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LkptTiger

"Jesus Family Tomb"

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Given the author quotes the bible, yet you say it's misquoted, is it possible the two of you are reading different versions?

Since the four main books of the new testament can't even agree when/where Jesus was born, it's hard to treat as a reliable source of information.

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Given the author quotes the bible, yet you say it's misquoted, is it possible the two of you are reading different versions?

That is one of the fallacies. Different versions of the Bible don’t say different things. Possibly state same things in different ways. Same manner as a person from Boston, and a person from California can say the same thing but use totally different words.

Then real scholars (non-religeous scholars) know enough about translations, and how the Bible was translated from original texts to not even make that kind of an argument, Scientist, Historians, and Theologians alike.

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Given the author quotes the bible, yet you say it's misquoted, is it possible the two of you are reading different versions?

That is one of the fallacies. Different versions of the Bible don’t say different things. Possibly state same things in different ways. Same manner as a person from Boston, and a person from California can say the same thing but use totally different words.

Then real scholars (non-religeous scholars) know enough about translations, and how the Bible was translated from original texts to not even make that kind of an argument, Scientist, Historians, and Theologians alike.

Translation is art as much as science. There are often terms that don't directly translate from one language to another. Then you run into words that have different connotations at different times throughout history.

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as i said, i am currently studying as a history major and my concentrations are in ancient history. i'm not an expert yet by any means but i would say my old/new testament professor is, and all i can really give are what i've learned from him mixed with some of my own personal conclusions. i think though it seems we can all agree that this documentary is worthless at best unless you want to learn about an archaeological site that was discovered 30 years ago and subsequently cast aside as unimportant by almost every respected scholar.

i would love to address everything brought up in this thread but i dont think this site has the bandwidth for me to scan and upload all of my notes... that being said, if you think the bible is in any way historical, then can you please tell me whether jesus gave his famous sermon, often called the sermon on the mount that starts "blessed are the poor..." (mt 5:1 and lk 6:17) on top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mountain on a level plain? it's the same sermon, lots of people where there, yet there is a contradiction.. one location is historical, one is theological... which one is it? yes this is just one example, but there are countless more, and the point remains, the bible is a book of theology, and while there are historical aspects and instances, it's intended audience was aware of this purpose, whereas today we are completely ignorant to it. my favorite though is judith. if your bible has the deuterocanonical literature, read that and tell me about the historicity of the bible... i'm not trying to be a smart-ass. you can believe that nine pound, eight ounce baby jesus is the divine son of god and at the same time accept the fact that the bible is historically inaccurate in many places. it's not supposed to be history.

if you enjoy this kind of discussion and are passionate about understanding the bible, then i would strongly recommend investing in the new jerome biblical commentary. it's basically cliffs notes on steroids for the bible, except it's written by the most acclaimed and respected scholars on the subject.

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Given the author quotes the bible, yet you say it's misquoted, is it possible the two of you are reading different versions?

That is one of the fallacies. Different versions of the Bible don’t say different things. Possibly state same things in different ways. Same manner as a person from Boston, and a person from California can say the same thing but use totally different words.

Then real scholars (non-religeous scholars) know enough about translations, and how the Bible was translated from original texts to not even make that kind of an argument, Scientist, Historians, and Theologians alike.

Translation is art as much as science. There are often terms that don't directly translate from one language to another. Then you run into words that have different connotations at different times throughout history.

There are scholars that agrue over punctuation, capitolization, etc., i.e. some connotations, but there are not historians and or translative athorities that argue over wheather Jesus exsisted, and what he claimed to be. There are "scholars" that argue a lot of things along these lines, but not any historians. The factual evidence is too compelling, no matter what anyone says, historians don't doubt it.

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Given the author quotes the bible, yet you say it's misquoted, is it possible the two of you are reading different versions?

That is one of the fallacies. Different versions of the Bible don’t say different things. Possibly state same things in different ways. Same manner as a person from Boston, and a person from California can say the same thing but use totally different words.

Then real scholars (non-religeous scholars) know enough about translations, and how the Bible was translated from original texts to not even make that kind of an argument, Scientist, Historians, and Theologians alike.

Well, the only reason I asked if the translations could be different is it might explain why his quotes of the bible aren't skewing with yours. Otherwise, we'd have to assume that either the author is blatantly misquoting the bible, or your memory is off on some of the passages he's quoted.

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Strictly for after dinner conversation, here's a link to a website that is very concise, and well notated, in arguing the above view.

