James Brown
Veteran Member
The idea that Jesus dictated his thoughts, and that the illiterate fisherman who heard his thoughts wrote them down in real time, would require a massive amount of evidence to be supported.
Consider it as dictating while someone was writing it down, where Jesus gets the credit for His thoughts.
We have a long line of unknown copyists, editors, and redactors who all said that Paul...
The idea that Jesus dictated his thoughts, and that the illiterate fisherman who heard his thoughts wrote them down in real time, would require a massive amount of evidence to be supported.
We have a long line of unknown copyists, editors, and redactors who all said that Paul...
You admit they are unknown.
You don't know who they were, so you cant use their identity to discredit them as accurate historians.
The idea that Jesus dictated his thoughts, and that the illiterate fisherman who heard his thoughts wrote them down in real time, would require a massive amount of evidence to be supported.
Those 'fishermen' were running a business with their wealthy father Zebedee (who had strong connections with highly literate members of the Sanhedrin)
Why do you assert they were illiterate?
We have a long line of unknown copyists, editors, and redactors who all said that Paul...
You admit they are unknown.
You don't know who they were, so you cant use their identity to discredit them as accurate historians.
Consider it as dictating while someone was writing it down, where Jesus gets the credit for His thoughts.
So, wait, if some invented a scientific theory, about, say, anti-darks, because there's a big gaping hole in light theory, and the anti-dark particle is the only way it makes sense, despite there being no experimental basis for the idea, you'd dismiss it as made-up speculation, and poor science at best, no? Fiction, maybe? A lie at worst?
But adding things to scripture, which scripture itself says is a no'no, is just a common sense way to resolve an apparent problem.
None of the apostles are identified as Jesus' chronicler. No passage describes "Jesus' account of his conversation with Satan, as told to Matthew one night." And still, none of the authors besides Paul identifies who is writing the gospel, or why.
So, why would you add dictation to your understanding of The Books? And why would anyone think it was not a Hail Mary invention of made-up bullshit?
The idea that Jesus dictated his thoughts, and that the illiterate fisherman who heard his thoughts wrote them down in real time, would require a massive amount of evidence to be supported.
Nothing about embellishment casts doubt on the original reported Jesus miracle acts, but actually the opposite: the embellishment points to the fact of the earlier Jesus miracle acts, which then explains where the embellishment came from. There had to be something there originally for them to do the embellishing to. It's easy to explain how an original miracle claim would become embellished into a bigger claim. But no one yet can explain how the original claim (Jesus miracles) got started.
OK, but there can't be an embellishment without first having something to embellish. What was it that they embellished?
What everyone always embellishes; the fantastical parts and always in escalatory fashion.
Nobody embellishes mundane elements, like, "and then he brushed FIVE of his teeth!"
Nobody gives a shit about a story where the protagonist is just an ordinary guy and nobody tells a story about a protagonist that is just an ordinary guy. And the reason the embellishments occur is in order to elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary, so that . . .
. . . ordinary into the extraordinary, so that people are impressed and pay attention to your story.
The most logical assessment in regard to Jesus is that he was the leader of a small, but effective insurrectionist movement who got ratted out by one of his own (hence the sequence where Judas has to kiss Jesus in order to tell the Roman soldiers there to arrest him, which one was the actual leader of the group). Jesus was then publicly tried, tortured, mocked as a pretend King seditionist -- by the Romans in front of the Jewish crowd in order to teach them all a lesson -- and then nailed to a cross to rot (like all seditionists) throughout the "festival" as a further warning to all.
His men scattered as instructed and slowly, after a few years, started to regroup and reform their earlier seditionist movement and along the way they would tell martyr stories about their fallen leader, probably just . . .
. . . as a reminder of his bravery and teachings for a better world once the Roman occupiers are overthrown and then more as a recruitment mythology. You know, like precisely what is done and has been done in that region for centuries up into today?
Those stories -- of his cunning and leadership and religious outlook for a new kingdom on earth -- then get embellished. The one time he managed to feed a small group of gatherers with nothing but a few loaves of bread and some fish gets turned into feeding a huge group of people with loaves and fishes that never ended.
The one time he turned to summon Jehovah to stop a storm that just coincidentally started to abate right at that moment gets turned into him having the power to command nature. The one time he gently brushed the cheek of a dying child, who seemed to get a little bit better at his touch, becomes a healing power that could cure the blind and lepers. Etc., etc., etc.
Ordinary becomes extraordinary and powers start to . . .
. . . powers start to grow and transform, exactly in the same manner that in one book Jesus grants those healing powers to the people who are telling those stories initially (the "disciples") that in turn in the next retelling of the story ten or so years later they not only get healing powers, but now they get powers to raise the dead.
If you're going from having the power to heal to having . . .
. . . to having the power to heal and raise the dead in just ten or so years, then simply extrapolate backwards from the version of the story that was told ten years prior (which was itself a version of the story told some forty years after the alleged facts). It's not rocket surgery.
From he touched a sick child that seemed to get better from his touch to he can heal the sick! to he granted us his powers to heal to we have powers to heal and raise the dead.
All in a forty to fifty year game of telephone.
