ElishaElijah
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This verse didn’t apply to me and I don’t have preconceived ideas about you. You’re talking like Satan talks, you’re using his language.
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There's Not An Iota Of Evidence The Apostles Existed
- Thread starter SeekingAllTruth
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- apostles
This verse didn’t apply to me and I don’t have preconceived ideas about you. You’re talking like Satan talks, you’re using his language.
ElishaElijah
Return
What truth is that?now that the truth has been pointed out to you?
actsfourthirty
Member
I bristle when I hear Christians say, "All the apostles were willing to die for their faith in Jesus." It has become such a cliche like the other one, "There's more evidence for Jesus than there is for Julius Caesar" and my favorite--"Jesus Christ is the most well-attested figure in history." Do these people read anything beside the Bible?
I watched a debate between Sean MacDowell and Paulogia the other day. Paulogia is a former Christian who saw the light and left Christianity. He now runs a popular skeptic website on YouTube. Sean, son of infamous apologist, Josh MacDowell wrote a book on the fate of the apostles which is the go-to source in the Christian community to prove the apostles all were martyred. I was floored when MacDowell said and this is a quote at 17:31 of the video below:
MacDowell: "For my case it doesn't even matter that any of them died actually as martyrs. I had this conversation with William lane Craig and he said, 'You don't have to prove any of them died as martyrs'.
Huh?
The question is "Did the apostles die as martyrs" and MacDowell and Craig are saying they don't have to prove the apostles died as martyrs--all they have to do is demonstrate that it's plausible that the apostles could have died as martyrs given the fact that they were apostles of Jesus and believed in him. Did we just warp to another universe where up is down and black is white?????????
Back to reality. Let's start with this:
There not an iota of evidence in the historical record for the apostles even existing.
Nine of them are not even mentioned by name in the Bible post-gospels. Not a single historian mentions them.
Justine Martyr doesn't even mention the nine (excluding Peter, John, and James). For all intents and purposes the apostles were never real--just figments of the gospel writers' imaginations.
And yet here's MacDowell writing a book making a case they died as martyrs for their faith but then saying, "I don't have to prove they died as martyrs for their faith."
Does 2 + 2 equal 22 in the world of Christianity?
you’re personal scripture
2 Peter 3:3
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,
Oh no?
Who's talking like satan? Lying is a sin.
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ElishaElijah
Return
Oh no?
Who's talking like satan? Lying is a sin.
No and you are talking like Satan when you use scripture to try to cause doubt in a believer. That’s what Satan does. How does Matthew 7 apply to me? It doesn’t.
So who is lying? Not me, so what are you wanting to accomplish? Are you wanting to make a list of sins?
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joelr
Well-Known Member
Cool, I just wanted to confirm that there is no evidence to support that.
ElishaElijah
Return
@night912
““Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
Matthew 7:21-23 NKJV
You share this verse, why?
First of all, I am doing my Father’s will, do you know what God’s will is? Are you doing God’s will?
Second, I’m not going to go to Jesus declaring anything except thanksgiving for what He has done for me.
Third, I’m not practicing lawlessness.
We are living like this over here:
““Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.”
Matthew 7:24-25 NKJV
““Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
Matthew 7:21-23 NKJV
You share this verse, why?
First of all, I am doing my Father’s will, do you know what God’s will is? Are you doing God’s will?
Second, I’m not going to go to Jesus declaring anything except thanksgiving for what He has done for me.
Third, I’m not practicing lawlessness.
We are living like this over here:
““Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.”
Matthew 7:24-25 NKJV
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I just showed that you lied.
ElishaElijah
Return
Nope you didn’t and your false accusations don’t amount to anything.
I wasn't expecting a liar to admit it, just showing the facts. And facts don't lie, they show the truth. So no need to continue with this conversation.
ElishaElijah
Return
Lol, no facts as usual, just false accusations, then quit.
Truthseeker
Non-debating member when I can help myself
It show's his bounty and mercifulness.
I don't who "these people" are. In my experience, people who believe that there is little or no evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus or his disciples have are almost always ignorant of ancient history, classical studies, classical languages, archaeology, and just about the sum total of all relevant fields here. Basically, they don't care much about ancient history and can't read the sources in their original languages and are generally unaware of the nature of our evidence for those figures from antiquity we take for granted.
Interestingly, the popular sensationalist and former-Christian-turned-non-believer Bart Ehrman made comparisons similar to those you dismiss above. Namely, he states (truthfully) that we have an abundance of evidence and explictly compares the evidence for Jesus to that of Julius Caesar. The interviewer, as is typical of those whose interest in ancient history extends only so far as would-be arguments against the historicity of Jesus and similar topics, rejoins that these "tactics" are used by apologists. Of course, Ehrman is not an apologist and most of his popular works are used by those who seek to undermine the validity of Christian claims. You can watch the video here (or skip to about 1:55~ into it)
There is. You simply dismiss the historical evidence that we have as being Christian or otherwise unreliable while failing to understand the nature of ancient historiography and our evidence for ancient individuals and history more generally. The letters of Paul alone are more evidence for Jesus' followers than we have for Pythagoras, the bulk of whose biographical details date from about half a millennia after Pythagoras is supposed to have lived.