I haven’t had a chance to read the entire article, but based upon the first couple paragraphs I have one main problem that I briefly already mentioned. You can not compare the time period of the authors of the bible to our time period today. Saying that everything was hearsay and that that would not be allowed in court, I believe is not an accurate defense. Word of mouth and oral tradition were the accepted forms of historical documenting in that day. That would be like us saying that since George Washington didn’t use the internet/email to push his presidential campaign, it can’t not be for certain that he was actually president.

On a side note, I applaud everyone who has read this topic and posted in it for keeping it a mature and well thought discussion, I think we all have seen stuff like this turn ugly real quick, but it seems like for the most part all of us understand people have their different beliefs and that we can intelligently and peacefully discuss the differences.

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whoa there has been some activity while i wrote that essay lol...

hockeydoc, you're a little off... different versions of the bible most definitely say different things. the king james version is quite poor in it's translation... and the language that the gospels were written in, ancient greek, was often butchered by those authors. different gospels contain a good deal of aramaic mixed in with the greek, which made it nearly impossible for later scholars to translate it into latin. we can never know enough about the original texts and their translations because the earliest copies are all hundreds of years older than their original publication... it

and i still haven't clicked on that link... i wouldnt really believe anything i found on the internet unless it's from wikipedia...

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and i still haven't clicked on that link... i wouldnt really believe anything i found on the internet unless it's from wikipedia...

I thought wikipedia is kind of "the people's encyclopedia;" i.e,, anyone can post an article, and it's up to future writers to refute what's been written.

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sorry i was kidding... yes wikipedia is a joke, especially to a history major. i'd love to be around in another 1000 years when someone discovers wikipedia and then totally rewrites the history of our entire civilization...

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Strictly for after dinner conversation, here's a link to a website that is very concise, and well notated, in arguing the above view.

I haven’t had a chance to read the entire article, but based upon the first couple paragraphs I have one main problem that I briefly already mentioned. You can not compare the time period of the authors of the bible to our time period today. Saying that everything was hearsay and that that would not be allowed in court, I believe is not an accurate defense. Word of mouth and oral tradition were the accepted forms of historical documenting in that day. That would be like us saying that since George Washington didn’t use the internet/email to push his presidential campaign, it can’t not be for certain that he was actually president.

On a side note, I applaud everyone who has read this topic and posted in it for keeping it a mature and well thought discussion, I think we all have seen stuff like this turn ugly real quick, but it seems like for the most part all of us understand people have their different beliefs and that we can intelligently and peacefully discuss the differences.

That's the type of mis-quotes I am refferring to. Claiming that none of the gospel authors state to have eyewitnessed the things they are writing of is false. The authors of the gospels for the most part make it fairly clear when they are speaking of things they have been told, and of things they have seen with their own eyes. Studying the Greek and Hebrew texts make it easier, but it is not hidden. They do claim to have eyewittness accounts of events.

The claims of no corresponding contemporary secular historical evidence is also just not true. The earth quake, the darkness etc, all found in Roman historical documents. No real scholars deny that. No real scholars deny that Jesus exsisted and claimed to be the Son of God, they do however argue about who all believed him, and weather he actually was the Son of God.

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i clicked on the link and closed the page in 4 seconds. from my uber-quick skim, it seems pretty biased and thats not really a good start when arguing about history. the one little quote that i happened to land upon in my skim though did pique my interest. i think it said something like "all 4 gospels are named incorrectly." depends on how you look at it... who was it phsically written by? well mark and luke were probably written by mark and luke. but who is it according to? well mark is probably the account as told by peter, dictated to mark, his scribe. and luke is likely the account as told by paul, but that gets a little confusing since paul never met jesus, and luke and paul seem to have traveled together for some parts of his journey.

you can spin all of that about whichever way you want i guess... but i agree that i'm glad we're not getting too messy with all of this...

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Any time you have an agenda when researching or writing it has an impact on the outcome.

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msh is mad at me and wont let me edit, but i was going to add that both matthew and luke are believed to have had an additional source that was composed of the sayings of jesus, which is called "Q" and one theory is that this source was actually written by matthew, and his gospel was written by someone else entirely, but since it incorporated all of this "Q" written by matthew, that his name was attatched to it. of all my points though that one is probably the least accepted, but it still carries some weight in some circles.

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Strictly for after dinner conversation, here's a link to a website that is very concise, and well notated, in arguing the above view.

