Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus

[paarsurrey]

No! Wrong! Or you are just adding that theory because you don't believe in the resurrection. Jesus had already foretold these events before the tragic rejection, sham trial and unjust murder!

• #1,620

Regards

 

[Brian2]

No, it means that "they cannot determine whether they happened or not."
Those are different things.
You really need to grasp this point. Perhaps a crash course in the basic rules of logic may help you with understanding this.

Maybe you could teach me.
Let's see.................
"We don't know if Jesus rose from the dead, so we will say that he did not rise from the dead in our analysis of the Bible, and that will reflect our neutrality on the issue."
Is that how the logic goes?

 

[joelr]

The analysis of the historical evidence is based on the presumptions of the people analysing.

No! No, no no? It's based on EVIDENCE? Dating, text, internal/external textual evidence, evidence of using older stories from intertextuality analysis. What are you talking about? You don't read historical scholarship yet you think you completely understand the field? Do you notice a problem here????

The same historical data can produce many interpretations.

Not really. If the Persians occupied Israel and there is no text from Israel about th efinal war and resurrection, then the Persians invade and we find out from the top Iranian religion scholars that those myths are first found in Persian religion and they started appearing in Judaism after the Persian invasion, slowly over centuries, it's most likely syncretism. That is the most reasonable explanation.

History is interpreted in the most probable way. YOu are just admitting here that apologetics twists evidence to make the religion possible.

It would be nice for you if there was a consensus among the historians which agreed with your view, even if it would be an appeal to popularism and authority fallacies.

All historians believe Jesus was a human Rabbi, later mythicized into a Greek savior demigod.

So What About Hannibal, Then? • Richard Carrier Blogs

This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for [x]. P3. The same standards of evidence...

www.richardcarrier.info

All mainstream scholars agree Jesus as demigod is a mythical savior deity. They all agree the Gospels are myths about him. They simply conclude that those myths contain some kernels of fact, and that Jesus was originally not a flying, magic-wielding supergod. But they agree the super-Jesus, the only Jesus about whom we have any accounts at all, didn’t exist. They think some mundane Jesus did, who was dressed up with those legends and beliefs later. But that still admits he belongs to a reference class that the Hannibals of the world do not: that of mythically-attested savior gods who speak to their followers in dreams and visions. So we actually need more evidence for Jesus than we have for Hannibal, to be sure Jesus isn’t just like all other mythical savior gods, who also had amazing stories about them set on earth history, and who also appeared to people in dreams and visions—yet never plausibly existed.

It does not matter if the historians do or don't believe the gospels, it's being neutral that matters.
And of course, being neutral in their scholarship does not automatically mean being anti supernatural and does not automatically lead to a lack of belief in God.

There is nothing to believe, it's a folktale that Mark wrote a Gospel for, using older sources. The other gospels are rewrites of Mark.
Mark uses many sources, sometimes verbatim, OT, Homer, Romulus, Paul, and creates an earthly story for Jesus.

He also writes with very fictive language, ring structure, triadic cycles, chiasmus, NEVER are these used in historical writing, only fiction.
Mark is a mythical story. This is a known thing in scholarship. Only apologetics denies it because they have an agenda to make these stories history.

My response was to show how illogical your response was.

Then you should do that instead of what you did, write a nonsense contradictory statement.

I believe in the supernatural but that does not mean that I have to believe what all religions teach.

Ah, so you have a sound methodology to show why you should believe the Gospel supernatural stories and not the Quran? Or, you just go by belief which has been demonstrated to be unreliable, bias, usually wrong, inconsistent and not a proper way to discover truth. You need an impartial sound methodology.
You already stated you have no methodology so you are now talking about pure bias and nonsense.

You believe in scholarship and that does not mean that you either do or have to believe what all scholars say.

This is pure nonsense. Scholarship is just our best attempt at truth. It's groups of people who put full time energy into a rigorus and strict process in any field to discover what is most likely true.
You also believe in scholarship. When you have surgery do you want a Dr or a faith healer. When you fly do you want planes designed by the best builders or a hobbyist? If you want to know about the Persians do you rerad a book someone channeled from a Persian monk or historical peer-reviewed books?

Why I have to keep saying this, I don't know. I go by what the EVIDENCE says, scholars happen to be aware of the latest and best evidence that passed peer-review and is our best current attempt at truth.

How hard is this to grasp?

IOW there is nothing wrong with me not believing the Quran unless there is something wrong with you not believing all scholarship.

Except that one thing. With scholarship I can look at which side of a debate has the best evidence. With th eQuran you just don't buy th estory. With Jesus you buy th estory, with Muhammad you don't buy into it..

Not reliable, not logical, not how truth is discovered.

Many astounding examples of prophecy have been made and they are in the Bible. All of them however seem to have been written after the fact when critical Biblical scholarship starts criticising them.

Zero examples. The NT is a folk story written by high level writers using the OT to continue the story. The secret is out, they use the OT verbatim.
Mark 15.24: “They part his garments among them, casting lots upon them.”

Psalm 22:18: “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon them.”

Mark 15.29-31: “And those who passed by blasphemed him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘…Save yourself…’ and mocked him, saying ‘He who saved others cannot save himself!’ ”

Psalm 22.7-8: “All those who see me mock me and give me lip, shaking their head, saying ‘He expected the lord to protect him, so let the lord save him if he likes.’ ”

Mark 15.34: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Psalm 22.1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mark also appears to have used Psalm 69, Amos 8.9, and some elements of Isaiah 53, Zechariah 9-14, and Wisdom 2 as sources for his narratives. So we can see yet a few more elements of myth in the latter part of this Gospel, with Mark using other scriptural sources as needed for his story, whether to “fulfill” what he believed to be prophecy or for some other reason.

Earlier in Mark (chapter 5), we hear about another obviously fictional story about Jesus resurrecting a girl (the daughter of a man named Jairus) from the dead, this miracle serving as another obvious marker of myth, but adding to that implausibility is the fact that the tale is actually a rewrite of another mythical story, told of Elisha in 2 Kings 4.17-37 as found in the OT, and also the fact that there are a number of very improbable coincidences found within the story itself. In the story with Elisha, we hear of a woman from Shunem who seeks out the miracle-working Elisha, finds him, falls to his feet and begs him to help her son who had recently fallen gravely ill. Someone checks on her son and confirms that he is now dead, but Elisha doesn’t fret about this, and he goes into her house, works his miraculous magic, and raises him from the dead. In Mark’s version of the story (Mark 5.22-43), the same things occur. We hear about Jairus coming to look for Jesus, finds him, falls to his feet and begs him to help him with his daughter. Someone then comes to confirm that she is now dead, but Jesus (as Elisha) doesn’t fret, and he goes into his house, works his miraculous magic, and raises her from the dead.


There are many more.


