconceivable, given life expectancy at the time, that anyone who was not a child was still around “a few decades after the fact”. To ascribe eyewitness testimonie to those accounts requires an explanation for why they were unpublished.
An alternate theory would be that they are not eyewitness accounts, they are in fact fabrications written some time later for a distinctly Gentile readership and are therefore suspect in their historicity. No histrorical evaluation of any account of an event, has any merit without considering the purpose for which it is published. Look at accounts of the Little Big Horn or any of a number of events for reference.
Unbelievable. Rather than answering the question we’re saying that he couldn’t have written it down because he would be dead?
An alternate theory, is just that. You offer me nothing credible to believe that that isn’t more pure speculation.
The question is this:
Does the bible record, and secular history, support the contention that the Jews were complicit in the murder of Jesus?
It’s a simple question.
Who was responsible for the death of Jesus?
This will be my last post here at SDMB. I’ve had deep reservations for the last several days anyway. I’m sure I won’t be missed.
Jesus wasn’t killed by the Swiss. (oops “some” Swiss) He was a Jew, living in the heart of Judaism. That the primary beef against him came from the Jews (“some” Jews for some of us…) based on religious differnces is well documented. That there were plots to have him killed by "some " Jews years before his actual murder are well documented also. It’s also clear that the Jews were living under Roman occupation.(I guess here I can use the term “the Jews”, right?..Actually I can’t…Because maybe “some Jews” were living abroad and not under Roman occupation…) There is NOTHING (read:NOTHING) in non-biblical historical accounts that would render the execution of Jesus a result of the Romans going off half-cocked for religious reasons they cared little about and without a shred of Jewish involvement. There’s nothing in the bible record to show that the Romans were all fired up about Jesus or his ministry. In fact, Herod was tickled to death to see Jesus as he was quite curious about him and wanted him to perform supernatural acts. Herod himself didn’t condemn him to death. In every non-biblical account that I’ve ever read, I have never, not once, read that the Jews were not in some measure complicit in Jesus’s death, or that this was strictly a Roman excercise.
You can argue all day long as to what level of support the execution of Jesus had among the Jews. It’s clear that he had both supporters and detractors. You can also argue all day long that not all members of the Sanhedrin supported his conviction. (Unless you of course argue it never happened) And maybe it makes us all feel better to say “some” Jews so as to not offend our Jewish friends. Maybe it makes all feel even better to say that none of the Jews, forget about “some” Jews, had anything to do with Jesus’s death. You can argue all day long that the Sanhedrin was simply a mouthpiece for the Romans, and because of that fact that the Jews could not be complicit as they were under duress. That requires that you not only accept that the members were not capable of some level of autonomy (or resistance!) , but that many other parts of the Gospels that chronicle the tension between the Jewish leaders and Jesus are not pertinent. If we accept that premise I would suggest getting a pencil sharpener because you will be redlining much more of the Gospels. But that flies in the face of much of the Gospels and much of secular history. The tension between Jesus and the Scribes/Pharisees is well documented. That they wanted him dead is well documented. That the Jewish religious establishment existed well before Roman occupation and that the Romans were tolerant of Jewish laws and traditions is well documented. In short, that the record that the Jews were complicit in Jesus’s death is overwhelming, both from a secular and biblical POV. If it makes you feel better to think that they were simply acting as pawns, and had no interest in seeing Jesus die, have at it. But that is in direct conflict with much of the Gospels and secular history.
This thread is absurd!
tomndebb said:
My claim is that the Jews and the Romans were jointly responsible for the death of Jesus. That you would contend that there isn’t credible evidence to support that, and I’ll quote you again, “are not supported by historical evidence” is simply absurd.
We’re pounding square PC pegs into round biblical/secular holes. I’m taking my jacks and going home.
raindog, I apologise for my tone; I did not wish to alienate you.
My objection was merely to your contention that the Gospels were eyewitness accounts, not to your claim that Romans and Jews were responsible for Christ’s death (who I believe effectively commited suicide).