I haven’t had a chance to read the entire article, but based upon the first couple paragraphs I have one main problem that I briefly already mentioned. You can not compare the time period of the authors of the bible to our time period today. Saying that everything was hearsay and that that would not be allowed in court, I believe is not an accurate defense. Word of mouth and oral tradition were the accepted forms of historical documenting in that day. That would be like us saying that since George Washington didn’t use the internet/email to push his presidential campaign, it can’t not be for certain that he was actually president.

I understand what you're saying about the different eras, but I've always felt the author is only using the hearsay example as an analogy of how today's society would react to an argument that cites, "Well, Susan said John told her."

But, toward the real nuts and bolts of your post. (And please understand I respect people's opinions on this matter, as long as I'm allowed mine.) it's exactly that word of mouth and oral tradition that has lead me to not believe in the bible. To me, this word of mouth is the Telephone Game times two thousand years and millions of people. I was having a discussion about this thread with my wife tonight and I said, "Think about it. When we have an argument, does either one of us agree about who started it?.....Of course not. Ten minutes later and we already have a revisionist history.....Now try to take that same thought and expand it by writing about your great-grandparents. We weren't even around to know them, so anything we'd say about them would have been handed down and filtered by our parents, etc."

And that's in an era when we at least had phones, let alone later advances, so the word came "straight from the horse's mouth." Now, let's go back 2000 years. Obviously 99% of the people didn't have the wherewithal to write, nor did most of them have access to horses, so they truly were sheltered in their villages. To me, it's simple Intuition that when one person went to the next village and told his cousin about what happened to him three weeks ago, and then his cousin goes to the next village two months later to repeat the story, that it's probably already 10% off from reality. But let's add years. How far from reality does the story stray over generations and generations?

Here's one good example that popped into my head while writing this. I grew up in New England, cradle of our country, thinking Columbus was a great man. An explorer, adventurer, hero. We had the day off from school and held parades. Since then, however, I've been out West, where the allure isn't quite as strong. Over time, there have been stories that he was a murderer, slave trader, rapist, etc. Who knows where the truth lies? The only thing I know for sure is none of us know for sure, because it happened 500+ years ago.

So, at the very least, it suggests that stories traded down over a period four times longer could easily be off somewhat.

i clicked on the link and closed the page in 4 seconds. from my uber-quick skim, it seems pretty biased and thats not really a good start when arguing about history.

Well, sure, it's biased. He's raising an argument against what he considers to be thousands of years of bias.

As I stated above, the truth is somewhere in between.

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whoa there has been some activity while i wrote that essay lol...

hockeydoc, you're a little off... different versions of the bible most definitely say different things. the king james version is quite poor in it's translation... and the language that the gospels were written in, ancient greek, was often butchered by those authors. different gospels contain a good deal of aramaic mixed in with the greek, which made it nearly impossible for later scholars to translate it into latin. we can never know enough about the original texts and their translations because the earliest copies are all hundreds of years older than their original publication... it

and i still haven't clicked on that link... i wouldnt really believe anything i found on the internet unless it's from wikipedia...

Have you studyed the Greek and Hebrew versions? The KJV is not one of the best versions, as it is difficult to decypher just what is said as the poetic language and audience it was written for, but it does say the same things as the NIV, NKJV, NAS etc. How it says it has been argued to be less clear, more easily misinterpreted, but not different meanings.

Example:

*KJV--John 1

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

*NIV--John 1

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 He was with God in the beginning.

3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

*NAS--John 1

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 He was in the beginning with God.

3 All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

*TLB--John 1

1:1-2 Before anything else existed, there was Christ, with God. He has always been alive and is himself God.

3 He created everything there is-nothing exists that he didn't make.

KJV might be quite poor, but poor does not mean inaccurate.

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msh is mad at me and wont let me edit, but i was going to add that both matthew and luke are believed to have had an additional source that was composed of the sayings of jesus, which is called "Q" and one theory is that this source was actually written by matthew, and his gospel was written by someone else entirely, but since it incorporated all of this "Q" written by matthew, that his name was attatched to it. of all my points though that one is probably the least accepted, but it still carries some weight in some circles.

Do a full edit and not a quick edit. We encountered some bugs while working on cleaning up a few things.

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yes, what you said about the king james version is accurate, with the poetic language. yes i understand some of both hebrew and greek, more hebrew though, which is more relevant to the old testament. i would argue that the word choices in different versions are somewhat more important that you are make them out to sound. one that comes to mind is genesis where different versions speak of "The Lord" instead of jehovah or other variations of the tetragrammaton... i guess inaccurate isn't the correct way to put it, however i think the meaning strays further and further the more the translations differ from the originals... i think the line is a little blurry between "hard to decipher and inaccurate"... but point for you lol...

