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Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:30 am
by atheist
The author has a right to blame skeptics and liberal Christians. When one uses the same standard for testing the bible's origins on it as they do on other works, the conservatives are right. But skeptics and liberals put the bible to unreasonable "tests" just to prove their point. They think that unless we have the original manuscripts, we're wrong. nobody EVER does that with ancient writings. The oldest writings of Homer that we have are 800 years after he died, yet nobody doubts that he wrote them.
Ask any Ancient Greek scholar, Mastermind. Nobody claims proofs of Homer's existence and the standards for testing are similar. We only mention a "Homer" because Ancient Greeks did and believed in his existence. It's a big difference. My own Greek teacher used to refer to the composer or composers of the Iliad and the Odyssey as "whoever made the poems".
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:38 am
by atheist
Keep in mind there are a lot of scholars who set out to definitively disprove the gospels and once they gained the understanding that would be required to do so, they became Christians!
Keep in mind that it often happens the other way around
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:38 am
by Mastermind
Then those greek scholars are ignorant of the fact that knowledge was transmitted through oral means for most of ancient history, and it has been proven to be extremely reliable. Your Greek teacher should stop assuming that the ancients were similar to us and thought in a similar way because it's far from the truth. People today want a dated document before they admit there is "proof" it exists. Oral transmission in ancient times is proof enough for me.
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:47 am
by atheist
Mastermind, those scholars actually has proven the grade of reliability of oral transmission. But oral transmission only applies to the integrity of the text, and this does not constitute a guarantee of the identity of the author or the events accounted in the text.
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 1:05 pm
by Mastermind
Actually, memorising the name of the author is the easiest part... It's not that difficult. Author writes it. People begin memorising it right away if it really is so important (and the Apostles and Homer were important to their particular faiths), the least they could do is memorise their names.
Felgar, you are welcome
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 3:03 pm
by Christian2
At one time I decided to harmonize the resurrection accounts myself. I found that I became cross-eyed very quickly. lol
These sites were a God send to me. What is the quote from the movie 'Philadelphia'? Something like, "For every problem there is a solution." I think that when we are dealing with eyewitness accounts, we can expect some inconsistencies.
God bless.
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 5:41 pm
by Anonymous
Atheist if your gonna argue against something, you could at least have your facts straight. Paul calls himself a Christian and Paul claims he saw Jesus, which I believe considering his transformation. I mean perhaps you should do some research on Paul, instead of trying to "disprove the NT".
If you don't want to believe something go out and say it cause it doesn't matter what you or your Atheist buddies think about the validity of the Texts.