outhouse
Atheistically
Provide credible sources.
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Is the Bible Really True?
- Thread starter maggie2
- Start date
Provide credible sources.
maggie2
Active Member
I don't personally put much faith in the prophesies from the Old Testament as it is well known that Matthew was written with this in mind and scholars seem to agree that it was written more to show that the prophesies had been fulfilled. In other words, the text was made to fit those prophesies.
You say there are other important figures of Jesus' time who have less written about them. If you discount the Bible, I don't think this is accurate. From what I have read, from several different sources, there is little in the secular history of the time that discusses him.
As to the archeological findings, these do not prove that Jesus existed. The way of life described in the Bible is probably fairly accurately described but that doesn't prove Jesus was part of that era. I agree with you that the Bible has many truths that we can apply to our lives right now. I don't, however, agree that it provides for people's salvation unless you happen to believe that Jesus died for everyone's sins, which I do not.
maggie2
Active Member
Which question are you referring to that a person would not ask if they had any common sense?
And I totally disagree with you that the Bible is 100% true. I think it has great truths but it certainly is not all true. For example, I was just reading an article that says archeologists have recently discovered that Joshua did not cause the walls of Jericho to come down, which the Bible says he did. Additionally, do you really believe that Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale? Is that true?
Kolibri
Well-Known Member
No, I do not believe that is true. Whales do not have throats big enough to swallow a man. And yet the book of Jonah never did actually say a whale. All it said was "a huge fish." (Jonah 1:17) That I can believe. Some sharks can swallow a man whole. Not saying it was a shark either, but at least that is plausible.
maggie2
Active Member
Soooo much pop pseudo-history being thrown around in this thread, haha.
Seriously, there are already some extremely detailed and nuanced historical studies into Ancient Judea and what might be confidently ascertained about the life of Jesus and his immediate followers. Why compare Jesus to Horus when a more apt comparison would be to the legends of other Jewish preachers around the time of Roman rule? Context is everything, and I cannot recommend enough the amazing podcasts by Philip Harland ( Podcast (series 1-8) | Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean )
I learned a lot from this very admirable (and unbiased) scholar. Namely, that the serious historical facts suggest with great confidence..
1. Jesus was a real person
2. He was a student or associate of John the Baptist.
3. Like John the Baptist, he was an apocalyptic preacher.
4. He was executed
5. His immediate followers believed he rose from the dead (i.e. whether or not he actually did rise from the dead, it was not something that was tacked on to the story later as his church grew)
6. Paul's letters are the oldest documents in the New Testament.
So yeah, I'm putting credence in these fairly mundane facts rather than some Internet-age Egyptian conspiracy theory..
As for the whole "Bible being true" question, well you're on your own for that one!
Interesting reply. I am glad to hear about Philip Harland. Can you give me a link to his podcasts? I'd like to listen sometime.
It's also interesting to hear about the extremely detailed and nuanced historical studies into Ancient Judea. Could you point me to those as well? I think they would be interesting. However, while they might shed light on the ear in which Jesus lived, do they really prove that he did live?
Why compare Jesus to Horus? I guess you'd have to ask the author that question. However, I think it's a fair comparison. Both were born of a virgin, both became preachers, both were killed for their teaching etc. etc. I could go on and on but those are some of the main reasons. And I guess most importantly, both were considered the suns (or sons) of God.
About what you learned. I don't dispute that. As I said in an earlier post, I'm still sitting on the fence as to whether or not I think Jesus actually lived. Everything else you have learned from the podcasts I can say I honestly believe as well.
I'm not sure I agree with your comment about an Internet-age Egyptian conspiracy theory. I think that might have been a bit of a cheap shot. If so, no sweat. If not, I'm reading it wrong.
maggie2
Active Member
I hear your anger at the media. However, in much of the free world we have free speech, so people can write and say what they want. I guess it is up to each of us to filter out or not listen to or read things that offend us. You must be very moved by your recent spiritual experience. Those are the things that I think give us the most assurance that our beliefs are moving us in the right direction. That's a very special thing to have happen and I'm sure you are treasuring it.