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yes, what you said about the king james version is accurate, with the poetic language. yes i understand some of both hebrew and greek, more hebrew though, which is more relevant to the old testament. i would argue that the word choices in different versions are somewhat more important that you are make them out to sound. one that comes to mind is genesis where different versions speak of "The Lord" instead of jehovah or other variations of the tetragrammaton... i guess inaccurate isn't the correct way to put it, however i think the meaning strays further and further the more the translations differ from the originals... i think the line is a little blurry between "hard to decipher and inaccurate"... but point for you lol...

You are a gentlemen. We play hockey!?lol I think your point I now better understand, and this is an issue with lessor educated folks. Not just formaly, but most misunderstanding comes from just those type of transliterary issues. That's what compelled me, as I assume most that do, to seek out some of the info for myself. Specifically being raised in the church by an abusive father that liked to throw the Bible in the face of his kids. As I got older I found out how full of it he was, and questioned every part of the way I was raised. Now raising my own children (teenagers) I feel obligated to speak on things not from tradition and hearsay (pastoral or other wise) but from personal knowledge and evidences. Personal study/research and responsibilty to know the truth.

I over explain things sometimes to my family, only to make sure that I've been clear on what I know to be fact, versus what I believe to be true.

Fact: you never score on shots you don't take.

Opinion: Hockey is the greatest sport.

Fact: Jesus exsisted, and was crucified for his beliefs.

Oppinion: I have lots...

BTW, I do believe the Bible, I don't believe a lot of what we are taught/told in church's (about the Bible or otherwise).

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I respect your opinions, particularly given the subject, but the point some scholars are making is quite the opposite of what you are expressing. What they are saying is there is no contemporary evidence that he existed. There have been millions of pages written since then but, if anything had ever been written about him while he existed, it never survived.

Strictly for after dinner conversation, here's a link to a website that is very concise, and well notated, in arguing the above view.

First and foremost, as a basic rule of rhetoric you cannot prove a negative. That's been established since Rome ruled the world. People that try are either slow witted or so ideologically driven that they are willing to abandon all logic. The manuscript evidence for the books of the New Testment is quite remarkable. As compared to say the "Gallic Wars," in which the earliest manuscript is centuries separated from the original. Did Caesar exist? You could certainly argue that he didn't, was actually a collection of figures, or was a minor figure that simply got credit for things he didn't do. People regularly cliam that William Shakespeare never existed. That's the thing, any time you have the life of a person that lived before modern record keeping, last 150 years or so and even that can be pushing it, their existence could be subject to debate. Some aren't going to believe in the mircle stories of the Bible, that's their choice. Given the impact that Jesus had on Jewish soceity and then the whole Greeco-Roman world saying he ever existed is fairly silly and it's obvious why we're debating existence of Jesus and not Plato.

Here's what we do know about the early Christians and the Apostles. They were violently persecuted for their beliefs by both Jewish and Roman authorities. When you have religious frauds they're looking to gain something, usually influence and money. All the Apostles got for their preaching were some rather nasty martyrs' deaths. Is it logical to believe that St. Peter or St. Stephen the first martyr suffered death on a cross (upside down) or stoning for a figure they just made up? If it was a con why not simply accept the emperor's divinity and operate under the protection of the Empire?

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"One thing I have always wondered when someone says that the writers of the bible wrote their own ideas and basically lies into the bible for their own benefit, what and how did they benefit from making up that stuff? They were persecuted like crazy from the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. until Constantinople declared Christianity the official religion of the empire."

In ancient times if you wrote or were educated you were either, royalty, wealthy or worked for the above. The royals or wealthy could have any writtings skewed for thier bennefit, whether it be for monitary purposes or to help keep the lower class people under control. With so few people able to read and/or write it would be very difficult to maintain an accurate account of anything without the checks and balances of an editorial, not to mention the fallout you would get from the royal and wealthy for contradicting them.

We all know how warm and sensitive the early popes were...the inquisition was such a good time for people. Why is it that the heads of the Catholic Church (as well as most churches) are extremely wealthy and powerful? Could it be because the wealthy and powerful call the shots and make the rules.

The egyptians had a writting system thousands of years ago. Why is it then that most cultures feel that having multiple gods with heads like animals and the bodies of humans is rediculous. They wrote it (like the bible) so it must be true.

