I will be reading the Qur’an on Saturday

Whoa, Nellie! wrote:

Get Real Real wrote:

WHICH Bible, genius???

Only the Bibles that fall in line with the same wording that the Dead Sea Scrolls produced. That discovery alone was THE slam dunk, game over for those that question the translations from language to language or that words have been changed to fit a certain belief.

Archealogy today continues to prove Biblical accounts, yet, as in an earlier post maybe on this thread, people refuse to believe or believe what they want to inspite of what is unearthed.

What about the Dead Sea documents which are NOT in the Christian Canon?

The Dead Sea Scrolls only have copies of some Old Testament stuff and he actually DOES prove that the translation that the New Testament writers used, the Septuagint, was a sha different rendering than the Hebrew (although we have no way of knowing if the Dead Sea OT documents weren't translated back to Hebrew from the Septuagint).

When Matthew claims Jesus will be born "of a virgin" according to the scriptures, he is referring to a reading that only exists in the Septuagint (parthenos - a literal virgin) and not in the Hebrew (alma - a young woman of indifferent sexual status). See, the NT writers wrote their gospels by making up the stories to comform to pesher readings of the OT. Origen gives us a blatant view of how this was done in his "interpretations" of the OT books. Ever checked these OT "predictions" of Jesus? They aren't predictions at all in their OT context. And many aren't in the canonical OT, but in books like Enoch.

There are no NT books in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And none in Greek (well, there are a few Greek words mixed in). The average Jew in the 1st century, if able to read at all, would have been reading the Greek Septuagint. Christians have the idea that Judaism in the 1st century was basically what one reads in the OT. It had changed a great deal. A 1st century Jew reading the OT would have been like us reading Chaucer.

Have you scrolled through the sea, dead????

Huh???? have you????

Well then if you haven't... then STFU!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where in verse 10 does it say that God hates people.

No, no, no! I was saying that God hating and wanting to kill people is what Chauncey was implying. I don't believe that, which, I thought, should be obvious from the rest of my sarcasm laced post.

I think we probably are quite like-minded.

You are preaching to the choir (pun intended), i'm aware of these anecdotes.

Brian,

These claims keep coming and batted down. Academia circles make these claims in history, then they get proven wrong. It's like claiming rape, then later proving they didn't commit the act but the stain of accusation is still there.

In college, I had a professor claim that Moses really didn't part the water and it would have been easy for the Jews to cross the Red Sea. So there was no sea parted. Problem was, he didn't account for Pharoah's army drowning when the waters flooded. It was an overt lie, but like all great lies, there is an element of truth.

Your Hebrew words don't prove your points. You OT claims of predictions are found all through out Isaiah, Daniel, etc.

Lastly, archeology has unearthed Scriptures and text pre-dating the Dead Sea Scrolls.

That isn't what we were talking about. I call "bait and switch." Not that this argument of yours isn't woefully wanting either, but I'm tired of this stuff that when someone challenges a premise that the "defense" of that premise starts off with "well, lets look at this other . . ."

I'm sad to say it, but unfortunately this is what some Christians do teach. I am not one of them. If you point it out to them the way you just have they will deny it (I've tried many times), but they have to do some impossible contortioning to avoid this obvious problem, but to no avail; they will blatantly contradict themselves. Well, this is what some Christians do teach with the exception that they do believe, and rightly so, that you will be convicted and held accountable for your own sin. The problem with their teaching is that, according to them, you never had the choice or ability not to sin, but rather that God predetermined and actually willed for you to sin. That, in my opinion, is really, really, really bad theology and isn't found in the contextual and unbiased reading of the Bible, but, many, many Christians believe it. I apologize on their behalf (though they won't like it, I'm sure).

It's only sickening if you have already, a priori, disregarded the whole message of the Bible that the crucifixion is set in and central to. If the rest is true, then the crucifixion and substitutionary death of Jesus could in no rational way be seen as sickening.

