Why Didn't God Leave Huge Quantities of Secular Evidence For Jesus?

[Subduction Zone]

No, God is sovereign not immoral. He may be immoral according to your standards, but He doesn't play by your rules.

Then you he cannot be playing hide and seek and punishing people that cannot find him. You did in effect claim that he was immoral.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Millions of Christians will come before Jesus to tell Him about all the good things they did during their lives, but He will say "depart from Me into the everlasting fire, for I never knew you".

Jesus kept warning people about hell, He spoke about hell as being a lake of fire where people will be tormented forever, with no hope of annihilation or escape. Jesus said, the vast majority will be cast into hell, but we see the vast majority calling Jesus a liar. I personally believe what Jesus said, and I reject the notion that something must be true if the general public invent it and give it oxygen.

I can find you have a dozen verses that say God will reconcile all men to himself. Here: "And I if I be lifted up will draw ALL men to myself." John 12:32 And this: "God, who is the savior of ALL men, especially of those who believe" 1 Timothy 4:10 Pretty explicit that God will save ALL men. What do you think about that?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I can find you have a dozen verses that say God will reconcile all men to himself. Here: "And I if I be lifted up will draw ALL men to myself." John 12:32 And this: "God, who is the savior of ALL men, especially of those who believe" 1 Timothy 4:10 Pretty explicit that God will save ALL men. What do you think about that?

The Bible is a pick and choose book for even those that claim to believe all of it. That is why there are countless sects. All of those contradictions allow for thousands of interpretations.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

All I know is, I was dead but now I'm alive, God never explained how He raises the dead to life. Even if He did explain His technique, I doubt that any human could comprehend it.

Ohhh....you mean dead figuratively as in my soul was dead but now I got Jesus and now my soul is alive. I get it. Pilgrim, I think you're yanking our collective chains, making all these outrageous claims and sitting back and chuckling when our jaws fall to the ground.

 

[Pilgrim Soldier]

No, we really do not. It is time for you to put up or shut up. You have made incorrect statements about the deaths being in the Bible and others and have not owned up to your errors when shown to be wrong.

Where are these "historical records"? Trust me, I have looked into this. No one has ever been able to support those claims to date.

I found all of them, so it means you haven't looked everywhere.

 

[Pilgrim Soldier]

Then you he cannot be playing hide and seek and punishing people that cannot find him. You did in effect claim that he was immoral.

You claimed that He was immoral according to your standards. I don't see anything immoral about someone doing what they please with their property. Jesus created the universe and everything in it, so He has the right to do whatever He pleases with it and nobody can argue with Him.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I found all of them, so it means you haven't looked everywhere.

If you found them why can't you link them?

I cannot link that which does not exist. You do appear to make an awfully lot of obviously false claims and then simply ignore those sins when they are made obvious to you. Did you forget how you claimed that the Bible has records of the deaths of the apostles? I said that it only had the deaths of James and Judas. I can support that claim by showing the verses of the deaths of those two. In fact I already did for James. Where is your support? As a supporter of the Bible you should realize that you do more harm to it than good when you make claims that you cannot support. You in effect declare the Bible to be false by doing do.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You claimed that He was immoral according to your standards. I don't see anything immoral about someone doing what they please with their property. Jesus created the universe and everything in it, so He has the right to do whatever He pleases with it and nobody can argue with Him.

No, according to anyone's standards that has a consistent morality.

And no, creating something does not give a being the right to destroy it, at least if one is claiming that that being is moral. We may need to work on some basics concepts. You are in effect stating that your god is an immoral monster. That would make anyone that worshiped him immoral as well.

 

[Skywalker]

Once agin, unsourced article debunking Zeitgeist? No author either? Why don't you actually explore what experts have to say why rely just on amateur writers?

As real historians have been saying Zeitgeist was taken from author D. M. Murdock. They consider her work to be innacurate and not reliable. Horus and Mithras are not good examples of dying rising gods.