If there was a son of God don't you think someone would, at the very least, give us some insight about his life or what he looked like. There is not much written about his teenage years and I don't think there is a physical discription of him anywhere. So why do we depict him as a handsome man with fair skin, light brown hair and sometimes blue eyes (I don't think there were to many people that looked like that in that part of the world.) It's because that is the way someone in western civilization depicted him and that is how it was accepted. Would the idea of "the son of God" gone over as well in western civilization if Jesus was depicted as "ugly", olive or black skinned? No! They needed a figure that was marketable to the people and had something in common to help them "believe".

I think the movie Dogma had the right idea.

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First and foremost, as a basic rule of rhetoric you cannot prove a negative. That's been established since Rome ruled the world. People that try are either slow witted or so ideologically driven that they are willing to abandon all logic. The manuscript evidence for the books of the New Testment is quite remarkable. As compared to say the "Gallic Wars," in which the earliest manuscript is centuries separated from the original. Did Caesar exist? You could certainly argue that he didn't, was actually a collection of figures, or was a minor figure that simply got credit for things he didn't do. People regularly cliam that William Shakespeare never existed. That's the thing, any time you have the life of a person that lived before modern record keeping, last 150 years or so and even that can be pushing it, their existence could be subject to debate. Some aren't going to believe in the mircle stories of the Bible, that's their choice. Given the impact that Jesus had on Jewish soceity and then the whole Greeco-Roman world saying he ever existed is fairly silly and it's obvious why we're debating existence of Jesus and not Plato.

Exactly. This is part of why the well educated don't argue these type of things. There are things that are debated among them, but this link brings up a # of the issues that the well educated do NOT debate.

Funny example, Plato, 'cause that was one of the examples I was going to use, either he or Socrates as examples of historical characters whose works are never brought into question. Nobody’s incompetent enough to actually question their existence, yet there is more empirical evidence supporting the Bibles claims than either Plato or Socrates.

Although, there quite regularly pops up some dork like James Cameron that pops off with a truly preposterous claim like they’ve found the remains of Jesus.

This is why there won’t be much back lash from his documentary, it lacks historical and scientific credibility.

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Wow!!

This thread is a microcosm look at our society. Oddly, so many speaking factually about misinformation and myths or just fabrications.

There's no scientific or historical question that Jesus of Nazareth existed and did what the Bible claims. There is more S/H evidence that he was and did as the Bible claims than there is that George Washington was and did what we all accept as fact as the US' first President. Yet so many deny it, and or try to dismiss it as folklore.

The S/H evidence clearly indicates that he did miraculous things, and his death and disappearance of his body also involved unexplainable miraculous events. Rejecting it or denying it does not mean it didn't happen. There are many skeptics that make claims to the contrary, and attempt to explain the events of his life as other than miraculous, but none of them have any scientific/historical evidence to support them. Coming up with hypothetical explanations do not change the facts.

So we can rewrite history with made up myths, or we can accept the available evidence.

The Bible is both theological and historical in context and intent. Translating is much more of a science than is being given credit. However, understanding the culture and context that original texts and languages are translated from is open for some debate.

The Old Testament has everything to do with the New Testament, the Old being merely a foretelling and a preparatory sag way to the New. The Old is a telling of the law and promise for things to come. The new being a fulfillment of that law and the fruition of the promises.

Religion is a difficult tumultuous thing. Truth and facts are not so. Just because some buffoon comes up with some hypothetical theory and a group of buffoons decide to treat those theories as facts, does not make them so.

Very interesting thread.

I will say up front that I know precious little about Christianity, but there are some questions I have about your post. Nothing here is meant to offend you.

Are you saying that there is scientific evidence that the miracles attributed to Jesus actually happened? Or, are you just saying that these miracles should be accepted as fact unless they can be disproven? I cannot disprove the existence of Leprechauns, yet that does not in itself prove their existence.

To the best of my knowledge, Jews dispute Jesus' resurrection and ascension, and overall don't think he was really that special of a guy. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. Are all Jews then to be considered "buffoons" because their theory doesn't match yours? Thats a lot of buffoons.

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So, at the very least, it suggests that stories traded down over a period four times longer could easily be off somewhat.

Sorry, i didnt want to qoute the entire post so i just selected the last statement. I completely agree that looking at oral tradition from our perspective would make it seem a bit sketchy and have its flaws, which i am sure there are some errors and nothing is 100% accurate, ever. But, oral tradition was far more accurate to those in the biblical era then writing. they have many, many generations of fine tuning this practice. One thing that many people tend to forget is that oral tradition was the dominant, accepted communication practice for tens of thousands of years (depending on when someone believes the beginning of man was) but written communication has only recently taken over as the accepted form of communication.

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