Whoa, Nellie! wrote:

Archealogy today continues to prove Biblical accounts

This is completely false.

Whoa, Nellie! wrote:

yet, as in an earlier post maybe on this thread, people refuse to believe or believe what they want to inspite of what is unearthed.

On this we agree.

Whoa, Nellie! wrote:

Brian,

These claims keep coming and batted down. Academia circles make these claims in history, then they get proven wrong. It's like claiming rape, then later proving they didn't commit the act but the stain of accusation is still there.

In college, I had a professor claim that Moses really didn't part the water and it would have been easy for the Jews to cross the Red Sea. So there was no sea parted. Problem was, he didn't account for Pharoah's army drowning when the waters flooded. It was an overt lie, but like all great lies, there is an element of truth.

Your Hebrew words don't prove your points. You OT claims of predictions are found all through out Isaiah, Daniel, etc.

Lastly, archeology has unearthed Scriptures and text pre-dating the Dead Sea Scrolls.

wouldn't it simply have been easier for your professor to claim no parting of the red sea because there was no moses? or that exodus simply did not happen? why split hairs on the manner in which some mythic event transpired. it didn't transpire at all.

Moses, by the way, is an eqyptian name. it mean's Son.

look up the myth of Sargon, who predated Moses by centuries. Sargon (an actual historical person) claimed to have been raised by Akki after his mother floated him down the Euphrates in a reed basket to escape death. Was Sargon a mosaic forerunner?

chauncey wrote:

This is completely false.

Well that settles that!

Chauncey, you are one heck of a hand-waiver. You could be the first inductee into the Hand-Waiving Hall of Fame if they ever create one.

I thought we were talking about the credibility of the Bible as a holy book. You don't think the miracles of Jesus are central to this claim? Why are they described in the bible, other than as proof of Jesus' divinity? My argument was germane to the discussion; I was simply pointing to a specific case of biblical credibility.

Ok, thanks. YOUR version of Christianity is right, and THERIS is wrong. Thanks for the clarification.

What don't you get about scapegoating?

I'm sorry, if you cheat on your wife, and then ask god for forgiveness, you are simply deluding yourself. A third party cannot absolve you the responsibility of your actions. A third party can take your place in prison or on the gallows, but he can't forgive you. And it's unethical to wish it.

Clifford Diffley wrote:

wouldn't it simply have been easier for your professor to claim no parting of the red sea because there was no moses? or that exodus simply did not happen? why split hairs on the manner in which some mythic event transpired. it didn't transpire at all.

Moses, by the way, is an eqyptian name. it mean's Son.

look up the myth of Sargon, who predated Moses by centuries. Sargon (an actual historical person) claimed to have been raised by Akki after his mother floated him down the Euphrates in a reed basket to escape death. Was Sargon a mosaic forerunner?

Who told you that Sargon was "an actual historical person" and that Moses was not? Man, delusional, for you, would be a major upgrade! So . . . you get to pick and choose which figures of ancient literature are real and which are not. The Bible has errors and is mythical, but this other story, no, it's just the way it's been handed down to us. Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a bit hypocritical of you? "Nooooo, I read it in a book/saw it on TV/heard professor bobblehead talk about it/caught it on YouTube." Well, it must be the way it is.

Brent. wrote:

Who told you that Sargon was "an actual historical person" and that Moses was not? Man, delusional, for you, would be a major upgrade! So . . . you get to pick and choose which figures of ancient literature are real and which are not. The Bible has errors and is mythical, but this other story, no, it's just the way it's been handed down to us. Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a bit hypocritical of you? "Nooooo, I read it in a book/saw it on TV/heard professor bobblehead talk about it/caught it on YouTube." Well, it must be the way it is.

well, Moses could be real, that is correct. I was being a wee bit glib. However, there is much greater historical evidence for Sargon - archeological as well as competing historical documents, not merely the later writings of devoted followers. You see how that works? it's called textual and historical criticism.

