Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
The problem is that even the "dying for your sins" part is nonsense. The entire story fails start to finish. It is only redeemed by what may have been the real teachings of Jesus.
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Is Yahweh A Liar? Yes, He Is. I Can Prove It.
- Thread starter SeekingAllTruth
- Start date
Redemptionsong
Well-Known Member
I didn't say that Herod ordered the census. I said he conducted the census, since he was the client king.
leroy
Well-Known Member
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt, given that you seem to know much more than I about the birth of Jesus, I have no problem in admitting that you are correct and that Luke has historical mistakes.
My point is that the hits in Luke and Acts are very detailed and impressive making the misses marginal and irrelevant.
leroy
Well-Known Member
You found a small and marginal probable mistake in the birth of Jesus and you concluded that all the documents (and all christiany) is wrong.
Imagine if I conclude that Evolution is wrong and that YEC is true just because I found some mistakes in the origin of species……….would you say that my conclusion is justified?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
He paid tribute. What makes you think that he would have used a census? There is no support for a census during Herod's time. And please note, we know when Quirinius took over the governorship of Syria. He became governor in the year 6 CE. And one of his first duties, run a census. Since it was for taxation purposes it was not well received. Sorry, the author of Luke screwed the pooch with his nativity.
Quirinius - Wikipedia
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I can support those claims with articles from various sources.
What supposed "hits" are these? I hear of them but most of them are rather boring and not that impressive. Plus, you cannot count the hits if you ignore the misses. Let's go over the supposed hits one at a time and see if there is anything that really helps the author there.
No, I found a major problem, though I cannot take credit for it. This has been known to be a problem to Bible scholars for a very long time.
And no, you see scientists do not make the mistakes that theists make. They never assume that a work is perfect. Darwin had some basic ideas correct but he was wrong in other areas. His findings were and are well supported by evidence, that is not the case for theists.
SeekingAllTruth
Well-Known Member
Okay, but just try to convince RedemptionSong that Luke was NOT written in 55 CE. I can't get ANYTHING through to her.
SA Huguenot
Well-Known Member
Did you know?Yahweh is okay when he makes grand sweeping prophecies that he will do things that are described in vague opaque terms like, "And I will bring forth great suffering on the inhabitants of the earth for they have done evil in my sight. I the Lord have spoken." Well, duh! We've seen people suffering every day since hominids stood upright. But when Yahweh gets real specific then he has a way of tripping all over himself.
Yahweh lied to no less than three prophets in the Old Testament that he would dry up the Nile river and he never did.
"I will dry up the streams of the Nile and sell the land to evil men; by the hand of foreigners I will lay waste the land and everything in it. I the LORD have spoken." Ezekiel 30:12
Never happened.
"...the river shall be wasted and dried up. The fishermen will groan and lament, all who cast hooks into the Nile." Isaiah 19:5,8
Never happened.
"They shall pass through the sea of Egypt, and the waves of the sea shall be smitten and all the depth of the Nile dried up." Zechariah 10:11
The Nile never dried up.
Christians invent all sorts of excuses for God's failure to keep his word. One says, "Well, these are metaphoric. God means he will figuratively dry up the Nile." What???? Another says, "Well, God is really saying that he will dry up the tributaries of the Nile, not the Nile itself."
To that I have a very succinct explanation of why that is erroneous:
The original Hebrew text simply uses the plural form of the word for "Nile" (Ye'or), hence literally the "Niles", likely referring to the various stretches of the river, or the Blue Nile and the White Nile that at one point run together. The plural "Niles" cannot be stretched to mean mere tributaries that would not be considered part of the Nile proper at all. A few other respected translations make this passage a bit more clear:
- "I will dry up the waters of the Nile and sell the land to an evil nation. I the LORD have spoken," New International Version
- "I will dry up the Nile River and sell the land to wicked men. I, the LORD, have spoken!" New Living Translation
Then there's always that old chestnut any apologist can fall back on when all else fails.
"It's a future prophecy yet to be fulfilled."
Come on!
The Nile is drying up!
SeekingAllTruth
Well-Known Member
It's a purely man-made effort. I suppose that doesn't matter, right?
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I do not think it matters HOW the prophecies are fulfilled, as long as they are fulfilled, so unless the prophecy specifies that it will happen naturally there is no reason to believe that it has to happen that way. For example, the flowers on Mt. Carmel that fulfilled the following prophecies were a man-made effort. Isaiah prophesied that the Plain of Sharon and the holy mountain, Carmel, would both be centers for the light and presence of the ‘Glory of the Lord’ in the last days. All the following prophecies have been fulfilled by the coming of Baha’u’llah, and these are only the tip of the iceberg.
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” (Isaiah 35:1).
“It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God.” (Isaiah 35:2).
“And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.” Isaiah 35:8).
“And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isaiah 35:10).
Above Haifa, Israel, stands the Baha’i World Centre on Mt. Carmel, proclaiming the Glory of the Lord has come.
SeekingAllTruth
Well-Known Member
The fact the Nile is drying up doesn't impress me far as Yahweh predicting it 3000 years or longer ago. I think the prophecy was for the people of that time because they were sinful or something, so what's the relevance to Egypt today? Unless Yahweh is punishing Egypt for the sins of people 1500 generations ago. Doesn't make a bit of sense to me.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I'd have to see those prophecies again, so I could see them in context, but off the cuff I'd say that those prophecies were not for the people of THAT time, they were predictions of what would happen in the future, and they are not necessarily related to a punishment. We are now living in that future time and these things are happening, therefore the prophecies are being fulfilled.
