Nobody Dies for a Lie

[Sparko]

The point, Sparko, is that we do not KNOW what Jesus said about himself. What we know is what the mid-late 1st century Christian community believed Jesus said about himself. I find it far more likely that the authors placed in the mouth of Jesus the theology that had evolved over a period of 40+ years than that they accurately wrote down, 40+ years later, the actual words of Jesus.

more conjecture based on nothing but your imagination.

Actually, not "without any evidence." My evidence is the extensive passage of time before writing, the extensive distribution of the communities, the evidence in the historical sequence of an evolving theology, modern science about the function of human memory, best practices from the historical community, widespread debunking of so-called "miracles," and the list goes on.

So you can call it "evidence you do not accept," but the claim that it is "no evidence" is simply false. It is evidence I find compelling, and you do not. That much appears to be true.

That isn't evidence Carpe, that is conjecture and rationalization. sigh.

[Cow Poke]

Joseph Smith could have gone back to his old life, but he was killed in a jail cell.

Joseph Smith was killed by a mob consisting largely of his disgruntled former followers because he cheated them out of wives and fortunes.

[carpedm9587]

more conjecture based on nothing but your imagination.

You guys do love your condescending emojis...

So, what I have provided is actually based on historical fact. The dating of the various books of the NT is well documented. The dating of Jesus death is fairly well documented. The life expectancy of the people of that era has been explored. It is a widely accepted fact that Jesus did not write any of the stories in the bible. So what we have is the writings of people who wrote 35+ years after the events (for the gospels) and 20+ years (for the Epistles). So there is nothing about what I said that is "speculation" except the observation that I consider it unlikely, given all of those historical realities, that the words and deeds attributed to Jesus have been accurately recorded, and far more likely that the developing community projected its developing theology into the mouth of Jesus.

So my conclusion is indeed a statement of what I believe most likely (so it could be called "speculation"), but it is based on the historical evidence.

That isn't evidence Carpe, that is conjecture and rationalization. sigh.

You apparently work with a different definition of "evidence" than I do. All of the things listed are well documented and widely accepted. How you can dismiss them as "evidence" is beyond me. Based on our previous discussions, and these comments, I think your definition of "evidence" is perhaps not a conventional one.

[Roy]

You call my question a strawman, yet ironically, both Dimbulb and carpe have argued in its favor.

That just means it's an ineffective strawman.

And I ask again, are you genuinely ignorant of early Christian history and are seeking enlightenment, or are you tossing out an ignorant rhetorical question and don't give a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys about the answer? Because if it's the latter, I'm not wasting my time.

I'm asking because your claim appears to be a pile of indefensible foetid dingo kidneys.

That you are not supporting it, but are instead dodging, ducking and diving, suggests I'm right.

[Sparko]

You guys do love your condescending emojis...

So, what I have provided is actually based on historical fact. The dating of the various books of the NT is well documented. The dating of Jesus death is fairly well documented. The life expectancy of the people of that era has been explored. It is a widely accepted fact that Jesus did not write any of the stories in the bible. So what we have is the writings of people who wrote 35+ years after the events (for the gospels) and 20+ years (for the Epistles). So there is nothing about what I said that is "speculation" except the observation that I consider it unlikely, given all of those historical realities, that the words and deeds attributed to Jesus have been accurately recorded, and far more likely that the developing community projected its developing theology into the mouth of Jesus.

you take various unrelated facts and then come up with a conjecture based on nothing but you imagination. Basically you are just a conspiracy theorist. Not much better than the guys who use various "facts" to prove that JFK was an alien or somesuch. They use "facts" too. And then give them imagined meanings and come to imagined conclusions. Just like you are doing. That is not evidence.

So my conclusion is indeed a statement of what I believe most likely (so it could be called "speculation"), but it is based on the historical evidence.

no. it is not.

You apparently work with a different definition of "evidence" than I do. All of the things listed are well documented and widely accepted. How you can dismiss them as "evidence" is beyond me. Based on our previous discussions, and these comments, I think your definition of "evidence" is perhaps not a conventional one.

I can safely say that you work with definitions that most people don't agree with. You seem to make them up on the fly depending on what claim or statement of yours you are trying to defend or wiggle out of. Imagination and conjecture is not "evidence" -- not even "bad evidence."

Your "evidence" is pretty much the same as Toonces driving ability. His owners claimed "Toonces can drive, just not very well" but no Toonces could not drive. Your evidence doesn't exist, bad or otherwise.

[Mountain Man]

If we find a way to add [limb regeneration] to human biology through gene manipulation, or some kind of medicine, then no "miracle." But if a preacher lays hands on a withered, atrophied human limb and it is restored to full health - that transcends the known laws of human biology.

So if you allow that man could do it through an application of science without violating natural laws, then why can't an omnipotent God who created the universe accomplish the same thing even if we don't understand exactly how he accomplished it? Your argument here seems to depend on special pleading.