ALSO, Yahweh says many things that will happen and they did not. Hundreds of them. So you are picking and choosing and not caring about what is actually true.

1. God promises to bring Jacob safely back from Egypt, but Jacob dies in Egypt (Gen.47:28-29) 46:3
2. Contrary to the prophecy in 48:21, Joseph died in Egypt, not Israel. Gen.50:24
3. God says that the Israelites will destroy all of the peoples they encounter. But he was unable to keep his promise. 7:1, 7:23-24, 31:3
4. God's favorite people will never be infertile (neither will their cows!) and will never get sick. (God will send infertility and diseases on the other guys.) 7:14-15
5. God promises to give Joshua all of the land that his "foot shall tread upon." He says that none of the people he encounters will be able to resist him. But later we find that God didn't keep his promise, and that many tribes withstood Joshua's attempt to steal their land. 1:3-5, 3:10, 15:63, 16:10, 17:12-13, 17:17-18, 21:43-45
6. God promises Abram and his descendants all of the land of Canaan. But both history and the bible (Acts 7:5 and Hebrews 11:13) show that God's promise to Abram was not fulfilled. 13:15, 15:18, 17:8, 28:13-14

Is that because they have all been written after the fact or is it something to do with critical Biblical scholarship?

give an example. There is no prophecy in the Bible that can be demonstrated to be an actual prophecy

I have no answer and I don't need an answer.

There you go, you don't have an answer to why you don't have a methodology to demonstrate why your version of being "ed" is superior to an Islamic person. Because there is no answer because religion is based on emotions and feelings. Not truth, facts, logic. You cannot show why it's better because it isn't.
It's exactly the same as any other person who bought into Scientology, Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism or any other wu belief.

 

[joelr]

But as I said, historical scholarship leads to all sorts of analysis and you have nothing to show that your version of historical analysis is any better than others.

Of course we do? Evidence, papers, archaeological evidence, textual evidence, historians of the day, comparative religions, temple finds, idol finds, proper translation of Hebrew and Greek text, older Mesopotamian cuniform finds, Greek religion, Persian religion, all studied by PhD scholars.


Again, the evidence is largely in consensus.


Genesis = Mesopotamian


2nd Temple Period, Persian influence


167 BC, Hellenism influence.


Jesus is a human Rabbi, possibly completely made up, that is currently under debate.

Billions of people believe the Bible, billions do not. So?
You have no answer for me about why your historical analysis is best, so why should I have an answer?

Of course I have an answer? How many times can I say it? How much evidence do you want? Christianity is a syncretic blend of local religions.


Itself has NO evidence. It has endless evidence of it being syncretic mythology. It uses older theology, Persian, Greek, I can cite evidence all day? Of course you will just complain because you are not looking for what is true but rather to prove something you believe is true. Not how truth is found.

Historical analysis just shows Judaism and Christianity were just using religious trends.


There is also historians of the time, none mention anything other than people who follow Gospels. Tacitus says it's a harmless superstition.


Direct evidence.


Cosmological arguments for a deity can all be debunked and do not support a God. But theism has no evidence whatsoever.

For all I know your historical analysis is based on the presumptions you bring to the Bible,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, your preheld beliefs. Maybe not, maybe you have to only true Biblical analysis and everyone should believe you.

No, Biblical scholars in critical historical studies have that analysis. People should believe them.


Dr. Bart Ehrman - How Jesus Became God


Dr. Carrier - OHJ


Dr. David Litwa - Lesous Deus


Dr. Richard Miller - Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity

a few examples of excellent peer-reviewed monographs.

Why would anyone believe me? Where do you get these ides from?

I've been doing something like that for a while also and my faith in Jesus is still intact. Maybe I'm just biased, yes probably. Maybe I'm just thick, yes probably. Maybe Jesus is the truth, yes probably.

You haven't. You haven't read one single historical work.


Dr Joel Baden


Dr John Collins


Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou - On God, an Anatomy


OT scholars.


Baden and Collins are also on youtube Yale Divinity lectures. Collins specializes in the Persian influence, I can timestamp those videos.

I don't believe you are even close to the path theological scholars went through when they switched to historical studies.


scholar Richard Miller, an ex-fundamentalist had a difficult journey he details here:

Same with Ehrman and Kipp Davis

I see the Bible and I see many people come along and attack it's reliability etc and I see none to manage to do a really good job.

It isn't reliable. That is proven. Borrowed theology, Gospels are anon and non-eyewitness.

Gospel evidence is compiled here -

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels » Internet Infidels

The traditional authors of the canonical Gospels—Matthew the tax collector, Mark the attendant of Peter, Luke the attendant of Paul, and John the son of Zebedee—are not held to be the Gospels' actual authors by the majority of mainstream New Testament scholars. Christian apologists nevertheless...

infidels.org

It's not an attack. It's evidence, facts and so on. If I said the Mormon Bible with Jesus coming to America was historical facts you would tell me it's not reliable facts. That is just true.

Each new attack can challenge my faith, (and it is faith, but there is reasoning there also) and your's did that also, but in the end I saw thru it, for what it is,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, imo.
Maybe you and I aren't that different in our approaches but we start off from different places and with different presuppositions and so end up at different places.

You have never ever given any actual reason why any of these facts are wrong ecept for supernatural bias but you cannot demonstrate why you DO have this bias for all other supernatural claims like the Quran. Meaning it's just a magic apologetic device to cover for the fact you just buy into one story and that is it.


Again, the Gospels are far from reliable or probable. That is fact.

Not really virtually all. There are plenty of scholars who disagree and see and analyse things differently.

You are not listening.






All mainstream scholars agree Jesus as demigod is a mythical savior deity. They all agree the Gospels are myths about him. They simply conclude that those myths contain some kernels of fact, and that Jesus was originally not a flying, magic-wielding supergod. But they agree the super-Jesus, the only Jesus about whom we have any accounts at all, didn’t exist. They think some mundane Jesus did, who was dressed up with those legends and beliefs later. But that still admits he belongs to a reference class that the Hannibals of the world do not: that of mythically-attested savior gods who speak to their followers in dreams and visions. So we actually need more evidence for Jesus than we have for Hannibal, to be sure Jesus isn’t just like all other mythical savior gods, who also had amazing stories about them set on earth history, and who also appeared to people in dreams and visions—yet never plausibly existed.


Dr Carrier, Jesus historian





AT 17:44


Host asks - The contradictions in the OT, Moses did not write the Pentatuch, Bible is not literal (OT) is this the consensus view in historical scholarship?



Dr Joel Baden - "YES, outside of apologetic institutions it isn't even a question. We have been past this for 1000 years, certainly since the Enlightnment"



Dr Baden, Yale divinity scholar, Harvard PhD, author Composition of the Pentatuch

So a common element in your historians would be a lack of belief in the supernatural.