There are many examples however and PhD Carrier touches on them here:
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier

There is a common meme in ancient religions in the Middel East of savior gods and a sub-meme of dying/rising savior gods. Carrier details the difference as well.

Dionysus is not a good example of a dying and rising god. Historians believe Jesus wasn't copied from Dionysus. He wasn't born of a virgin, crucified, and there is evidence that the resurrection of Dionysus was taken from Christianity. Zeitgeist Debunked: Jesus Is Not A Copy Of Pagan Gods | Reasons for Jesus

Virgin birth?
Dionysus also was not born from a virgin mother. There are several different mothers for this god depending on which source you read, but the most common story is that Dionysus was born from Zeus having sex with Semele:

“And Semele, daughter of Kadmos was joined with him [Zeus] in love and bare him a splendid son, joyous Dionysos,–a mortal woman an immortal son. And now they both are gods.” – Hesiod, Theogony. 940 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or 7th B.C.)

Nothing virginal about this story, or any of the others pertaining to the birth of Dionysus.

Crucified?
Dionysus died, not on a cross, by being torn up into a bunch of pieces by the titans (4). He was then boiled in a pot, and then eaten by them. There are at least 6 different accounts of what happens to his remains after that. The only thing this has in common with the death of Jesus is physical pain, which is so general and common in death accounts as to offer no value to this discussion.

Resurrected?
While most restoration accounts of Dionysus are too ambiguous to matter, there is one story that reads: “Dionysus was deceived by the Titans, and expelled from the throne of Jupiter, and torn in pieces by them, and his remains being afterwards put together again, he returned as it were once more to life, and ascended to heaven.”

Pretty close to the story of Jesus. The problem is that this source, Contra Celsum, was written by the early church father Origen in 248AD, over 200 years after the story of Jesus had already been established and circulating. This is a post-Christ resurrection story. If anything, it may have been the Dionysus cults that adopted this idea from Christianity.

As historian Gary Habermas has said:

“I DON’T KNOW ANYBODY WHO THINKS THAT DIONYSUS IS PRE-CHRISTIAN, NOT THE RESURRECTION PORTION.” (5)

 

[Pilgrim Soldier]

I can find you have a dozen verses that say God will reconcile all men to himself. Here: "And I if I be lifted up will draw ALL men to myself." John 12:32 And this: "God, who is the savior of ALL men, especially of those who believe" 1 Timothy 4:10 Pretty explicit that God will save ALL men. What do you think about that?

I think we need to consider the word "All" in it's intended context. We can sink into confusion very quickly if we pluck out Bible verses in isolation.
The Bible never contradicts itself, it is the perfect inerrant Word of God.If I pull a fishing net full of fish out of the water and say, "I'm going to take all the fish to the market" then you read my comment in isolation and start telling people that I took all the fish out of the ocean and took them to the market.

 

[Skywalker]

But the gospels are fiction. Made up stories using the OT and older literature.
They are written exactly like all fiction was written in the day. They do not even claim to be eyewitnesses.
This article goes over many of the literary styles used in myths and how Mark used them and shows some of the OT narratives he used. Obviously the messiah stories came true this is what the gospels were written to be. They are still fiction. All of the wisdom were ideas already being taught by modern Jewish sects.
The Gospels as Allegorical Myth, Part I of 4: Mark

