Greetings,
ggazoo said:
Many instances in the Bible, including the controversy over the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, has been substantiated by both historical and archeological evidence.
So?
Gone with the Wind has real history in it too.
That does not make it a true story.
Why do you think a few historical references makes the legends in NT true?
ggazoo said:
When Paul, James, Peter, and many others were preaching about the resurrection, there is no record, even in the Palestinian Talmud, of anyone ever disputing what these men and women had witnessed.
There is no record of anyone even NOTICING the Christians until long after the alleged events. Why would they dispute a tiny sect with a new belief?
There is no record of anyone disputing the Golden Ass of Apuleis either.
Many crazy sects and ideas were known in this period - most were never disputed because they were crazy ideas no-one cared about.
Christianity was the same - until later, when it became powerful and other groups had to respond.
ggazoo said:
Jesus was on the earth for 40 days before His assension (sp?) and had spoken to groups of people up to 5,000.
According to which Gospel?
Did you notice Acts and the Gospels contradict?
ggazoo said:
His ministry was real, and He quoted quite a bit from the existing scriptures (which is now the OT). So we know historically Jesus, His ministry, death, resurrection, and assension was real, and in His ministry He validated the OT,
The Jesus story was crafted from the OT - that's why it matches - it was WRITTEN to match.
ggazoo said:
which also has alot of strong support hisorically and archeaologically.
There is no historical or archeological support for Jesus AT ALL - NONE, nada, zip, zero. Just late legends which grow with the telling.
ggazoo said:
Josephus was a noted historian and here is a passage he wrote in 93 A.D.:
Exceptional was he?
Do you believe that a horse gave birth to a lamb?
Josephus said it happened.
The famous Testamonium Flavianum in the Antiquities of the Jews is considered probably the best evidence for Jesus, yet it has some serious problems :
* the T.F. as it stands uses clearly Christian phrases and names Christ as Messiah, it could not possibly have been written by the Jew Josephus (who remained a Jew and refused to call anyone "messiah" in his book which was partly about how false messiahs kept leading Israel astray.),
* The T.F. comes in several versions of various ages,
* The T.F. was not mentioned by any of the early CHurch fathers were reviewed Josephus. Origen even says Josephus does NOT call Jesus the Messiah, showing the passage was not present in that earlier era.
* The T.F. first showed up in manuscripts of Eusebius, and was still absent from some manuscripts as late as 8th century.
* (The other tiny passage in Josephus is probably a later interpolation.)
An analysis of Josephus can be found here:
http://www.humanists.net/jesuspuzzle/supp10.htm
In short - this passage is possibly a total forgery (or at best a corrupt form of a lost original.)
But, yes,
it COULD just be actual evidence for Jesus - late, corrupt, controversial but just POSSIBLY real historical evidence.
ggazoo said:
Another well noted historian was actually the writer of two of the books of the Bible- Luke. Archaeology has shown that he was write in many of his descriptions.
It is quite clear that G.Luke/Acts was not written by an apostle in the early period, e.g. -
"Nevertheless it is clear that neither the two books in their totality, nor even the prologues, can be attributed to a writer of apostolic time and, consequently, not to Luke." (Alfred Loisy, The Origins of the NT, Chapter VI, pg.142-3)
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/loisy2/chapter6.html
Most importantly, G.Luke, like G.Matthew, copies a great deal, word-for-word, from G.Mark - not the action of an eye-witness. Stories and sayings similar to G.Luke (or perhaps an early version of the Gospel) was quoted by Christian writers, BEFORE it was given a name - e.g. Clement of Rome, Aristides, Marcion, and Justin. The Gospel of Luke is simply another case of an originally anonymous Gospel, eventually accepted by Christian as authoritative and eventually attributed to Luke.
Luke/Acts are late documents
Some of the reasons why G.Luke/Acts is dated fairly late, and NOT by someone who knew Paul, are as follows :
* Its infancy interest, pushed back to the birth of John. One is reminded that in the Book of James (the Protevangelium), half a century or more later, this infancy interest is pushed still farther back to the nativity of the Virgin herself.
* Its resurrection interest, including a whole series of appearances, visits, eatings, penetration of locked doors, protracted through forty days. This is in marked contrast to Matthew's (which was probably also Mark's) account and is much nearer to the second-century representations of Jesus' long post-resurrection conversations with the apostles, e.g., the Epistle of the Apostles, ca. A.D. 150.
* Its doctrine of the holy Spirit, which pervades both volumes. The holy Spirit is to come over Mary, 1:35; it fills Elizabeth, 1:42, and Zechariah, 1:67. It came down upon Jesus, 3:22; he was full of the holy Spirit, 4:1. It is on almost every page of the Acts, the whole narrative of which seems to float upon a sea of it. Luke evidently has a definite and developed doctrine of the holy Spirit, which was the fruit of no little religious reflection.
* The interest in punitive miracle, a feature conspicuous in the Elijah-Elisha cycles of Kings but wholly wanting from Mark and Matthew. It marks the opening scene of Luke (Zechariah is struck dumb) and plays a prominent part in the Acts: Ananias and Sapphira are struck dead, 5:5, 10; Elymas is struck blind, 13:11; compare 12:23. In this trait we are on our way to the fondness for punitive miracle in the infancy gospels of the second century, which also found it edifying, e.g., the Gospel of Thomas.