Alright. If you're going to try to discredit the Bible by discrediting miracles then I can see that, but it didn't seem to me that's where you were headed. I'd appreciate if you'd try again. The point would be for you to discredit the Biblical miracles, though, and not just get into some philosophical arguments about what they might or might not mean whether or not they are true, which is what seems you were getting at. It is nearly 2 a.m. here, however, so maybe I'm just getting whacked in the head.

This seriously makes no sense. Forgiveness isn't saying that what someone did was either OK nor that it didn't really happen or "count". Forgiveness is saying, in fact, what someone did was wrong, but that the penalty or punishment for that will not be enacted. Biblically speaking, however, God put it in such a way that sin must always be punished, so there must be someone willing to take that punishment (it would be unjust of God to demand that someone else take that punishment, and that may be where you are getting it wrong).

Anyway, it's getting late and I need to crash. But, my advice to you is to not just take some parts of the Bible without the other parts of the Bible. If you do you'd have no choice but to say it's craziness. You either take the whole thing and evaluate it in its own context, or you just chuck the whole thing. The way you and most other detractors come at it, however, is to take part of the story and say it makes no sense or is "sickening", or some such thing.

G'night.

I thought I did a pretty good job of discrediting biblical miracles. I wrote this:

"Okay, let's deal with the evidence for miracles. I'll paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, who puts a finer point on it than I could:

Anyone who sees an apparent miracle, or suspension of the laws of physics (such as the turning of water into wine, the raising of the dead, walking on water), must ask himself this question: Were the laws of physics suspended, and moreover suspended in my favor, in a way in which I approve, or am I under a misapprehension?

Now, take those same miracle claims and put them in a bronze age book, 2000 years before the scientific age, described decades after their supposed occurrence, described by non-eye-witnesses, and filtered down through dozens of revisions, poor translations, and manuscripts, and the question becomes far, far more pointed."

I think that if you can still be so credulous as to believe in biblical miracles after considering the above, you have, as Hitchens again says, "You have advertised a willingness to believe in absolutely anything."

To take the point further: There are reports of miracles being performed by religious gurus TODAY. Sai Baba has over a million followers, and is reported to have performed many of the same miracles attributed to Jesus. These are eyewitness reports. These miracles should be far, far, more credible than the miracles of the bible, if only because the witnesses are contemporary, current, and numerous. Do you take these claims seriously? No, of course not. Why do you think that is?

It seems we have different definitions of "forgiveness." It seems to me, and I would argue, most Christians in the world, that forgiveness implies much more than simply the withholding of punishment: being made whole, being washed clean, made pure, made righteous, etc.

And any way you slice it, a human sacrifice for the atonement of the sins of the tribe is abhorrent.

I am quite familiar with the bible. In fact, the more familiar I became with it, the more convinced I became that it is mostly nonsense.

A note about context: it always seems strange to bring up "context" when talking about the perfect word of the creator of the universe. You would think that such a being could find a more clear and universal way of communicating his message, a way that didn't depend on "context." The bible is remarkably provincial for the work of an ultimate, timeless being.

Chauncey,

I am interested in the things you are saying and have a lot to say in return, but I've regrettably had a long day and if I start typing a reply now it will most certainly be gobbledygook. I've already had to correct two typos above.

Please check back, though.

This is complete nonsense trying to be masqueraded as an argument. This doesn't speak to the point of whether any miracle claim is or was credible or not, but rather to an opinion that anyone who would believe in them is willing to believe anything. It is a supremely dumb argument. I believe in the miracle claims in the Bible. I believe in the possibility of miracles in general. I know I have experienced some miracles. I don't believe in any and all miracle claims. So, yes, I am advertising a willingness to believe in absolutely anything, but yet I still discriminate in what I actually do believe in. I'm sorry, but Hitchens has wasted time and ink by saying absolutely nothing.

