4 Step Perfect Proof for God and Minimal Facts Approach

Originally Posted by Hannibal

Parture.

Question: Why haven't you mentioned St Paul? And how, without him, Jesus would be nothing more than a myth?

After Jesus' apparent death, there was a 30 year gap from the first Gospel written - 30 years is a long time if you think about, and back then, it was quite literally someone's lifetime. So without Paul, Jesus would have been nothing more than another fable in History.
What's more is that Paul doesn't even mention any of Jesus' apparent miracles; just his apparent persecution, crucifixion and ressurrection, why is that?
It's all good mentioning the Gospel's but if it wasn't for St Paul wandering the Earth spreading the word of Christianity and Jesus' teaching and setting up the Church, there would be nothing.
You'd think there'd be more to spread the teachings of Jesus - seeing as you said "500 people saw Jesus after his apparent ressurrection". 500 people? And yet only 1 person spreads the word? Doesn't make sense to me, you'd think they'd band together (like todays religious people) and preach to everyone, especially about someone as influential as Jesus Christ himself.

Hannibal

There was no gap from Jesus' death to the gospels. Why think that?

Apparent death of Jesus? His death is extremely highly evidenced.

Paul is mentioned.

The epistles and Acts, including John's, James, Peter's, Jude's writings speak of setting up the churches by everyone involved not just Paul.

You really haven't read the Bible have you that you make so many errors in your thinking.

Originally Posted by wheels5894

well, Parture, one problems one has debating with you is that every time one trying to tackle a point it seemed to spread out to larger and larger areas. This means that thread is getting far too long without ever attempting to complete discussion on any particular aspect. So let the proposal will at least give us a chance to get going to discuss important matters of the original posting.

1. The dating of the Gospels is a long and complicated job requiring higher criticism. If you look at Wikipedia you'll find an article about this and you will see that the earliest a proposed to mark is perhaps 50CE the majority of scholars would go with quite a bit later as a date. Since most people feel that markets first because Matthew and Luke and using that means the Matthew and Luke must be later than Mark and John, which contains the most developed theology would appear to be later still. I suggest we start a new thread discuss the dating of the Gospels and for the time being except the majority view which would date Mark around 65 to 70 CE.

Are you sure that people won't die for a lie? I will agree with you that dying literally for a lie is exceptionally unlikely that people can be persuaded the truth of things even though, in the cold light of day and you these things are not true. There have been a number of counts and United States has resulted in suicide of the individuals on the basis of some weird ideas and people have gone along with it. Suicide bombers believe that they are going to meet their virgins after they die they believe it enough to go and kill themselves and kill others the same time. Now you may not think what they believe is true but that isn't the point -- the individuals believe that it is true and believe that it is the right thing to do. Now for some reason the disciples were convinced that Jesus had risen and therefore that is all the justification that is needed for them to have got a group going to believe this and they would then have been willing to die for it.

So, how do we know that the resurrection was preach from the beginning and what precisely whilst the beginning? The fact is that the only way we know this is through the writings of Luke when he wrote acts. I'm trying to avoid dealing with dating of these documents but this is essential at this point. At its successor volume to the gospel of Luke and so has to be written later. If you look at the introduction that

so who is not the first and it is not just Mark and Matthew that precede him. Thus we may date Luke quite a lot of later -- commonly 75 - 85 CE so there is not a very good link to what you call the beginning for us to know what the disciples did do the beginning.

In fact, you might like to compare this material with the accounts of Joseph Smith who, as you know, received a visit from Angel found the golden plates and translated them and returned the plates afterwards. Nonetheless two groups of witnesses small plates with Joseph Smith and accounted for them. This rather legendary sounding story grew up almost straight after the book of Mormon was first produced and no one argued yet at that you don't believe it.

finally, to make this discussion easier to have, please stop adding you Tube videos to your posts and put down in a text exactly what you think was I'm not up for watching videos by anyone to discuss.