No a lack of evidence in the Bible and surrounding culture for the supernatural. A lack of evidence for the Bible stories, excellent evidence for borrowed theology. Justin Martyr SAID IT WAS TRUE, he said th edevil made it "look that way"

A common element might be belief in the Bible with another group of scholars.
Different beliefs can mean a different way of viewing the evidence.

I don't know what you mean.

23:07


"why do mainstream scholars believe Ruth, Jonah and Ester are Jewish fiction?"

Dr Baden, "well, it's all fiction, the better question is why does anybody believe anything isn't fiction in the Bible?"

 

[Brian2]

Surely you're aware that most atheists aren't on the forum or subject to its rules, yet they will also tell you that they live without faith.

Regarding proselytizing, most atheists are also humanists, who promote reason over faith and compassion over received morals, and who reject gods, scripture, and commandments (religion). If that's proselytizing, mea culpa. I'm doing what I do now - describing what humanism is, what humanists believe, and what their agenda is - but I wouldn't call it proselytization. It does not include converting you to humanism. Stay as you are if you like. It does include disempowering organized, politicized religions in secular states (antitheism).

So people say they live without faith but have beliefs.

We don't preach. We teach. Preaching uses the methods of indoctrination - repetition without sound argument. Teaching involves reasoned, evidenced argument. Another big difference between the two is that your preacher cares whether you believe him. Your teacher may test what you've learned, but won't ask you if you believe it. Think of a creationist Sunday School "teacher" and a biology teacher teaching evolution.

Maybe you are speaking about yourself and cannot speak for others.

Not quite. Not believed to be true rather than declared untrue. The critical thinker doesn't call something untrue because it has not been demonstrated to be true. That's an ignorantium fallacy.

Not all atheists/skeptics are your type of critical thinkers, so you should not generalise about them.

As soon as you invoke change (became) or even persistence without change (is), you are implying the passage of time as well as location. Consciousness imposes an "I am here now" on the subject and "that is there now" on the object of consciousness, as well as an implied sense of was becoming is headed to will be. Even when dreaming, this is the architecture and psychology of the theater of consciousness. Even in prelinguistic humans and all other conscious beasts, this is the stage. And it would be the case for gods as well if they exist, because to exist means to exist somewhere sometime.

The point of all this is to show the self-contradiction (incoherence) of concepts like supernaturalism, and existing outside of time or space. Supernaturalism is an incoherent position if it means an existence and laws separate from nature yet able to effect nature. It may not matter to you, but as soon as you tell me that your god exists outside of time or is changeless, I understand that as it doesn't exist. And if there is an aspect of reality unknown to us that can modify perceptible reality, it's also part of nature - a previously unseen part. If gods exist, whatever we mean by a god, they are also a part and product of nature.

In the Bible God is. He is everywhere and that means everywhere in time and space and does not change but can bring change to other things.
For you to do as you say you do, you should not say that this Biblical God does not exist. But you do say that.

What truth? Can you say what it is and how you know it's true?
Your beliefs are the result of trying to say that something that doesn't exist does anyway. You say that it has none of the qualities of things that can be detected when asked to demonstrate this god, yet you claim to have detected it anyway and have a personal relationship with it. That's incoherent - you've detected the undetectable. I understand that as you've detected your own mind ("in here") and misunderstood what it reveals to you as being a part of "out there." But when we fail to detect this deity empirically, we are told it's not in space or time and undetectable. That's not hard to interpret.

The truth I am speaking of is the basic moral understanding God has put into each of us.
And no, you cannot say that the Bible God does not exist.
I claim that God has revealed Himself to me through faith but is not detectable by the scientific method. That is not incoherent.
But I can see your reasoning, as someone without faith in God. You see things in terms of that.

 

[Brian2]

Such as? Where is faith required, in the skeptic's position?

Faith is required to believe the things that skeptics go on about.

What are you claiming as "preaching" here?

The attacks on the believers' beliefs and saying they are wrong and unreasonable to believe.

 

[Colt]

• #1,620

Regards

Matthew 28​

Jesus’ Resurrection​

28 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. 2 Suddenly, there was a great earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and going to the tomb, he rolled away the stone and was sitting on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. 4 The guards were so terrified of him that they shook and became like dead men. 5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here. He has risen, just as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. 7 Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has risen from the dead! And look, he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.’ See, I have told you!”

 

[Brian2]

This was in response to, "I want the same evidence I'd expect of anything else that actually exists. You're the one giving special exceptions for the special things you believe but can't demonstrate. I don't accept that."


What do I get? If, if, if, what I say is true, then what I say is true. Cool. Can you demonstrate that a god exists and created everything and "keeps everything going?"

We all know that you don't believe in the Bible God because you deny that there is any evidence for Him.

Oh, it doesn't? How do we know what we're talking about then?


That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
-Christopher Hitchens

You know what we are talking about and so do I, even without giving a definition and you can and do dismiss His existence without evidence and you refuse to accept the evidence that is there.

We can observe and measure the physical universe. We can make predictions about it. We can provide definitions for the things we are talking about in that physical universe, like "gravity."

So far, you've gone nothing even close to that with your god claims.

It would be great for you if you could study and test God like gravity is tested and studied, but God is a living spirit, something that science does not even know how to test.
But we do not know what gravity is, or what matter is or what light is or what any physical thing is. We have names for them and can test them, but have no idea what they are, just what they do.
A spiritual thing would be something like an idea, maybe "love your neighbour as yourself". We are told that God is Love. We have more of an idea what these things are than we do of what gravity is.

 

[joelr]

Having an anti supernatural bias means that you see things in that light and analyse the Bible in that light, and say that it cannot possibly be true because for a start you do not believe in the supernatural and so start off with the presupposition that the Bible cannot be true, and then you analyse the history in such a way that it shows the Bible is not true. This is what I find when I read attacks against the Bible. It is circular reasoning and can even start with the idea that the Bible is not evidence of anything except that it was written.

There is so much more evidence than just an assumption about the supernatural that it's mind boggling you think that is an argument.
Just read the evidence for the Gospel names being added late 2nd century.
The main theology is all borrowed also, easy to demonstrate.

Genesis IS a re-writing of Mesopotamian creation/flood myths.
But this concept is flawed from the start. If you allow for any supernatural then you have to allow for the Quran and Mormonism to also be true.
If you only allow for Christian supernatural then it's massive special pleading among other things and it's just one big fallacy. That isn't how one reasons, uses a rational methodology, it's just delusional, magical thinking.

You might think I have an unreasonable reason, but you see the Bible as not being evidence of anything. It is unreasonable to you but not to me.

Yet, all you can do is say "I don't have to give you a reason" and "I don't have to have a methodology".
So it's just a fantasy or wishful beliefs. You bought into it, emotionalized the story and accepted it as part of reality and cannot allow critical, rational thinking to get in the way.