But you can always mollify yourself by supposing that the Biblical record is false even if it's plausible, so no worries, right?

[JonathanL]

The life expectancy of the people of that era has been explored

I would be interested in knowing if if the life expectancy of 35-40 years for the people living in the first century Mediterranean that you've referenced is the average life expectancy (which would have been influenced by the high rate of infant and child mortality) or the age to which an average person, having survived childhood could expect to live. Because if what you're talking about is the average life expectancy it's not really that strong of an argument against the claim that there were still eyewitnesses living when the documents of the NT were written down, given that a person who managed to survive infancy and childhood would have a considerably higher life expectancy than the average.

[Mountain Man]

That just means it's an ineffective strawman.

I'm asking because your claim appears to be a pile of indefensible foetid dingo kidneys.

That you are not supporting it, but are instead dodging, ducking and diving, suggests I'm right.

If I thought your question was sincere and not disingenuous rhetorical ignorance then I would be more inclined to answer.

[carpedm9587]

you take various unrelated facts and then come up with a conjecture based on nothing but you imagination. Basically you are just a conspiracy theorist. Not much better than the guys who use various "facts" to prove that JFK was an alien or somesuch. They use "facts" too. And then give them imagined meanings and come to imagined conclusions. Just like you are doing. That is not evidence.

Unrelated? Sparko - I have no idea how you come to that conclusion. The question is, "can we believe the stories of the gospel are historically accurate recountings of the life of Jesus." The timing of their writing is relevant. Authorship is relevant. The nature of the community from which they arose is relevant. Given they were written 20+ years after the events they relate (epistles) and 35+ years after (gospels), the question of how memory functions is relevant. Literary styles of the period are also relevant, as are other historical sources from the period. I do not and cannot see these things as "unrelated" to one another.

I also do not see a "conspiracy" at work here. I see a perfectly natural unfolding of events, and an attempt to best determine "what happened." If you want to dismiss it as "conspiracy theory," however, you are certainly free to.

no. it is not.

Apparently not to you...

I can safely say that you work with definitions that most people don't agree with. You seem to make them up on the fly depending on what claim or statement of yours you are trying to defend or wiggle out of. Imagination and conjecture is not "evidence" -- not even "bad evidence."

Nothing I have cited is "made up." If there is a claim I've made you find to not be grounded in reality, by all means point it out. Did I get the time of the writings wrong? Modern science about memory? Information about life expectancy of that age? The conclusions I have drawn from it also seem to flow pretty straightforwardly, to me. Clearly not to you.

Your "evidence" is pretty much the same as Toonces driving ability. His owners claimed "Toonces can drive, just not very well" but no Toonces could not drive. Your evidence doesn't exist, bad or otherwise.

As you wish, Sparko. Unfortunately, it does - and the sources have been cited/linked and can be easily found.

I have no idea how to proceed from here. If this were a court of law, what is happening is roughly the equivalent of the prosecution (or defense) laying out all of the evidence for the guilt (or innocence) of the plaintiff, and the other side responding with, "none of that evidence exists." I have no idea how to respond further.

[Mountain Man]

I have no idea how to proceed from here. If this were a court of law, what is happening is roughly the equivalent of the prosecution (or defense) laying out all of the evidence for the guilt (or innocence) of the plaintiff, and the other side responding with, "none of that evidence exists." I have no idea how to respond further.

Funny you should mention the legal argument. Are you familiar with Simon Greeleaf's "The Testimony of the Evangelists"?

I think you'll find that your habit of insinuating that simply listing certain facts somehow disproves the Biblical account is not a particularly strong line of argument.

[carpedm9587]

I would be interested in knowing if if the life expectancy of 35-40 years for the people living in the first century Mediterranean that you've referenced is the average life expectancy (which would have been influenced by the high rate of infant and child mortality) or the age to which an average person, having survived childhood could expect to live. Because if what you're talking about is the average life expectancy it's not really that strong of an argument against the claim that there were still eyewitnesses living when the documents of the NT were written down, given that a person who managed to survive infancy and childhood would have a considerably higher life expectancy than the average.

I've gone back and looked, and the information I have found is not broken out in those terms. There are couple of references to the distinction between "lifespan" and "life expectancy," and the observation that life span is generally longer than life expectancy. That distinction does lend some credence to your observation. However, even if lifespan were 70 years (as far as I can tell, fairly aggressive for that timeframe), and we assume that a 15-year old could witness the events of Jesus' life and remember it accurately, it means that person would be about 35-38 when the first epistles were written, 52-57 when Mark's gospel was written, 65-75 when Luke and Matt were written, and 75-105 when Acts and John were written. And those are all "youngest possible" based on the available dating. There is very little reason to believe the first apostles were in their teens. If they were in their mid-twenties (more contemporary to Jesus' apparent age), you have to add 10 years to all those minimums.