I agree with you that men wrote the Bible and that it has been translated and edited and on and on. I also agree that it may not be 100% true, but it does hold great truths.
I agree that just because the Bible is not fully accurate does not equate to Jesus being a myth. I also agree that to show proof that someone in that era lived and died is not an easy thing to do. However, you say that Jesus was just a regular person and that I don't agree with. He was/is the foundation on which the Christian faith is built. That makes him anything but regular. And even in his time, according to the Bible he did things like walk on water, turn water into wine and raised the dead as well as many other things. Those things should have gotten him some attention that a regular person would not have had.
You're right, it is hard to tell someone how you know what you know to be true by what it makes you feel. However, in my opinion, that is the very best way to determine what is true for each of us individually. You must have a very special son if he was praying for you to have your faith strengthened. You must be very proud of him and happy that he was thinking of you. That is truly special.
You say you thought you knew it all buy have discovered that you don't. Don't we all go through that at some point? I think when I was in my twenties I probably thought I knew if not it all, at least most of it. However, the older I have gotten and the more I have learned the more I realize how very little I do know. I think we would have to live at least 1000 lifetimes to know even one percent of what there is to know and even then we would only have scratched the surface.
maggie2
Active Member
I did not include your full post in this quote because it was rather long. I appreciate you sharing your journey. It must have been enlightening for you. It's interesting that while we come at this whole question of faith from very different perspectives, we do have some very similar beliefs. I refer to the "inner" and "outer" person. I too believe that we are a body and a soul. I just happen to have come to that belief on a different path from the one you are on at the moment.
I do not see the Bible as being 100% revealed and error-free truth. That is where I think we are in disagreement. I am not here to argue this point. Each person has to make their own decisions about what they believe and both you and I have to do that. While I respect your right to your beliefs, I don't necessarily have to agree with them and in this instance I don't. You would not agree with my beliefs either and that's fine. The bottom line, though, is that we can agree that there is more to humans than our bodies and that it is the inner part of us that is the real, eternal soul that lives on to eternity. I really enjoyed your post, by the way.
maggie2
Active Member
You said in your original post that the Bible is 100% true. Now in this post you are saying that you do not believe the Jonah story. So that makes the Bible less than 100% true. And that's exactly why I say I do not believe the Bible is 100% true. However, as I have said before, I believe it holds great truths that we can use to live by.
And I see you didn't tell me which question you were referring to that a person would not ask if they had any sense. Can you clarify that for me?
We all have read books that suggest and elicit all sorts of conclusions. The "TRUTH" may never be known. There is no question that apostle Paul (and many others) injected a version of Christ that was not "Christ-like" at all. He drew from Jewish, Roman, Persian, Pagan and God knows how many others to create his own version of Christianity that soon became "Churchianity." Then came Marcion, Tertullian, Aarianus, St Augustine and many others with their own version of Christ. After 300 or so years, those ideas resulted in bloodsheds that gathered momentum through reformation that far surpassed what ISIL is doing today. None of this had anything to do with Bible, and as for that matter, Old Testament, Qur'an, Behaved Gita or any other holy texts. What is done in the name of religion has been done by man. The truth of those texts has nothing to do with the actions of those who profess to believe in them, and more than any those who claim authority in knowing them.(i.e. priests, ministers, mullahs, ayatollahs, popes, monks, rabbis, etc. etc.)
My question is:
Ingledsva
HEATHEN ALASKAN
Soooo much pop pseudo-history being thrown around in this thread, haha.
Seriously, there are already some extremely detailed and nuanced historical studies into Ancient Judea and what might be confidently ascertained about the life of Jesus and his immediate followers. Why compare Jesus to Horus when a more apt comparison would be to the legends of other Jewish preachers around the time of Roman rule? Context is everything, and I cannot recommend enough the amazing podcasts by Philip Harland ( Podcast (series 1-8) | Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean )
I learned a lot from this very admirable (and unbiased) scholar. Namely, that the serious historical facts suggest with great confidence..