Redemptionsong
Well-Known Member
If you bothered to check Tacitus, who is not one of your 'apologists', you would know that Cyrenius was a military givernor in Syria before he was sent as a civilian governor.
SeekingAllTruth
Well-Known Member
Here is one of the prophecies from Ezekiel. Notice the mention of several of the inhabitant kings and Nebuchadnezzar make it pretty clear the prophecy was for that time, not a future period
The word which the Lord spoke to Jeremiah the prophet about the coming of Nebuchadrez′zar king of Babylon to smite the land of Egypt:
“Declare in Egypt, and proclaim in Migdol; proclaim in Memphis and Tah′panhes; Say, ‘Stand ready and be prepared, for the sword shall devour round about you.’ Why has Apis fled? Why did not your bull stand? Because the Lord thrust him down. Your multitude stumbled and fell, and they said one to another, ‘Arise, and let us go back to our own people and to the land of our birth, because of the sword of the oppressor.’ Call the name of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, ‘Noisy one who lets the hour go by.’ “As I live, says the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts, like Tabor among the mountains, and like Carmel by the sea, shall one come. Prepare yourselves baggage for exile, O inhabitants of Egypt! For Memphis shall become a waste, a ruin, without inhabitant. “A beautiful heifer is Egypt, but a gadfly from the north has come upon her. Even her hired soldiers in her midst are like fatted calves; yea, they have turned and fled together, they did not stand; for the day of their calamity has come upon them, the time of their punishment. “She makes a sound like a serpent gliding away; for her enemies march in force, and come against her with axes, like those who fell trees. They shall cut down her forest, says the Lord, though it is impenetrable, because they are more numerous than locusts; they are without number. The daughter of Egypt shall be put to shame, she shall be delivered into the hand of a people from the north.” The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, said: “Behold, I am bringing punishment upon Amon of Thebes, and Pharaoh, and Egypt and her gods and her kings, upon Pharaoh and those who trust in him.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I do believe that you are wrong. I have checked his history, but let's see if you can find a valid source. From what I remember he was in what is now Turkey before then.
Redemptionsong
Well-Known Member
Okay, but just try to convince RedemptionSong that Luke was NOT written in 55 CE. I can't get ANYTHING through to her.
I'm not immovable about the exact date of 55 CE. It may well have been a few years later, but the argument is not about a few years, but about decades!
Luke's account in the book of Acts ends abruptly in about 63 CE, so there is no history in Acts and Luke after this date. We also know, from the prologue to Acts [Acts 1:1], that the Gospel of Luke was completed before the book of Acts, so Luke is likely to have been completed well before 63 CE, and before he started writing the book of Acts. This date is supported by the fact that the siege of Jerusalem (during the Jewish Revolt 66-73 CE) is not mentioned in Acts, an oversight that would have been unimaginable given the implications of the event.
An adversarial spirit still attempts to undermine the inspired word of God, but the accumulated evidence of two thousand years is not so easily undermined!
SeekingAllTruth
Well-Known Member
You and I are not the experts, Song. Trained Biblical scholars who have studied this stuff for decades are the experts and they place the date at 115 CE. Sounds to me like you're trying to label them agents of the devil merely because they render a professional opinion based a LOT more scholarship than you have have that conflicts with your preconceived notions of when it was written, and all this is just to bolster your confidence in your faith, I believe--you're trying to shore up the sagging foundations of a faith whose veracity is in crisis. Sad, really.
leroy
Well-Known Member
There are good arguments that suggest that luke and acts where written in the 50s those arguments where already provided by me and @RedemptionsongOkay, but just try to convince RedemptionSong that Luke was NOT written in 55 CE. I can't get ANYTHING through to her.
There are important events that are not recorded in acts (death of peter death of Paul, fall of the temple etc) implying that maybe* the documents where written before such events.
But sure if you demand 100% certainty and/or conclusive evidence for a 55AD date you won’t find it.
What we can show conclusively is that the author of Luke and Acts had access to good reliable information about stuff that happened in the mid 1st century…. So ether he was a witness, or he knew the witnesses or had access to good sources.............
Given that , the date of the document and the name of the author become secondary and irrelevant.
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leroy
Well-Known Member
That is the point; boring details are the most important details to determine the reliability of a testimony.
If 2 witnesses claim that Joe killed marry that’s a relevant point and the witnesses could conspire to make up the story……………but if 2 witnesses claim that Joe ordered a peperoni pizza, well that is boring and uninteresting it´s unlikely that 2 witnesses would have conspired to invent that irrelevant detail.
Some of the hits in acts:
Missing the original reasons for why paul whent to Damascus or why joseph traveled to Bethlehem are minor misses compered to these type of hits.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
There was nothing at all amazing for someone from that time knowing those facts. They only support the claim that the author of Luke was from the first century. It means that Luke was likely not written in the 2nd century CE or later, but no one is arguing that at any rate. The problem is that when a major plot point is shown to be wrong due to a major history error one cannot claim that one he is either a liar or incompetent at that point