Yes I believe in Jesus. Why do you think a believer in the supernatural should believe the truth of every religion. Maybe a Baha'e can do that, but that is unreasonable.

Now you are conflating arguments. Supernatural bias was your thing now you just claim "belief in Jesus".
Same question, by what method can you demonstrate that you can tell your belief in Jesus is more rational than billions of people believing in Muhammad or Mormonism?
I don't thing a "believer in the supernatural" has to believe every story but the supernatural bias argument does not include a method for distinguishing which supernatural stories you are supposed to choose. Now we are at a different thing. Belief in a deity.

How can you justify that? Gospels? Synoptic problem provides excellent evidence they all copied from Mark.
Arguments given here:

The Synoptic Problem | Bible.org

Any serious discussion of the Synoptic Gospels must, sooner or later, involve a discussion of the literary interrelationships among Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is essential in order to see how an author used his sources (both for reliability’s sake as well as for redactional criticism), as...

bible.org

and even more detailed here:

The Case Against Q: A Synoptic Problem Web Site by Mark Goodacre

This Synoptic Problem Web Site is the home page for Q sceptics. It expounds the Farrer Theory, which maintains Markan Priority but dispenses with Q. Its author, Mark Goodacre is Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

markgoodacre.org

Mark is writing fiction, using Hellenistic theology, all of which can be detailed.

Yes the NT carries the revelation further and makes it clearer.

Right so th eQuran and Mormon Bible also could.

Although the fact remains that in historical studies all of the updates in the NT are syncretic from Greek, Persian and Roman religions.

Second Temple Judaism​

During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire. Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them. Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[52] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is thought to be derived from Persian cosmology,[52] although the later claim has been recently questioned.[53] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[52] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[50] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC).[43] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[43]

Sanders
Wright
Hundley

Yes I believe God has led me to Jesus and Muhammad is a false prophet, so?

And by what methodology do you know that you were actually led by God and Muhammad is false? Beliefs are far from meaning truth.
As billions of Muslims demonstrate. And they claim they were led and know in their heart Allah has guided them. I know this from personal experience.

And are you saying that your scholars just don't believe the supernatural in all religions and so are consistent?

No scholars are consistent because they rely on evidence, if no evidence is available it remains unknown.

The anti religion historians who make it their life's work to debunk religions and who seem to concentrate on the Bible. But you don't see that the profound basic background belief is to not believe. That makes other conclusions and ways of analysing, just logical necessities.

Islamic countries do not have critical historical scholars, They would have problems.

They are not debunking religions, they are bringing the historical information alive. Just because the text is not correct isn't their fault.
Listen to th eentire Dr Baden interview, he explains the evidence regarding where the Israelites actually came from. It's actually very interesting.
Some Rabbi wrote a story that isn't true? So what? History should still be done as accurately as possible. Historians know apologetics institutions hide from this reality to keep their stories alive. Some people are not interested in fake history and false truth.

 

[Brian2]

This was in response to, "It's simply your claim that it's "out of the realm of science." And a convenient one at that. Now you don't have to actually explain anything! It's just true because you believe it."


Thank you for providing something of a definition.

To me, it sounds like "the supernatural" is a placeholder for "things we can't explain." And then you just say "God did it," which isn't an actual explanation either.

There are plenty of things that we cannot explain and do not say that it is supernatural or God did it. That used to happen before science started explaining mechanisms for how things happen.
Of course we still have no idea about those things that the Bible God has said that He did. Those are the things that I attribute to God.

Do they?

All I've been saying is "what is the supernatural and how do we know it exists?"

You have answers for those things, but don't like those answers.
You want God and the supernatural to be things that can be studies by science and so keep rejecting faith and where it leads.

All you seem to have done here is said "I know you are but what am I?"

I just threw what you said, back at you.
If what I believe is not true just because that is what I believe, then the same applies to you.

 

[joelr]

You certainly have some basic background belief, or lack thereof. It is a firm one from what you say and how you say it.
Reading historians with that same belief has a way of encouraging that belief or lack thereof, and you end up saying that there is no chance the gospels are real, internally or externally.

First, understand how it is known.

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels » Internet Infidels

The traditional authors of the canonical Gospels—Matthew the tax collector, Mark the attendant of Peter, Luke the attendant of Paul, and John the son of Zebedee—are not held to be the Gospels' actual authors by the majority of mainstream New Testament scholars. Christian apologists nevertheless...

infidels.org

next, it's Hellenism mixed with Jewish religion. I can provide a detailed lecture, timestamped with many sources and so on to explain how this is known.


Also Christians loved to invent stuff that wasn't real. There are fake gospels, 36 others, Acts, Epistles and much more, written by Church fathers to bolster the religion.


Also the 1st canon was the Marcionite canon, forever lost to us. The 2nd century of Christianity was 1/2 Gnostic and what is actually true (even if it were true) would be impossible to say. Rome put together the 4 Gospels in late 3rd century although they were being used in some respect before this because we have letters from Ignatius late 2nd century. They did not use 4 Gospels.


















2nd century Christianity:






These various interpretations were called heresies by the leaders of the proto-orthodox church, but many were very popular and had large followings. Part of the unifying trend in proto-orthodoxy was an increasingly harsh anti-Judaism and rejection of Judaizers. Some of the major movements were:

• Gnosticism – second to fourth centuries – reliance on revealed knowledge from an unknowable God, a distinct divinity from the Demiurge who created and oversees the material world. The Gnostics claimed to have received secret teachings (gnosis) from Jesus via other apostles which were not publicly known, or in the case of Valentinius from Paul the Apostle. Gnosticism is predicated on the existence of such hidden knowledge, but brief references to private teachings of Jesus have also survived in the canonic scripture (Mark 4:11) as did warning by the Christ that there would be false prophets or false teachers. Irenaeus' opponents also claimed that the wellsprings of divine inspiration were not dried up, which is the doctrine of continuing revelation.[citation needed]
• Marcionism – second century – the God of Jesus was a different God from the God of the Old Testament.
• Montanism – second century – a pentecostal movement initiated by Montanus and his female disciples, featuring prophetic continuing revelations from the Holy Spirit.
• Adoptionism – second century – Jesus was not born the Son of God, but was adopted at his baptism, resurrection or ascension.
• Docetism – second to third century – Jesus was pure spirit and his physical form an illusion.
• Sabellianism – third century – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three modes of the one God and not the three separate persons of the Trinity.
• Arianism – third to fourth century – Jesus, while not merely mortal, was not eternally divine and was of some lesser status than God the Father.[note 1]

In the middle of the second century, the Christian communities of Rome, for example, were divided between followers of Marcion, Montanism, and the gnostic teachings of Valentinus.