1. Jesus was a real person
2. He was a student or associate of John the Baptist.
3. Like John the Baptist, he was an apocalyptic preacher.
4. He was executed
5. His immediate followers believed he rose from the dead (i.e. whether or not he actually did rise from the dead, it was not something that was tacked on to the story later as his church grew)
6. Paul's letters are the oldest documents in the New Testament.
So yeah, I'm putting credence in these fairly mundane facts rather than some Internet-age Egyptian conspiracy theory..
As for the whole "Bible being true" question, well you're on your own for that one!
Which says nothing new at all.
It has already been put forward that Jesus could be real, or not.
However, his story is obviously myth, and many have noted the MYTH can be associated to known mythic characters in other religions.
Robert Graves says -
"Is it reasonable? The Pope though he permits our typifying Jesus as a fish, as the Sun, as Bread, as the Vine, as a Lamb, as a Shepherd, as a Rock, as a Conquering Hero, even as a Winged Serpent, yet threatens us with Hell fire if we if we ever dare to celebrate him in terms of the venerable Gods whom he has superseded and from whose ritual every one of these symbols has been derived. Or if we trip over a simple article of this extraordinarily difficult Athanasian Creed. We need no reminder from Rome or Canterbury that Jesus was the greatest of all Sacred Kings who suffered death on a tree for the good of the people, who harrowed Hell and who rose again from the dead and that in him all prophecies are fulfilled. But to pretend that he was the first whom poets have ever celebrated as having performed these wonderful feats is, despite St. Paul, to show oneself either hypocritical or illiterate. So at his Second Coming we reserve the right to call him Belin or Apollo or even King Arthur."
*
There's no evidence for any of those so-called "facts" except for #6.
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Kolibri
Well-Known Member
lol. Sorry maggie, I was saying Jonah was not swallowed by a whale. The account did not say whale, and whales do not have a large enough throat. The point was that whatever the fish was, it was not a whale. And yet there are huge fish capable of this feat. I realize I was being a bit backwards in the way I responded last.
Are you sure it was me about a person not asking a particular question if they had any sense? That does not sound like something I would say, as I generally encourage questions when they are asked with honest intent.
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Ingledsva
HEATHEN ALASKAN
maggie2
Active Member
Nope, it was not you. Sorry I got that mixed up. I guess I was answering so many posts I must have made the mistake. My apologies. I'll try to be sure I don't do that again. LOL!
outhouse
Atheistically
Garbage link, and book.
Ingledsva
HEATHEN ALASKAN
Epictetus
Member
Sorry, I've come in late on this conversation and have only read the first page and the last page and am surprised that people are still talking about Horus and Jonah et al.
There's plenty of research and writing on the Historical Jesus question without looking for ancient Egyptian connections or other arcane hypotheses. Professional scholars are usually pretty confident that there was a man called Jesus/Jeshua/Yeshua who taught in Galilee in the first part of the first century, but what he said and what he did are very uncertain now. Perhaps only 20% of what he is alleged to have said in the Gospels can be reliably attributed to him, and what he did, when and with whom is pretty dependent on Mark. Matthew and Luke drew heavily on Mark and on a no longer extant source called "Q" (which is more of a sayings source). John doesn't really attempt to portray a real person, but an idealised one who makes long speeches and knows the future.
Of course, professional biblical scholars are conservative and are unlikely to break away from the present paradigm (that Jesus was an historical figure) unless it really no longer works for them, or no longer works at all. Most of them are employed by churches, church-connected institutions or university centres and departments that are funded by churches, so it has cash value for them to profess that Jesus was an historical figure and that the Gospel narratives and logia have a reasonable basis in fact.
Not all though. A few brave souls incline towards mythicism. Robert Price is one. Joseph Hoffman has said we'll never really know whether Jesus was an historical person or not. Dominic Crossan has said that Jesus existed but the Gospels are largely parables about Jesus as well as by him. Geza Vermes saw him as a Galilean Hasid and miracle-worker like Honi the Circle Maker and Hanina ben Dosa. I think many will accept that the sources are not verifiable enough to justify a firm belief in the Jesus of the Gospels, but there was most likely a real man behind the stories.