"First of all, before even identifying or examining these literary constructs, allegories, and prospective elements of myth, we can already see by reading the Gospels that they fail to show any substantive content of being actual researched histories. Nowhere in the Gospels do they ever name their sources of information, nor do they read as eye witness testimonies (nor do they identify themselves as such), nor is it mentioned why any sources used would be accurate to rely upon. The authors never discuss any historical method used, nor do they acknowledge how some contents may be less accurate than others, nor do they mention alternate possibilities of the events given the limited information they had from their sources. They never express amazement or any degree of rational skepticism no matter how implausible an event within the story may be — something we would expect from any rational historian (even one living in antiquity). The authors never explain why they changed what their sources said, nor do they even acknowledge that they did such a thing in the first place — despite the fact that Matthew and Luke clearly relied on Mark as a source (as did John, though less obviously so), for example, and then they all redacted Mark’s version as needed to serve their own literary and theological purposes (which explains some of the contradictions found between one Gospel and another). Instead, the Gospels appear to be fictional historical biographies, likely written by specially interested Christians whose intent was to edify Jesus, just like many other fictional historical biographies that were made for various heroes and sages in antiquity. In fact, all students of literary Greek (the authors of the Gospels wrote their manuscripts in literary Greek), commonly used this fictional biographical technique as a popular rhetorical device — where they were taught to invent narratives about famous and legendary people, as well as to build a symbolic or moral message within it, and where they were taught to make changes to traditional stories in order to make whatever point they desired within their own stories."

The gospels are considered biographical texts. How We Know The Gospels Are Reliable | Reasons for Jesus

The Gospels as Historical Sources
It is clear that almost all historians within New Testament studies and other relevant fields (i.e. Greco-Roman history, classical history etc.) hold that the gospels provide historical information that can be used to reconstruct objective history. To what degree they do will certainly differ depending on which historian one decides to ask.

However, that the gospels are devoid of historical value or that they are entirely legendary and mythical is a view no longer held within scholarship. Instead, the gospels are treated as valuable historical documents on the ministry of Christ. Scholar Bart Ehrman explains that,

“If historians want to know what Jesus said and did they are more or less constrained to use the New Testament Gospels as their principal sources. Let me emphasize that this is not for religious or theological reasons—for instance, that these and these alone can be trusted. It is for historical reasons, pure and simple” (2).

Biblical scholar Richard Burridge says that when the gospels are,

“judged by the criteria of the 1st century and I think they are pretty reliable documents. They share essentially the same story of Jesus’ public ministry, his teaching, his preaching, his activity, his healing and the events of the week leading to his death – and the fact that something very odd happened afterwards” (3).

Some of the reasons below will demonstrate why scholars have reasoned to these conclusions.

The Gospel Genre
The genre of a historical text is important. If an author intended to write romantic fiction it would be different to if he had selected to write historical biography. That the gospels are ancient biographies is an important point to take into account concerning their purposes. Scholar James Dunn says that “it has become clearer that the Gospels are in fact very similar in type to ancient biographies” (4).

Graham Stanton agrees: “the gospels are now widely considered to be a sub-set of the broad ancient literary genre of biographies” (5). According to New Testament professor Craig Keener: “Most Gospel scholars today—not all, but most—see the Gospels as biographies” (6).

There are several reasons why the gospels are biographical. Firstly, the authors aimed to portray their subject’s character by narrating his words and deeds, a standard motivation behind a biography (7). Further, despite that the gospel authors possessed agendas for writing (which is the case for all authors), they still decided to adopt Greco-Roman biographical conventions in order to explain the story of Christ.

This suggests that they wished to convey what really happened to him (8). These are just some reasons why the “Gospels are a sub-set of the broad ancient literary genre of ‘lives,’ that is, biographies” (9).

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think we need to consider the word "All" in it's intended context. We can sink into confusion very quickly if we pluck out Bible verses in isolation.
The Bible never contradicts itself, it is the perfect inerrant Word of God.If I pull a fishing net full of fish out of the water and say, "I'm going to take all the fish to the market" then you read my comment in isolation and start telling people that I took all the fish out of the ocean and took them to the market.

Please, find a reliable source that supports your claims about not contradictions in the Bible. Of course if you redefine what a "contradiction" one is every time that one is supplied to you we will have an endless game here.

And remember, apologist sites are never valid sites. They may give you ideas, but they tend to be liars for Jesus.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The gospels are considered biographical texts. How We Know The Gospels Are Reliable | Reasons for Jesus

Here is an example of someone claiming that the Bible is false by only supporting his claims with lying sources.