Try this. Ask yourself one good reason why you think the gospels are so late dated. I gave a really good reason why they are not. So the burden is on you to in suggesting otherwise.

Name one person in history where someone willingly died for what they knew to be a lie. There is none.

Joseph Smith hardly compares, for he had visions whereas the disciples could touch, eat with, talk with and walk with Jesus, the very person they had spent 3 years with. Moreover Smith's vision was not of God, if he didn't outright lie, because his vision doesn't agree with God's word, so he experinced a supernatural evil vision from Satan. And we don't care about individual accounts because they could be hallucinations. We are concerned with seeing Jesus alive from the dead in various group settings. Modern psychology says group hallucinations are impossible.

Originally Posted by wheels5894

you're quite right about Paul -- there would not have been much written if Paul had not started writing letters. However I don't think that it was he who necessarily got Christianity on its feet as the were clearly at least some Christians in Jerusalem, probably led by James, and presumably some questions in Damascus as that is where all went, according to his letters, to be converted. I think Paul's contribution is probably more that he got the Gentiles involved in the movement and manage to get them in large numbers too!

Now as to that the gap between the death of Jesus and the first gospel we are going to have to watch the dating very carefully. Although general consensus among scholars tend to think of 65 CE to 70 CE as roughly the right period to the gospel of Mark, followed by Matthew and then Luke by maybe 80 CE there are those, such as Parture, who would like to put a much earlier date on the writing of the Gospels. Dating the Gospels is, of course, extremely difficult and there are no definite guidelines as to how this can be done. We can see the Matthew and Luke are both using Mark as their source so clearly they have to be later than Mark. The fact that in the first verse of his gospel Luke mentions that many people have already attempted to write about Jesus would tend to point to later in the first century to allow time for that writing to have been written so that dating between 75 CE and 80 5CE would seem a reasonable timescale for a gospel to have been written. However there is no obvious way in which we can establish this fact.

Of course, there is the interesting fact that none of the Gospels presents the first person account. they are also presented, originally, without any names the authors attached. Though one cannot quite dismiss the idea, this does tend to point to the fact that the Gospels were being written by those who were not witnesses to the events they describe. Moreover, there are times in which details are given of which the could not have been a witness -- the disciples were asleep and yet somehow, someone was able to write down exactly what Jesus prayed in the garden Gethsemane. I don't claim that the least some of the Gospels has to be taken as folktale -- maybe a core of fact but well decorated by the writing on top.

I have asked Parture to justify he's very early dating the Gospels in my post above I know wait, with interest, what fact he can produce to justify such an early dating.

You can prove Jesus is God through the gospels as well as through Paul. Either way is fine. There eare lots of writings. Without Paul's writings, Jesus is still by far the most recorded person in antiquity.

Most respected scholars place the gospel writings soon after Jesus died. Even with your late dating, your late datings are earlier than for anyone else in antiquity, so either way you lose.

The gospels are written not about someone's self, but about Jesus, so they are biographies. You shouldn't expect otherwise. Matthew was a witness as one of the original disciples, Mark was that man running naked in the streets, so he wrote Mark, Luke is Luke for sure, and John is John for sure. All throughout John's gospel and his epistles and Revelation he uses phraseology that only he uses. Matthew writes as you would expect treating Jesus as king, for Matthew was governmentally a tax collector. Luke was a doctor treated Jesus as a man, Mark treated Jesus as a servant like Mark was, and John emphasized Jesus' deity and love. John is the disciple whom Jesus loved most.

That is a silly argument that the disciples could not report things about when they were asleep. Jesus would have told them what happened.

Your arguments are all quite silly. The burden is not on me, but on you since you want to make the writings late dated, not that that would matter anyhow, since if they were late dated, it is still earlier than for anyone else in antiquity.

Originally Posted by Parture

Try this. Ask yourself one good reason why you think the gospels are so late dated. I gave a really good reason why they are not. So the burden is on you to in suggesting otherwise.