Earl Doherty rejects the historicity of Jesus entirely and has written an excruciatingly detailed 800-page book (Jesus, Neither God nor Man) setting out his reasons. I think Doherty's arguments about Jesus are very strong, but he is blackballed by the academy because he's not one of them (no PhD; doesn't work in a university or seminary, etc) and tends to be secretive about his qualifications. (PS, his arguments about Paul - the first half of the book - seem pretty speculative.)
The argument that we know as much about Jesus as we do about Confucius, Socrates, etc is not really a very strong argument. People don't normally question the existence of these men, though we only know them by report, because they didn't claim to be and were never claimed to be the Son of God and workers of miracles. In any case, we now know that some presumed ancient persons, e.g. Homer and Isaiah, were compilations of more than one person, and some, e.g. Abraham, Noah, may well never have existed as historical individuals.
Perhaps the better question than "Is the Bible true?" would be "What does it mean?". Why did the writers and editors of the varied and colourful books of the Bible put this stuff down, work it over and collect it into a library of sacred writings? It meant a lot to them, and yet it varies widely from triumphalist narrative, as in the historical works, to the anger and anguish and exhortation of the prophetic works, to the moral tales of Ruth and Job, to the pessimistic reflections of Ecclesiastes and the homespun wisdom of Proverbs. What do all these books have in common? What are they driving at? And does it matter if there's a fair amount of myth and legend and hagiography and fancifulness in them?
There's plenty of research and writing on the Historical Jesus question without looking for ancient Egyptian connections or other arcane hypotheses. Professional scholars are usually pretty confident that there was a man called Jesus/Jeshua/Yeshua who taught in Galilee in the first part of the first century, but what he said and what he did are very uncertain now. Perhaps only 20% of what he is alleged to have said in the Gospels can be reliably attributed to him, and what he did, when and with whom is pretty dependent on Mark. Matthew and Luke drew heavily on Mark and on a no longer extant source called "Q" (which is more of a sayings source). John doesn't really attempt to portray a real person, but an idealised one who makes long speeches and knows the future.
Of course, professional biblical scholars are conservative and are unlikely to break away from the present paradigm (that Jesus was an historical figure) unless it really no longer works for them, or no longer works at all. Most of them are employed by churches, church-connected institutions or university centres and departments that are funded by churches, so it has cash value for them to profess that Jesus was an historical figure and that the Gospel narratives and logia have a reasonable basis in fact.
Not all though. A few brave souls incline towards mythicism. Robert Price is one. Joseph Hoffman has said we'll never really know whether Jesus was an historical person or not. Dominic Crossan has said that Jesus existed but the Gospels are largely parables about Jesus as well as by him. Geza Vermes saw him as a Galilean Hasid and miracle-worker like Honi the Circle Maker and Hanina ben Dosa. I think many will accept that the sources are not verifiable enough to justify a firm belief in the Jesus of the Gospels, but there was most likely a real man behind the stories.
Earl Doherty rejects the historicity of Jesus entirely and has written an excruciatingly detailed 800-page book (Jesus, Neither God nor Man) setting out his reasons. I think Doherty's arguments about Jesus are very strong, but he is blackballed by the academy because he's not one of them (no PhD; doesn't work in a university or seminary, etc) and tends to be secretive about his qualifications. (PS, his arguments about Paul - the first half of the book - seem pretty speculative.)
The argument that we know as much about Jesus as we do about Confucius, Socrates, etc is not really a very strong argument. People don't normally question the existence of these men, though we only know them by report, because they didn't claim to be and were never claimed to be the Son of God and workers of miracles. In any case, we now know that some presumed ancient persons, e.g. Homer and Isaiah, were compilations of more than one person, and some, e.g. Abraham, Noah, may well never have existed as historical individuals.
Perhaps the better question than "Is the Bible true?" would be "What does it mean?". Why did the writers and editors of the varied and colourful books of the Bible put this stuff down, work it over and collect it into a library of sacred writings? It meant a lot to them, and yet it varies widely from triumphalist narrative, as in the historical works, to the anger and anguish and exhortation of the prophetic works, to the moral tales of Ruth and Job, to the pessimistic reflections of Ecclesiastes and the homespun wisdom of Proverbs. What do all these books have in common? What are they driving at? And does it matter if there's a fair amount of myth and legend and hagiography and fancifulness in them?