Perhaps both @Skywalker and @Pilgrim Soldier are only taking on the roles of poes. They appear to be trying to make Christianity look bad by posting the worst arguments possible for it.

 

[Skywalker]

"Hercules was the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and the mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus, who was always chasing one woman or another, took on the form of Alcmene's husband, Amphitryon, and visited Alcmene one night in her bed, and so Hercules was born a demi-god "

No but that is a different variation on the theme. This isn't hard to understand. A God (usually depicted as a man) somehow gets a human woman pregnant. Through magic, a magic lake, actual god-sex, it doesn't matter, it's the same concept. YOur dad is God and your earth mother gives you a connection to humanity.

Thor's dad - Odin, like Zeus, white beard, all powerful, mother was an earth goddess. So another variation. It's the sky-god plus earth mother concept that we see in myths over an over.

Jesus in his humanity was the byproduct of a miraculous conception-not a god marrying a woman. Jesus as God appeared to Joseph. The angel of the Lord was Jesus.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Jesus in his humanity was the byproduct of a miraculous conception-not a god marrying a woman. Jesus as God appeared to Joseph. The angel of the Lord was Jesus.

Except you forgot that we know that the Nativity is as mythical as the story of the conception of Hercules. If there is any truth to the Jesus story you should focus on the parts that have not been refuted.

 

[Pilgrim Soldier]

Please, find a reliable source that supports your claims about not contradictions in the Bible. Of course if you redefine what a "contradiction" one is every time that one is supplied to you we will have an endless game here.

And remember, apologist sites are never valid sites. They may give you ideas, but they tend to be liars for Jesus.

You're right, we wouldn't be able to prove or disprove anything the Bible says. The reason is simple, if we set out to disprove something, we need to posses the damning evidence, and that would require you to be a Bible scholar.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You're right, we wouldn't be able to prove or disprove anything the Bible says. The reason is simple, if we set out to disprove something, we need to posses the damning evidence, and that would require you to be a Bible scholar.

No, one does not need to be a biblical scholar to disprove it. That is quite the non sequitur. Though you do have to admit that I have demonstrated a more thorough knowledge of the book than you have. Or have you forgotten your claims about what was in the Bible that were not in there. If I need to remind you, you claimed that it talked about the deaths of the apostles and said that it claimed that they died martyrs deaths. It only made that claim about one apostle. There are others but until you at least admit that error there is no point in going on.

 

[Pilgrim Soldier]

No, one does not need to be a biblical scholar to disprove it. That is quite the non sequitur. Though you do have to admit that I have demonstrated a more thorough knowledge of the book than you have. Or have you forgotten your claims about what was in the Bible that were not in there. If I need to remind you, you claimed that it talked about the deaths of the apostles and said that it claimed that they died martyrs deaths. It only made that claim about one apostle. There are others but until you at least admit that error there is no point in going on.

The Bible was completed before the apostles were executed, but their deaths were all predicted in the Bible. You obviously know what the Bible doesn't say but you don't know what it does says

 

[Subduction Zone]

The Bible was completed before the apostles were executed, but their deaths were all predicted in the Bible. You obviously know what the Bible doesn't say but you don't know what it does says

Wrong again. Do you know when the Bible was written? Obviously not. I can provide links. You only provide easily falsifiable claims. You should study the Bible some day.

And you forgot that you were the one that claimed that the deaths of the apostles was written about in the Bible. There is only one to be found.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Ohhh....you mean dead figuratively as in my soul was dead but now I got Jesus and now my soul is alive. I get it.

I think we need to consider the word "All" in it's intended context. We can sink into confusion very quickly if we pluck out Bible verses in isolation.
The Bible never contradicts itself, it is the perfect inerrant Word of God.If I pull a fishing net full of fish out of the water and say, "I'm going to take all the fish to the market" then you read my comment in isolation and start telling people that I took all the fish out of the ocean and took them to the market.

So in your world, "ALL" means not all, right?