That makes the likelihood that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses (with the possible exception of Mark) as fairly low. Coupled with the wide distribution of Christian sects by the second half of the first century, it also makes the claim that they would have been widely read by communities primarily composed of witnesses extremely unlikely.

It doesn't disprove anything, of course. It's not impossible. But I would see it as extremely improbable.

[carpedm9587]

So if you allow that man could do it through an application of science without violating natural laws, then why can't an omnipotent God who created the universe accomplish the same thing even if we don't understand exactly how he accomplished it? Your argument here seems to depend on special pleading.

Fundamentally, when you posit an all powerful god, nothing (except the logically impossible) is "impossible."

But you raise a good point, and one I had not considered. If it is possible for humans to accomplish it with a biological approach, then it should be nothing for a god to accomplish the same thing and remain within the bounds of "natural law." My argument does reduce to a case of special pleading.

Well argued!

But you can always mollify yourself by supposing that the Biblical record is false even if it's plausible, so no worries, right?

I have no idea how this relates, so I'll leave it to you.

[Sparko]

Unrelated? Sparko - I have no idea how you come to that conclusion. The question is, "can we believe the stories of the gospel are historically accurate recountings of the life of Jesus." The timing of their writing is relevant. Authorship is relevant. The nature of the community from which they arose is relevant. Given they were written 20+ years after the events they relate (epistles) and 35+ years after (gospels), the question of how memory functions is relevant. Literary styles of the period are also relevant, as are other historical sources from the period. I do not and cannot see these things as "unrelated" to one another.

I also do not see a "conspiracy" at work here. I see a perfectly natural unfolding of events, and an attempt to best determine "what happened." If you want to dismiss it as "conspiracy theory," however, you are certainly free to.



Apparently not to you...



Nothing I have cited is "made up." If there is a claim I've made you find to not be grounded in reality, by all means point it out. Did I get the time of the writings wrong? Modern science about memory? Information about life expectancy of that age? The conclusions I have drawn from it also seem to flow pretty straightforwardly, to me. Clearly not to you.



As you wish, Sparko. Unfortunately, it does - and the sources have been cited/linked and can be easily found.

I have no idea how to proceed from here. If this were a court of law, what is happening is roughly the equivalent of the prosecution (or defense) laying out all of the evidence for the guilt (or innocence) of the plaintiff, and the other side responding with, "none of that evidence exists." I have no idea how to respond further.

You are taking a list of "facts" and then coming up with a conclusion based on conjecture.

I can do the same:
1. Jesus actually lived
2. He did miracles
3. He rose from the dead
4. What appear to be miracles then and resuscitation of dead people can be reproduced by science today and probably even more so in the future.

Conjectured conclusion: Therefore Jesus must have been a time-traveler from the future who went back in time and fooled everyone using modern science.

According to you, my "theory" has evidence (#1-4) so it is completely plausible and not just made up.



That is what you are doing.

[carpedm9587]

Funny you should mention the legal argument. Are you familiar with Simon Greeleaf's "The Testimony of the Evangelists"?

No - I have not read it.

I think you'll find that your habit of insinuating that simply listing certain facts somehow disproves the Biblical account is not a particularly strong line of argument.

At no point did I say it "disproves" anything. As I have noted, most of what we conclude we conclude by reasoning on the available evidence. In the realm of history, however, we are always dealing with "what seems most plausible." History is certainly not an exact science. So I list the factors that I consider when evaluating the information contained in the biblical narratives. It includes the context in which they were written (time, place, authors), available sciences about human memory and human psychology, and available corroborating information from the period (archeology, etc.), and what conclusion they lead me to. At this point, based on the available information, I find there to be inadequate evidence to support the claim, "the gospels contain an accurate record of the life of Jesus as it happened." There is more than adequate evidence to support the claim, "the gospels contain an accurate record of what the early church believed about Jesus of Nazareth."

[Roy]

I would be interested in knowing if if the life expectancy of 35-40 years for the people living in the first century Mediterranean that you've referenced is the average life expectancy (which would have been influenced by the high rate of infant and child mortality) or the age to which an average person, having survived childhood could expect to live. Because if what you're talking about is the average life expectancy it's not really that strong of an argument against the claim that there were still eyewitnesses living when the documents of the NT were written down, given that a person who managed to survive infancy and childhood would have a considerably higher life expectancy than the average.

I suspect it's the average, and that people who survived to adulthood often lived into their sixties. But some-one of Jesus's age would have been around 70 when the first gospel was written, and even someone in their teens at the time of the crucifixion would have been in their mid-fifties. And that's for Mark.* John is estimated to have been written some 30 years later, so any contemporary witness would have been at least eighty. Also, that's without taking the time needed for the gospels to reach Galilee from where they were written.

*The version without the resurrection. The version with the resurrection wouldn't reach Galilee until Jesus's contemporaries were long dead.