Seriously, think about this from a Bible believing perspective. In scripture do we only see miracles happening by the Hand of God? No. So, why would or should I automatically disregard a miracle claim by any person, whether he calls himself a Christian or not? To believe in the Bible is to believe in the God of heaven and earth, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, holy angels, unholy angels, the Antichrist, and Satan, along with the powers that the Bible claims that they all have. I don't know if this Sai Baba character has performed any real miracles or not, and don't care that much. If pressed to answer yes or no, I'd say I do not believe it. Why? Because I haven't checked for myself (meaning the reliability of witness claims, etc.), and because anything that has the potential for a man to use for his own gain and glory is highly suspicious and should be approached with much scrutiny.

Many people do lump the whole lot together, but technically it shouldn't be. This can be laid out from the Bible. Concisely, it is as in the OT. God promised Abraham such and such, and in a very real sense, from the very moment, Abraham had already obtained the end of that promise. But in the unfolding of time we see that it was in reality a process that lasted even longer than the life of Abraham upon the earth. Faith apprehended the promise, and because the promise was from God who cannot lie, it was as good as accomplished.

It isn't abhorrent in any way as long as you keep it in its context. This is an excuse you've made in an attempt to rid yourself of your responsibility to sincerely evaluate the claims of Christ and the Bible.

You may be quite familiar with the Bible, but that speaks nothing to the point I made. There are many otherwise mature Christians that are quite familiar with the Bible too, but they still have a nasty tendency to take some parts in favor of other parts because they like a nice and tidy way to get through life. For example, many teach that it is a sin to drink alcohol, but the only way to teach that from the Bible is to ignore the whole of scripture in favor of a couple of verses very liberally interpreted. It is a favorite pass time for some Christians, I think (to find something to teach without taking the whole counsel of scripture into account, that is).

If there really is a God of the Universe and He really is trying to communicate with us, how would a creature of His, created lower than Him, possibly be able to know what is the best way for Him to communicate with us? It's a silly argument in my opinion for that reason alone. However, I think it's even more silly for the fact that someone would complain because God communicates with us in exactly the way that we are most familiar with. I mean, I can just see some American getting bent out of shape because a Japanese tourist comes and speaks fluent American English. "Come on there, Hashimoto! You should speak broken English if you want me to take you seriously!" That would really be funny.

Dude, Rationalist interpretations of the Bible are passe. No one looks for "rational" explanations of the biblical stories. THEY ARE MYTHOLOGY!!! Christ, how dim can you be. There was no Moses any more than there was a Hercules. Why are the Mosaic stories told twice in different versions with vastly different details and narratives in the OT? Piety has no answer, the Documentary Hypthesis does (if you haven't heard of that, you haven't ever "studied" the Bible).

Archeology hasn't unearthed any of that shit. It has unearthed non-canonicall Christian texts similar in age to what we hav ein the Canon that is very different. Predictions in Daniel? The "predictions" in Daniel were things that were happening in Daniel's own time. Daniel is a book written in the second century by a guy who claime to have "found" a book of prophecies written in the 6th. Jesus, we have an example of this in our own time...the Book of Mormon. Do you Christian dimwits really just avoid any critical discussion of your beliefs? Aren't you interested in weighing all the argumens against each other, not just letting your pastor speak for the other side (and parody and misrepresent their views)? Examine the evidence for this. Daniel makes tons of mistakes regarding the politics of the time it was originally written, but is eagle-eyed in its "predictions" and there are anachronisms that give it away.

There are no "predictions" of a Messiah in Isaiah. You haven't read the alleged predictions. They are "enthronement oracles" or talking about Israel itself. We have tons of examples of "enthronement oracles" from many cultures of the time.

The books of the bible are just a mundane example of a genre of the period any given one was written.

Brent, don't give pearls to swine.

They don't deserve it.

Sorry, but your wasting your time if you actually think these numbskulls will actually pay attention to something they haven't been brainwashed with.