And think of the people we're talking about. Not exactly critical thinkers. Look at Paul. The ONLY reason he is even a topic of discussion is because he claimed to have a "vision." That's it.
That was the full extent of their critical acceptance. Oh, ok, well, if you say you had a vision, then of course, it must have been true so come on in.
And don't forget that Paul is alleged to have been the one to basically say that anything claimed in regard to the "good news"-- even lies -- are ok because of the importance of the word.
We literally see exactly this kind of escalatory embellishment all over the place in history and just every day stories.
It's what "embellish" means ffs.
Look at what you are doing. You are so desperate to establish the ludicrous notion that Santa Clause is real that you are . . .
. . . that you are abandoning all rational thought in an ironic attempt to apply rational thought to a belief that is inherently and deliberately irrational.
Faith is supposed to be in spite of the evidence that contradicts it.
Mark 5:25 And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well." 29 And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, "Who touched my garments?" . . . 32 And he looked around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."
Yet you are doing the exact opposite by trying to ground your faith in facts, no matter . . .
. . . no matter how tortured they have to be in order for you to make your case for yourself.
All of us see right through what you're trying to do, so it's sure as shit not . . .
. . . not being done for our sake. You are right now turning reality into fiction in order to fit your beliefs.
And you don't even see it. Or, . . .
. . . or worse, you do and don't care.
Ok, you say miracle, but Jesus Himself, you must agree has something over the Fairies, Easter bunny and Santa Claus.
Why should the Jesus miracle stories be treated differently? Because you believe them?
Not quite. God of The Gaps is when you dissect current knowledge, asking 'why?' and 'how?' until the authority runs out of answers. Then, at the limit of knowlege, where cartographers used to write 'here there be dragons,' you claim 'because god.'You mean like when you say "God of the gaps" sort of thing?
oh. So now, your solution to the problem is a mere "figure of speech," and questioning your source is "frantic."Pendantic frantic responses isn't necessary imo when responding to 'figure of speech' quotes which should be understandable enough.So, why would you add dictation to your understanding of The Books? And why would anyone think it was not a Hail Mary invention of made-up bullshit?
Not quite. God of The Gaps is when you dissect current knowledge, asking 'why?' and 'how?' until the authority runs out of answers. Then, at the limit of knowlege, where cartographers used to write 'here there be dragons,' you claim 'because god.'
This is more like when Superman has a new superpower to solve the plot twist. Or when someone finally said, "Hey, Piltdown Man doesn't make any sense unless fraud is involved."
oh. So now, your solution to the problem is a mere "figure of speech," and questioning your source is "frantic."Pendantic frantic responses isn't necessary imo when responding to 'figure of speech' quotes which should be understandable enough.
Got it.
So, you're still left with anonymous accounts, of unknown purpose or authenticity, written at an unidentified remove from the events, with details added by later authors, upon which you literally 'bet your soul' (not a figure of speech).
But i'm being frantic.
Got it.
well, yeah, car key gnomes are as well-documented as Santa Claus, but who told Matthew about the Flight into Egypt?Calm down already. Magic events happen all the time. I lost my keys and then I found them. It could only have been the work of a magic being.
"Evidence from the time" is that the Caesars were gods, testified to be so by the educated, literate, and known members of the Roman senate.We must rely on the evidence from the time, not some contemporary pundit's cosmic vibes about what should or should not have happened.
(Loads of even more special pleading drivel skipped.)
We must rely on the evidence from the time, not some contemporary pundit's cosmic vibes about what should or should not have happened.
"Evidence from the time" is that the Caesars were gods, testified to be so by the educated, literate, and known members of the Roman senate.
"Evidence from the time" would also 'prove' that the Egyptian pharaohs were also gods.
Can you explain why it would be reasonable for us to believe that Jesus performed miracles? What is the evidence, and what . . .
. . . and what makes you conclude that a supernatural creator bending the laws of nature is the best explanation for the miracle stories in the gospels?
More special pleading? Or maybe, as you would put it, "some contemporary pundit's cosmic vibes about what should or should not have happened."We must rely on the evidence from the time, not some contemporary pundit's cosmic vibes about what should or should not have happened.
"Evidence from the time" is that the Caesars were gods, testified to be so by the educated, literate, and known members of the Roman senate.
"Evidence from the time" would also 'prove' that the Egyptian pharaohs were also gods.
Yes, "evidence from the time" does prove that the Caesars and the pharaohs were worshiped as gods. I.e., that they had vast power over millions of subjects who were required to bow before them and submit to them and perform rituals to honor them.
Jesus might well be as real as Santa Claus. In both cases, there may be a real person who is the nucleus of the myth; But the modern mythical individual is pure fiction. Nobody has ever made toys at the North Pole, and nobody has ever come back from being dead.
Of course, it's possible that (unlike Santa) there was no one person who formed the foundation of the Jesus myth, in which case . . .
. . . in which case Jesus is less real than Santa Claus.
But that doesn't change the fact that any adult who believes in either should be deeply embarrassed at their naivety.
. . . just the same special pleading nonsense repeated in gish gallop Yee-Haw! form to make it appear as if there is something else going on beside basic mythology.
bottom line: The evidence is that the miracle acts of Jesus really did happen.
You are simply falsely equivocating “evidence” for “proof.”