Many groups were dualistic, maintaining that reality was composed into two radically opposing parts: matter, usually seen as evil, and spirit, seen as good. Proto-orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, held that both the material and spiritual worlds were created by God and were therefore both good, and that this was represented in the unified divin

Wow, really?
I see faith, based on your and other like minded people's analysis of the Bible.
It all looks like a reasoned position to me,,,,,,,,,,,, but there is a background doubt in the Bible that has been encouraged and grown into a full blooded denial.

That actually sounds delusional? You keep saying "denial" yet when asked for a method to tell the difference between Islam. Mormon or Christian beliefs you said there is none.

So how is this denial? It's a story, no evidence, borrowed theology, trending theology ONLY in thel ocal area and where Greeks occupied did these type savior religions happen. You cannot show a method to pick out which religion is true and yet you still call it denial? It isn't denial. Just like you don't believe Krishna or the Quran, it's rational skepticism.

The literary devices only used in fiction, some of it is covered here based on Dr Carriers work:

The Gospels as Allegorical Myth, Part I of 4: Mark

Previously, I’ve written about the historicity of Jesus, and mentioned how the most recent analysis, in Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus (the first comprehensive, academica…

lagevondissen.wordpress.com

Justin Martyr, yes faith, which is fantasy. He;s trying to justify why Jesus looks like Greek sons of God. So he comes up with an idea, the devil did it to fool Christians. Scripture doesn't bother to mention this will happen, it's just a person making claims this time, literally. He has no proof any devil is real, he's making it up and you are eating it up.


Yes, it's faith, desperation and willingness to forgo logic, probability and reason and come up with an ad-hoc reason. And you bought into it because you also want it to be true.


There is no chance a devil went back in time and made all the Hellenistic religions to fool future Christians into thinking Jesus was a copy.


He IS A COPY?! No chance any devil did anything. Faith IS unreasonable. Can I hold Islam on faith? Mormonism? Race supremecy? Yes I can. Faith is not reasonable. There is also no evidence of any devil never mind a devil creating an entire type of religion in ancient Greek society. Absurd.


Evidence is what matters. You think that ad-hoc explanation is "reasonable"? YET, if I used the same logic for Muhammad, if he was similar to older Arabic religions in the area you would laugh at a terrible attempt to justify a copycat theology.


Justin Martyr, The Dialogue with Trypho


Chapter 69. The devil, since he emulates the truth, has invented fables about Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius


Justin: Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah's days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter's] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, 'strong as a giant to run his race,' has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Æsculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ? But since I have not quoted to you such Scripture as tells that Christ will do these things, I must necessarily remind you of one such: from which you can understand, how that to those destitute of a knowledge of God, I mean the Gentiles, who, 'having eyes, saw not, and having a heart, understood not,' worshipping the images of wood, [how even to them] Scripture prophesied that they would renounce these [vanities], and hope in this Christ. It is thus written:




And when I hear, Trypho, that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent counterfeited also this.


Wow, a deceiving serpent wrote all the Greek Hellenistic religions. So reasonable!

 

[joelr]

You trust mainline anti faith scholarship way too much imo.
It is all the current myths that sees itself as so advanced because it is the 21st century afterall.

No I trust evidence. Why would you trust ancient stories with myths that were trending and have zero evidence?
If you let go of your need for it to be true you probably would see it's exactly as unreasonable as buying into the Quran or Mormonism.

Both use faith, anu position can use faith. You have been lied to, faith is not a path to truth. It's an excuse when there is no evidence. Any cult or doctrine can say just have faith it's true.
They do. The Law of Attraction movement uses the same scam, just believe, have faith and your reality will be created as you desire.
If you grew up in Islam you would have faith in Allah.


Scholarship is the only thig that cares about what is true. It takes a Phd to work on intertextuality and solve these issues. Yet fundamentalists hand wave them off with propaganda like "anti-faith scholarship" and "don't trust them too much".

Why is that? It's because they will expose you to what is actually true.

These are all peer-reviewed PhD textbooks/monographs,

John Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible 3rd ed.
“Biblical creation stories draw motifs from Mesopotamia, Much of the language and imagery of the Bible was culture specific and deeply embedded in the traditions of the Near East.
2nd ed. The Old Testament, Davies and Rogerson
“We know from the history of the composition of Gilamesh that ancient writers did adapt and re-use older stories……
It is safer to content ourselves with comparing the motifs and themes of Genesis with those of other ancient Near East texts.
In this way we acknowledge our belief that the biblical writers adapted existing stories, while we confess our ignorance about the form and content of the actual stories that the Biblical writers used.”
The Old Testament, A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, M. Coogan
“Genesis employs and alludes to mythical concepts and phrasing, but at the same time it also adapts transforms and rejected them”
God in Translation, Smith
“…the Bibles authors fashioned whatever they may have inherited of the Mesopotamian literary tradition on their own terms”
THE OT Text and Content, Matthews, Moyer
“….a great deal of material contained in the primeval epics in Genesis is borrowed and adapted from the ancient cultures of that region.”

The Formation of Genesis 1-11, Carr
“The previous discussion has made clear how this story in Genesis represents a complex juxtaposition of multiple traditions often found separately in the Mesopotamian literary world….”
The Priestly Vision of Genesis, Smith
“….storm God and cosmic enemies passed into Israelite tradition. The biblical God is not only generally similar to Baal as a storm god, but God inherited the names of Baal’s cosmic enemies, with names such as Leviathan, Sea, Death and Tanninim.”

 

[Brian2]

Atheism is the scam? Religions teaches that there is a magic man in the sky who will burn you forever if you don't obey a bunch of rules they say come from a god, and to come to church each week with your wallet, but rejecting that is the scam?

I did not even say that atheism is a scam. It is a scam to say that atheism is just a disbelief in God. You Carl Sagan quote at the bottom of your post shows that, as do many things that atheist on this forum say.

No, those are your words. What the critical thinker says is that only things that can be demonstrated to actually exist should be thought to exist.

I was not speaking about critical thinkers in general and that was not you with your pure and romanticised critical thinking and humanism.

That's your error, not his. Please try to understand the difference between "I won't accept that it is real until you show me" and "If you don't show me, it's not real." Do those sound like the exact same idea to you, or can you distinguish between them. If the latter, please note that the skeptic's position is the latter one and to discontinue morphing it into the former one, unless you think it's a good way to think. If so, please explain why you think that.

I know the difference and I know that not all atheists believe the way you want to define atheism.
Even atheists who claim your definition for themselves have the ability to morph into the atheist who denies the existence of God.
They may even say that is true, but they are only denying the existence of the Bible God. But that is hardly the stance of a critical thinker whom you say does not deny the existence of things, just does not believe they exist.
This is why I see that whole "I just lack belief" thing as a scam for some people who are just out to destroy the faith of people.