1) The gospels fit into a kind of historical genre. Most historians of and around that time included myth, legend, and fantasy within their histories.
2) We usually don't have historians mentioning the names of historical individuals we know of. We usually don't even know whether or not those names that are mentioned in various works are the same persons or not. Most individuals come down to us in the form of medieval manuscript copies of texts containing supposed quotations of authors whose works are lost to us completely and survive only as fragments. Often we don't have that much.
But of course as those interested in the arguments that are somehow supposed to undermine Christianity by attacking it from a historical perspective are generally ignorant of historical methods and the nature of historical evidence in and around this period, such individuals generally blindly accept that somehow Livy or Tacitus or Herodotus or even Diogenes Laertius somehow provide us with actual "history" of a type that the gospels are supposed clearly not to have done.
One wonders what tales mythicists would spin if, instead of this weird obsession with the would-be lack of historical evidence for Jesus (and/or his followers), they were concerned with establishing that Socrates couldn't have existed because of the fictional genre of the Sokratikoi logoi, the clearly fictional depiction of this character in Aristophanes, the complete absence of manuscript evidence save a handful of medieval copies of copies of copies of questionable veracity, and the obviously conflicting accounts given even by his supposed contemporaries.
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ElishaElijah
Return
“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.”
1 John 2:22 ESV
Where do you stand with Jesus Christ? Do you say that Jesus is the Christ ?
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
What do you think the word "allegedly" means?
Right.... people claimed jesus said this.
Your very own wording reveals that these are merely claims that got collected in a book. They remain claims, regardless of if and when and by whom they were written down.
Right. So there "evidence" is hearsay and claimed "testimony". And testimony, as well as hearsay, is what? Right: more claims.
So really, instead of defending your point, you're giving even more weight to mine. It's just a piling on of claims.
So for christians to hold their beliefs about jesus they must believe the claims written in the bible which, according to your very statements above, means the following:
- they must believe the claims were accurately recorded in these texts by the authors
- they must believe the people accurately repeated the claims from whom they authors heared them
- they must believe those people accurately repeated the claims who heared them from those that came before them
- etc until you get to those people who allegedly were the "first source"
- they must believe that those people even existed and that it wasn't made up / formed along the way somewhere
- they must believe they told the truth and didn't "embellish" it or made it up out of thin air
- they must believe that assuming they were honest, that they correctly interpreted the fantastical claims they made. You know after all, the scizofrenic who hears voices also really honestly believes in the paranoid conspiracies he hears from those voices.
It's claim after claim after claim after claim after claim after......
And off course it all relies on copies of copies of translations of copies of copies of translations of copies of.......... etc
It sounds a little unwise to me, to say the least, to put so much faith in such a weak case.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
lol, owkay.
I guess the same goes for centaurs, bigfoot, visiting aliens, leprechauns, fairies, ...
After all, if there are stories about it, it must be true, right?
I believe aliens are more likely government fakes, and I don’t think that “if there are stories about it, it must be true”. But in some cases, I think it is more probable that the story is true than that it is a fake, especially if there is no reasonable motive for fake.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
I would rather say that people wrote that Jesus said x, y, and z and then that got compiled into a book.
Those people wrote that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and many other things, and they wrote that Jesus rose from the dead and walked on water, healed the sick, raised people from the dead, etc.
There are some claims that Jesus made in the NT but it is not all claims. Much of the NT is stories men wrote about what Jesus allegedly said and did.
Yes, this is what Christians must believe. They must believe what is written in the NT. You can call them claims if you want to, I call them writings of men.
I fully agree. Christians have to believe what they believe on faith, faith that the men who wrote the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit. I kind of believe that but only because I belong to another religion that corroborates that the Bible is God's greatest testimony to His creatures. But what does that mean? Obviously it was not written by God, and since it was written by fallible men that leaves a lot of room for errors to creep in. Certainly, given the NT was passed down by oral tradition many years after Jesus lived it cannot be word for word what Jesus said, because that is logically impossible. I do however believe that the essence of what Jesus taught is captured in the NT although I do not believe that the stories written about Jesus are literally true. Rather, they are stories, some of which convey spiritual truths.
ElishaElijah
Return
No one has to believe anything, a Christian is someone who makes a decision to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. God reveals Himself to us and we live out the Word of God. We find out that God is faithful to His Word and promises.
This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written
John 21:24-25 NKJV
I’ve proved to myself beyond a shadow of a doubt these words to be true and reliable.
Trailblazer
Veteran Member
Fair enough.
Just as I have proven to myself beyond a shadow of a doubt the writings of Baha'u'llah are true and reliable.