Only two known events are helpful for determining how soon early gospels may have been written after the death of Jesus: the fall of Jerusalem (70 C.E.) and the martyrdom of Peter (ca. 64 C.E.). Yet, these events are useful for dating only two gospels and a portion of a third. Matthew and Luke must have been written after Titus’ siege of Jerusalem because they allude to it (Matt 22:7; Luke 19:43-44, 21:20-24), but it is not clear that Mark was aware of the event.[15] John 21 must have been written after Peter’s death,[16] but the final chapter may have been added to the gospel long after the rest had been written.[17] There are no certain references to any datable historical events in John 1-20.[18]

Dating Early Christian Gospels

So... based on their contents, we know that Matthew, Luke and at least part of John were definitely written after 64 CE. How much later is an open question, but we know for certain that they could not have been written any earlier than this.

Consider this as well:

Trying to determine the latest possible dates for gospel origins is also a difficult task. Certainly, all early gospels were completed before the end of the second century, but how much earlier is unclear. On the basis of manuscript evidence alone, it is only possible to determine that two gospels were in circulation before the middle of the second century, one non-canonical gospel (“Unknown Gospel,” P.Egerton 2)[27] and one canonical gospel (John, ‰52).[28] All additional information about which gospels were in use by the early decades of the second century comes from ambiguous patristic testimonies.

So... we have a hard limit of 64 CE as the earliest point for most of the Gospels. We have a hard limit of about 200 CE as the latest point for all of them, and a hard limit of around 150 CE as the latest date for John.

Now... what basis do you have for your earlier datings? What evidence points toward earlier dates of authorship?

Originally Posted by Parture

Try this. Ask yourself one good reason why you think the gospels are so late dated. I gave a really good reason why they are not. So the burden is on you to in suggesting otherwise.

Name one person in history where someone willingly died for what they knew to be a lie. There is none.

Joseph Smith hardly compares, for he had visions whereas the disciples could touch, eat with, talk with and walk with Jesus, the very person they had spent 3 years with. Moreover Smith's vision was not of God, if he didn't outright lie, because his vision doesn't agree with God's word, so he experienced a supernatural evil vision from Satan. And we don't care about individual accounts because they could be hallucinations. We are concerned with seeing Jesus alive from the dead in various group settings. Modern psychology says group hallucinations are impossible.

Right, let's look at the point is that you raise.

1. The Gospels are dated other times that they are due to the evidence inside the Gospels, and the developed theology which is in them. It is highly unlikely that the developed theology of John, for example, would have arisen in the first few hours after Jesus died. Then, take Luke. Luke says that he has seen the and many accounts and decides to write his own. He must be writing quite late than otherwise would not be the accounts for him to comment about. Actually, of course, you have not provided any evidence or arguments why the Gospels might have been written so terribly early. All you have done is to make an assertion. However I said if you want to discuss the dating of Gospels then you really need to start a new thread because this is interfering considerably with the point of the main thread.

2. My point about Joseph Smith is out from objective point of view we have the account of him and his witnesses to have seen golden plates and we have accounts of the disciples are those who say that they saw Jesus. Leaving aside belief for a moment, there is no obvious way that we can decide what is right and what is wrong as far as I can tell. Of course one is in your belief and the other is not that is hardly an argument to make a decision. The fact is that he who cannot accept one of these cases, what can your argument need for rejecting that one than accepting an earlier one -- after all Joseph Smith saw his goal plates less hundred 50 years ago and there's much more history around those to read and study.

3. I have never suggested that people would die of something they knew to be a lie. How other people will die to something which you consider to be a lie. Take the Muslims who crashed planes into the World Trade Center tower for example. They had a strong beliefs in Allah, they will fully expecting their 72 virgins after their deaths and they died with the planes. They died for their beliefs yet you consider that those beliefs are a lie but to those individuals who died they were not a lie and they will the truth as they saw it. the point is that when someone is prepared to submit their lives to what they consider to be martyrdom it is not what we might later considered to be true or false upon which they base this it is their beliefs at the time that they are mastered which count.