Of course he doesn't. It's YOUR straw man. You wrote, "So you say that only things that have verifiable evidence are real and can only be demonstrated only through their verifiable evidence. Then you ask, "Which demonstrably real things don't have verifiable evidence?"
But you make the error in your thinking when you think that only verifiable things are real." He did not say that "only things that have verifiable evidence are real." Those are your words, not his. His words are the ones that followed, which you quotes rather than mis-paraphrase, and it means something different than your words.

I did not ask "Which demonstrably real things don't have verifiable evidence?" and in what I said I was just skipping over the BS and getting straight to the point that he just used this "verifiably true" stuff in arguments against the existence of God. Other unverifiable things are OK to believe but not God.
So he and you attack belief in God and suggest (even if not say outright) that only those things with verifiable evidence are real.
Maybe people have fooled themselves that they don't actually believe that God does not exist, just lack belief in a God.
I see the difference but I also see the scam.

Scholarship excludes faith. All academia does.

I figured that.

Once again, not what he wrote, which was, "Feeling led because you learned a supernatural story is 100% psychology and seems to happen no matter the religion. Making your method completely useless until you demonstrate it's more effective. Without circular logic." He's referring to your method of deciding what's true - faith.

Yes I know.

Did you mean being a critical thinker? He has a bias against all belief by faith. So do I. It's called skepticism, or the belief that ideas should be empirically justified before being believed.

You seem incapable of understanding that not all belief is held by faith. There is a method for extracting faith from ones thoughts and belief set. Master it and faith is gone from your thinking. To those who have not understood what this method is and does, all belief must seem equal to theirs. What else is possible for them to believe if thusly unaware?

If I look hard I find beliefs that lead people to logically conclude certain things.
In joelr's case I seem to see that he has gone past critical thinking and is thinking with his faith. It is his faith which declares that certain parts and in fact all of the Bible cannot be true. Critical thinking would be saying that in his opinion it looks like part of the Bible are not true.
He believe the anti Bible scholars he reads, what he calls the consensus and does not consider the pro bible scholars or that scholarship, in it's neutrality, excludes the supernatural and God as possibilities.
Hmm, he sounds like a typical skeptic I guess.

That's true for all of us, but our biases need not be irrational. The bias in favor of justified belief over unjustified is called skepticism and is a fundamental value of critical thought, and what makes that bias rational is the stellar success of its application, which has given us Enlightenment values: science and reason over faith, tolerant secular governments, and free citizens with guaranteed rights. That's the evidence that this bias is rational and constructive. Faith has no such successes. The biases of the Abrahamic religions include irrational and destructive bigotries (gays and atheists are abominations, women are incubators, man is worthless and helpless) and magical thinking.

Hmm that was a mouthfull. All I'll say it that I don't see all good things having come from humanism however.

 

[Jimmy]

82 pages bickering about evidence. Wow.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Jesus was sinless

The Bible claims that but doesn’t show him sinless. He even breaks commandments.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

people say they live without faith but have beliefs.

Do you see a contradiction there? Do that mean that you equate all belief with faith?

Maybe you are speaking about yourself and cannot speak for others.

I wrote, "We don't preach. We teach. Preaching uses the methods of indoctrination - repetition without sound argument. Teaching involves reasoned, evidenced argument. Another big difference between the two is that your preacher cares whether you believe him. Your teacher may test what you've learned, but won't ask you if you believe it. Think of a creationist Sunday School "teacher" and a biology teacher teaching evolution."

Did you want to address the comment? Is there any part you think is incorrect, and if so, which and why?

Not all atheists/skeptics are your type of critical thinkers, so you should not generalise about them.

I wrote, "The critical thinker doesn't call something untrue because it has not been demonstrated to be true. That's an ignorantium fallacy." That applies to all critical thinkers. If it doesn't apply to a particular thinker, he is not a critical thinker. He's a faith-based thinker at least some of the time.

In the Bible God is. He is everywhere and that means everywhere in time and space

I thought you said God lived outside of time. That's when I explained that that to say that God could not be detected anywhere at any time is to call God nonexistent, since to exist means to occupy a series of consecutive instants somewhere.

For you to do as you say you do, you should not say that this Biblical God does not exist. But you do say that.

What I say is that if you are going to postulate that something does not exist in time that you are saying the same as it doesn't exist. But I go further and say the god of the Old Testament doesn't exist unrelated to its temporality. Maybe a god or gods exist, but not one that created the universe in six days and created a first pair of human beings. Science has ruled those possibilities out.

The truth I am speaking of is the basic moral understanding God has put into each of us.

For starters, there's no evidence that our moral intuitions come from anything but naturalistic evolution, and they are intuitions, not truths as I use the word truth. Truth refers to fact. Truth is the quality facts possess that makes them facts, and that depends on them accurately mapping some aspect of reality

I claim that God has revealed Himself to me through faith but is not detectable by the scientific method. That is not incoherent.

So then you can detect God, but not science. How does that work? Your detector is your nervous system. How can it detect something that science can't?

The attacks on the believers' beliefs and saying they are wrong and unreasonable to believe.

I wrote, "What are you claiming as "preaching" here?" That's not preaching. That's dialectic.

we still have no idea about those things that the Bible God has said that He did.

Sure we do. Most never happened. Nobody created the world in six days, nobody created two human beings and put them in a garden, there were no ten plagues of Egypt and no tower of Babel. We know how the universe evolved and how it works day today, both without intelligent oversight.

I did not even say that atheism is a scam. It is a scam to say that atheism is just a disbelief in God.

No, it's a fact.

I know that not all atheists believe the way you want to define atheism. Even atheists who claim your definition for themselves have the ability to morph into the atheist who denies the existence of God.

OK, So what? They're still atheists like agnostic atheists.

This is why I see that whole "I just lack belief" thing as a scam for some people who are just out to destroy the faith of people.

Who's trying to destroy your faith? And how does claiming that one doesn't believe in gods become a scam? Do you mean they're lying about their unbelief in gods? Even if they were, how are they scamming you or anybody else.

Other unverifiable things are OK to believe but not God.

Not to a critical thinker.

Maybe people have fooled themselves that they don't actually believe that God does not exist, just lack belief in a God. I see the difference but I also see the scam.

This seems like nothing at all. What are you actually complaining about and why? Why would this offend you even if correct? I think theists are fooling themselves, but they aren't the scammers. The ones who fooled them and then got them to give churches money are.

 

[Brian2]

The Bible claims that but doesn’t show him sinless. He even breaks commandments.

That's a problem with commandments, sometimes doing what is right means breaking the general commandment about a certain thing.
The New Covenant and being guided by the Spirit of God in situations is a better way.

 

[paarsurrey]

Matthew 28​

Jesus’ Resurrection​

28 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. 2 Suddenly, there was a great earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and going to the tomb, he rolled away the stone and was sitting on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. 4 The guards were so terrified of him that they shook and became like dead men. 5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here. He has risen, just as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. 7 Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has risen from the dead! And look, he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.’ See, I have told you!”