* The passing of the Jewish controversy; this interest, so acute in Paul's day, has become a dead issue when Luke is written.
* The interest in Christian psalmody. Luke preserves hymn after hymn, 1:42, 46, 68; 2:14, 29-the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Nunc Dimittis. Nowhere else do we find any such early interest in Christian poesy, except in Eph. 5:14 and in the arias, choruses, and antiphonies of the Revelation. Already that liturgical endowment, which Walter Pater once said was one of the special gifts of the early church, was beginning to appear.
* Church organization; the Twelve appear in the Acts as a sort of college of apostles, stationed in Jerusalem, watching over the progress of the Christian mission. With them are associated the elders, 15:2, 6, 22; 16:4, etc. Paul is represented as appointing elders in each church, 14:23, so the presbyteral organization is recognized as established, though Paul himself in his list of types of Christian leadership in I Cor. 12:28 says nothing about elders. The office of deacon is also traced back to the earliest days of the church and given added dignity and luster by the story of Stephen, chapters 6, 7. Luke's account of Ananias and Sapphira shows an interest in church funds when he wrote the Acts, and the story of Dorcas sewing for the poor, 9:39, also points to a considerable degree of organization. The point made here is not as to the fact of such embezzlement or charitable doings in the church, but of the writer's interest in recording them. Here belongs also the emphasis upon baptism as a condition of church membership, forgiveness, and salvation that is so characteristic of the Acts. 2:38; 8:12, 36; 9:18; 10:47; 16:15, 33.
* The Speaking with Tongues; this was simply ecstatic utterance with Paul, I Corinthians, chapters 12-14, but in the Acts it has come to be a miraculous endowment with the power to speak foreign languages, Acts 2:4-11.
(The alleged silence of Luke about Paul's death)
* Paul is dead; that he is still living when the curtain falls upon the Acts in 28:30, 31, is outweighed by his farewell to the Ephesian elders, 20:25, with its solemn declaration that none of them would ever see his face again, underscored by its repetition in 20:38: "they were especially saddened at his saying that they would never see his face again." Such presentiments are remembered and recorded only when they have proved true.
* Paul has risen to hero stature. He is not only dead; he has become a hallowed memory. He is no longer a man struggling and grappling with difficulties, as in his letters; he has become a heroic figure and towers above priests, officers, governors, and kings. This is simply the retrospect of history. Lincoln rose in a generation into a heroic figure, very different from the man his contemporaries knew. The manner of his death no doubt contributed to this, but Paul's death too made its contribution to the reverence in which he came to be held, for he was probably the first of the Roman martyrs. Time has to play its part in the development of these attitudes. The success of the Greek mission naturally drew attention to the figure of the leader of that movement.
* The emergence of the sects; men of their own number were appearing and teaching perversions of the truth in order to draw the disciples away after them, 20:30. Apart from this reference to them in Acts the first we hear of the sects is in Eph. 4:14; compare 4:3-6, and in the Revelation, where the mysterious sect of the Nicolaitans is mentioned with abhorrence, 2:6, 15. Early in the second century the Docetists appear (cf. I, II John, Ignatius), then the Marcionites and Gnostics, and then the Montanists. Here, again. Acts seems to belong to the time of Ephesians and the Revelation.
(Edgar Goodspeed, The Work of Luke, pg.192-193)
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/goodspeed/ch12.html
Acts manuscripts highly variant
Also note - Acts is the single most textually suspect book of the whole NT - it comes it two different versions, one considerably longer (about 10%) than the other. Manuscripts of Acts shows the most variation of ANY NT book.
Regarding historicity, while Acts is accurate in places, its reliability (and G.Luke) as history is hotly disputed, as there are many apparent errors :
* Luke 2:2 and 1:5 is wrong about Quirinius,
* Acts 5:37 is wrong about Judas the Galilean,
* Acts 10:1 is probably wrong about the Italica cohort,
* Acts 5:34-39 is probably wrong about Gamaliel's tolerance,
(from Brown's NT commentary, Doubleday, 1996, page 321)
Also, Acts does not seem typical of histories of the day :
"Acts does not match the pretensions of contemporary historiography either in style or subject-matter"
(Oxford Bible Commentary, OUP, 2001, pg. 1029)
Of course, some parts of Acts are transparent mythology, such as the Pentecost stories.
The date of G.Luke/Acts is problematic, scholarly opinion varies from late 1st century to early 2nd century. Of particular interest the argument that Acts depends on Josephus (c.96) :
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/loisy2/chapter6.html
So,
to summarise the situation of G.Luke / Acts -
* it is a late document(s), from decades after the war, by an unknown author, not an eyewitness, who never met Paul,
* the Gospel is copied largely from G.Mark,
* manuscripts of Acts are the most variant of all the NT books,
* it contains miraculous stories,
* it is not typical of histories of the period,
* it has some historical inaccuracies,
* Paul in Acts does not well match Paul own writings (e.g. the VARIANT stories about the appearances of Jesus)
Iasion