Originally Posted by Penguin

Dating Early Christian Gospels

So... based on their contents, we know that Matthew, Luke and at least part of John were definitely written after 64 CE. How much later is an open question, but we know for certain that they could not have been written any earlier than this.

Consider this as well:



So... we have a hard limit of 64 CE as the earliest point for most of the Gospels. We have a hard limit of about 200 CE as the latest point for all of them, and a hard limit of around 150 CE as the latest date for John.

Now... what basis do you have for your earlier datings? What evidence points toward earlier dates of authorship?

Notice the writer of that article didn't give any reasonings for his late dating, he just declared it like the pople.

The fact of the matter is we have no reason to believe the NT was written later than about 60 AD except for the book of Revelation which was written 95 AD. The disciples were all martyred by about 60 AD, so they recorded their work before then.

And the entire NT can be reconstructed from quotes of the early church fathers in the late first, and 2nd centuries, except for 11 verses, so the NT was completed long before by the middle of the first century.

None of those mormons who saw the golden plates remained mormons. I just saw a gold plate yesterday, it didn't change my life. But seeing someone alive from the dead in various group settings, well that is a whole other ball game. And the disciples died for their testimony whereas Smith died guns ablazing.

Originally Posted by wheels5894

I have never suggested that people would die of something they knew to be a lie. How other people will die to something which you consider to be a lie. Take the Muslims who crashed planes into the World Trade Center tower for example. They had a strong beliefs in Allah, they will fully expecting their 72 virgins after their deaths and they died with the planes. They died for their beliefs yet you consider that those beliefs are a lie but to those individuals who died they were not a lie and they will the truth as they saw it. the point is that when someone is prepared to submit their lives to what they consider to be martyrdom it is not what we might later considered to be true or false upon which they base this it is their beliefs at the time that they are mastered which count.

You're still not thinking right. What this says is they truly believed it, yet Islam, of course, has no evidence, so just believing something is not enough. Where's the evidence? The evidence we have exists for the disciples, for they multiply attested to having seen Jesus alive from the dead in various group settings, and his was not mere believe, but the eyes. Since group hallucinations are impossible and no other naturalistic theory works, then we know it is true Jesus is God.

It's a perfect proof. Now if you shut your mind down to this proof, as evidenced by the fact you can't find a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the disciples, yet don't want to givey our life to Christ, then why not be honest with yourself and just admit you want to go to Hell, because you do. I don't have a problem with your choice to go to Hell. I am grateful to God he locks you up in jail for life so you can't harm people. My problem with you is you try to cover it up, embarrassed by your choice to go to Hell. Why be embarrassed by it since it is what you want?

I almost forgot to mention again, Luke's Act requires it be around 55 AD because it makes no mention of Paul's death (like for Stephen and James)The book of Luke around 45 AD and Mark around 35 AD, just 2 years after the cross. Mark worked with Peter, so Peter's writings were very early also. All Paul's epistles were before he died so they were written from about 40 AD to 50 AD. James and Peter's writings were before 65 AD before hey were martyred. Jude as well. Matthew may have started writing around 30 AD but completed it by 40 AD in its final editing. John's book was quite early as well, for he mentions himself at the cross when Jesus died and it wouldn't make much sense to wait decades to write. And Revelation was definitely written about 95 AD because it was after the Temple was destroyed. It really is a non-issue.

And fairly re cently they discovered as many as 27 verses in 12 books of the NT from the Dead Sea Scrolls discoverd in 1947 that are carbon dated before 65 AD, so science agrees.

Science doesn't agree with you.

However the whole discussion is irrevelant in once sense because no matter how you date it, it still far exceeds anything from antiquity, so the NT holds the highest standards possible.

The issue is really, why do you talk about anything but the central issue, that is, you need to find a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the disciples' beliefs and appearances. Obviously you can't, for noone has, yet you don't give your life to Christ, thus proving you want to go to Hell.

They say Hell is locked from the inside. I agree.