It is not from Jesus/Yeshua- the truthful Israelite Messiah in first person, just a hearsay, right?

Regards

 

[joelr]

I did not even say that atheism is a scam. It is a scam to say that atheism is just a disbelief in God. You Carl Sagan quote at the bottom of your post shows that, as do many things that atheist on this forum say.

Atheism is often defined as a disbelief in any stories about Gods we currently have. Atheism does not generally argue against deism or some God behind reality, it lacks belief in theism.

In joelr's case I seem to see that he has gone past critical thinking and is thinking with his faith.

I really don't know why you have this mental block that forbids you to see I am using evidence only in these arguments. There are other lines of debtae I haven't used but historicity includes only evidence. Textual, comparative religion, archaeological, DNA of modern Jewish people, historians and writers from the time period.
Why do you think Kipp Davis, Josh Bowden, Bart Ehrman, Richard Miller and many other historians started out as fundamentalists and became atheists? Because they were forced to look honestly at the evidence.

I don't use faith. But since you think I do please explain how this evidence is faith. Also your apologists DO NOT interpret the evidence another way (as you claim there are other ways to view the evidence). They do not interpret the evidence in a different way.
They either ignore it and claim it doesn't exist.
Or they strawman it, pick an example that isn't true and isn't argued and use that (like Mithras being a dying/rising savior).
Or they just say vague things like "well I disagree", but they have no way of showing why or that scholarship is wrong. That isn't a different interpretation it's just denial. They don't want evidence to suggest there was outside influence so they just deny it.

OR they make up a strawman reason why it's not true. For example - Jesus isn't like other resurrecting savior demigods because he was crucified on a cross. Yes, that is true but every religion has a different story, the important part is they all were personal saviors who went through a passion, defeated death and saved followers by imparting eternal life onto them. The other details can be different.

It is his faith which declares that certain parts and in fact all of the Bible cannot be true

No. First, that is common sense. Just as you don't believe ANY other religious supernatural story. You likely find the idea that Lord Krishna actually visited Prince Arjuna on the battlefield and gave him a ton of philosophical answers and knowledge to be absolutely silly to believe is actually true. Same with Joeseph Smith getting a new Bible where Jesus comes to America. You likely find that absurd as a proposition to take literal. Yet have no methodology to demonstrate your religious beliefs are any more reasonable.
It is your common sense that tells you those stories are legends. Because those type of stories are always fiction.
You bought into one and that isn't a reason to suddenly call the SAME common sense you use for other religions to suddenly be "faith".
The supernatural might be real, but there is no evidence. Old stories clearly influenced by trends, going around a specific area are absolutely going to be fiction.

You seem to be making some sort of "but it COULD be true, you can't say for sure....?" which is in defiance of common sense.
But then you can also say it for any story. Is it a coincidence this one you already believe and want to be true? No, it's a cognitive bias, you have no argument here.

Yes any religion could be true. Zeus could be real. Evidence shows probably not. That is not faith.

. Critical thinking would be saying that in his opinion it looks like part of the Bible are not true.

Evidence shows the Bible is syncretic, evidence shows it is written like fiction, evidence shows some of it is a forgery like Daniel, evidence shows all historians only know of people who follow the Gospel stories, evidence shows that 2 historians investigated Christianity in the 2nd century and called it a "harmless superstition", evidence shows all of the theology was trending and in older religions, both who invaded Judea for centuries. Evidence shows nothing supernatural has ever been demonstrated.
Evidence shows that having a "feeling" you are in the correct religion of in a relationship with a God is internal, psychological and not external.

This is why honest religious people say there is no evidence and it's a faith based position.

He believe the anti Bible scholars he reads,

They are not anti-Bible. Why you don't want to know the history of a religion you believe is bizarre? These scholars love the Bible. AGAIN, is it their fault that evidence shows what is written is not what happened? OR textual evidence from people who read Hebrew and understand literature in that context see it's fiction or historical fiction, even comedy like Ruth or Jonah.
Is it their fault that the Bible changes theology to suddenly match Persian and Greek theology?

See how you twist basic arguments and facts to mean something else? These scholars love the Bible and want to study it without bias. You are stuck reading an english translation and an interpretation that isn't what was intended when the text was written. If anyone is anti-Bible it's religious groups changing the meaning of much of it to fit a dogma given by theologians like Aquinas, Agustine, Origen and others.
You can study them as well and see how they just took Greco-Roman theology and made Yahweh into something different.


The ancient temples found in Israel have a huge 20 foot footprint leading into the "holy of holies" chamber where Yahweh resides while on earth. This was a literal belief in the Hebrew. Yahweh had a body, all body parts and was very much like other Mesopotamian deities.

what he calls the consensus

Uh, I gave 2 different scholars, Carrier and Joel Baden mentioning ideas mentioned about the OT and Jesus are consensus.

YET, you still say it's me calling it consensus. Why do you need to misrepresent my argument so hard? What does that tell you when you cannot engage with the actual facts as is?

and does not consider the pro bible scholars or that scholarship,

So, again, I provided scholars explaining that apologetics (pro-bible scholars) are not history but are crank made up history and the ideas do not match evidence.
However I do listen to their points. Mike Licona, William Lane Craig, CS Lewis, Habermas and others. Most NT scholars do not engage with any of the evidence mentioned, they start out with the assumption that the Bible is the word of God and go from there. Those institutions have employees sign a statement of intent saying they will never speak negatively about the Bible.
In fact in a debate with Ehrman, Mike Licona admitted the passage about saints rising from the grave during the crucifixion was a metaphor.
He was fired.
These scholars are not interested in what is actually true, they can't even talk about things along those lines. Your "pro-bible scholars" are a joke for the most part. I'm open, tell me someone who has good evidence?
Why you don't listen to Yale Divinity lectures but probably do listen to a pastor or similar? No different than a Muslim Imam telling you Islam is true. Of course they are going to say that. Do you think they really study history and actually look at evidence? They don't.

Can you imagine a movement where people act as if studying scholarship and educating oneself if somehow a bad thing? Only a cult with something to hide would cause this type of behavior. You don't want to learn the historical facts about your religion, you already know why.
It shows you are holding on to beliefs not supported by reality.

in it's neutrality, excludes the supernatural and God as possibilities.
Hmm, he sounds like a typical skeptic I guess.

So God updated the OT right? Well he also updated the NT with the Quran. If you don't like that it was also updated to Joseph Smith and a Mormon Bible was given from an angel.
We have much better evidence and witnesses. Both religions gave updates, which is a thing that clearly happens. Bahai did as well.

Are you skeptical? You bought the NT because you are not just Jewish but Christian. Islam has firsthand documents? Why are you skeptical?
You cannot say, but you are. You are a skeptic and you know exactly what it entails. You exclude the possibility of supernatural in all three updates to Christianity. You are being a typical skeptic.

So pretending like it's just me who does these things is disingenuous. You need to demonstrate a method of how to determine which supernatural tale you buy.
If you cannot then it looks like a cognitive bias towards a belief you became attached to.
But you admitted you cannot. You cannot and you don't owe an explanation. Well that leaves wishful thinking and some type of bias.

So again you have no argument here, the smart play is excluding the supernatural, which you also do. The only time you don't there is no methodology to show why this and not that, so that isn't valid. That leaves us all as skeptics and you believe in one thing because of a bias.

 

[joelr]

Matthew 28​

Jesus’ Resurrection​

28 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. 2 Suddenly, there was a great earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and going to the tomb, he rolled away the stone and was sitting on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. 4 The guards were so terrified of him that they shook and became like dead men. 5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here. He has risen, just as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. 7 Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has risen from the dead! And look, he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him.’ See, I have told you!”

Matthew is a creative reinterpretation of Mark, and anonymous, not eyewitness.
97% of the original Greek in Mark is in Matthew verbatim. Not a good source at all.



"The narrators of both Matthew and Mark describe the events in their texts from an outside point of view. This is a subtle aspect of both texts, but it is a very important consideration for why scholars describe them as “anonymous.” Neither narrative is an overt recollection of personal experiences, but rather focuses solely on the subject—Jesus Christ—with the author fading into the background, making it unclear whether the author has any personal relation to events set within the narrative at all.




Once more for the Gospel of Matthew, the internal evidence contradicts the traditional authorial attribution. The disciple Matthew was allegedly an eyewitness of Jesus. John Mark, on the other hand, who is the traditional author of the Gospel of Mark, was neither an eyewitness of Jesus nor a disciple, but merely a later attendant of Peter. And yet the author of Matthew copies from 80% of the verses in Mark. Why would Matthew, an alleged eyewitness, need to borrow from as much as 80% of the material of Mark, a non-eyewitness? As the Oxford Annotated Bible (p. 1746) concludes, “[T]he fact that the evangelist was so reliant upon Mark and a collection of Jesus’ sayings (“Q”) seems to point to a later, unknown, author.”


Apologists will often posit dubious assumptions to explain away this problem with the disciple Matthew, an alleged eyewitness, borrowing the bulk of his text from a non-eyewitness. For example, Blomberg in The Case for Christ (p. 28) speculates:


It only makes sense if Mark was indeed basing his account on the recollections of the eyewitness Peter … it would make sense for Matthew, even though he was an eyewitness, to rely on Peter’s version of events as transmitted through Mark.


To begin with, nowhere in the Gospel of Mark does the author ever claim that he based his account on the recollections of Peter (Blomberg is splicing this detail with a later dubious claim by the church father Papias, to be discussed below). The author of Mark never names any eyewitness from whom he gathered information.


But what is further problematic for Blomberg’s assumption is that his description of how the author of Matthew used Mark is way off. The author of Matthew does not “rely” on Mark rather than redact Mark to change important details from the earlier gospel. As scholar J. C. Fenton (The Gospel of St. Matthew, p. 12) explains, “the changes which he makes in Mark’s way of telling the story are not those corrections which an eyewitness might make in the account of one who was not an eyewitness.” Instead, many of the changes that Matthew makes to Mark are to correct misunderstandings of the Jewish scriptures. For example, in Mark 1:2-3 the author misquotes the Book of Isaiah by including a verse from Malachi 3:1 in addition to Isaiah 40:3. As scholar Pheme Perkins (Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels, p. 177) points out, “Matthew corrects the citation” in Matthew 3:3 by removing the verse from Malachi and only including Isaiah 40:3.




Instead, scholars recognize that the author of Matthew was actually an ethnic Jew (probably a Greek-speaking and educated Jew, who was living in Antioch). As someone more familiar with Jewish teachings, he redacted Mark to correct many of the non-Jewish elements in the earlier gospel. This again makes little sense if the author of Matthew was actually Matthew the tax collector, whose profession would have ostracized him from the Jewish community. Instead, scholars recognize that the later authorial attributions of both of these works are most likely wrong.[14] In fact, even conservative New Testament scholars like Bruce Metzger (The New Testament, p. 97) have agreed:


In the case of the first Gospel, the apostle Matthew can scarcely be the final author; for why should one who presumably had been an eyewitness of much that he records depend … upon the account given by Mark, who had not been an eyewitness?



Here, we already have a problem with the traditional authors of the Gospels. The titles that come down in our manuscripts of the Gospels do not even explicitly claim Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John as their authors. Instead, the Gospels have an abnormal title convention, where they instead use the Greek preposition κατα, meaning “according to” or “handed down from,” followed by the traditional names. For example, the Gospel of Matthew is titled ευαγγελιον κατα Μαθθαιον (“The Gospel according to Matthew”). This is problematic, from the beginning, in that the earliest title traditions already use a grammatical construction to distance themselves from an explicit claim to authorship. Instead, the titles operate more as placeholder names, where the Gospels have been “handed down” by church traditions affixed to names of figures in the early church, rather than the author being clearly identified.[2] In the case of Tacitus, none of our surviving titles or references says that the Annals or Histories were written “according to Tacitus” or “handed down from Tacitus.” Instead, we have a clear attribution to Tacitus in one case, and only ambivalent attributions in the titles of the Gospels.[3]

Tax Collector

Likewise, the internal evidence of the Gospel of Matthew contradicts the traditional attribution to Matthew (or Levi) the tax collector. While tax collectors had basic training in accounting, the Gospel of Matthew is written in a complex narrative of Greek prose that shows extensive familiarity with Jewish scripture and teachings. However, tax collectors were regarded by educated Jews as a sinful, “pro-Roman” class (as noted by J. R. Donahue in “Tax Collectors and Sinners: An Attempt at Identification“), who were alienated from their religious community, as is evidenced by the Pharisees accusations against Jesus in Mark 2:15-17, Matthew 9:10-13, and Luke 5:29-31 for associating “with tax collectors and sinners” (μετα των τελωνων και αμαρτωλων). Regarding the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew, scholar Barbara Reid (The Gospel According to Matthew, pp. 5-6) explains, “The author had extensive knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and a keen concern for Jewish observance and the role of the Law … It is doubtful that a tax collector would have the kind of religious and literary education needed to produce this Gospel.” For a further analysis of why Matthew the tax collector would have probably lacked the religious and literary education needed to author the gospel attributed to his name, see my essay “Matthew the τελωνης (“Toll Collector”) and the Authorship of the First Gospel.”

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels » Internet Infidels

The traditional authors of the canonical Gospels—Matthew the tax collector, Mark the attendant of Peter, Luke the attendant of Paul, and John the son of Zebedee—are not held to be the Gospels' actual authors by the majority of mainstream New Testament scholars. Christian apologists nevertheless...

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