Seriously, Sap, your continued insistence on sources while stubbornly refusing to provide any of your own are incredibly transparent.

Just admit you are working off of an impression you got from a couple of Bart's books and haven't even remotely done the legwork to verify if any of it is even in the same galaxy of the greater biblical scholarship debates and we can move on. This is my entire issue with Bart. Biblical scholarship is a wide ranging tapestry with a multitude of perspectives and well reasoned theories and to the lay person like Sap reading his books it comes across as this homogenized monolith of skepticism. Do better independent research.

Silent For Too Long said:

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Dr. Watson said:

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What Jewish sources have you given that support your argument?

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Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelations, Epistles of Barnabas, Epistles of Clement, Epistles of the Corinthians to Paul, Epistles of Ignatius to the Smyrneans, Epistles of Ignatius to the Tralians, Epistles of Polycarp, Book of Jubilees...


Your turn.

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Nope. Try again. Give me Jewish sources on the messiah that align with Christian theology. Not Christian sources on Christian theology.

Silent For Too Long said:

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Seriously, Sap, your continued insistence on sources while stubbornly refusing to provide any of your own are incredibly transparent.

Just admit you are working off of an impression you got from a couple of Bart's books and haven't even remotely done the legwork to verify if any of it is even in the same galaxy of the greater biblical scholarship debates and we can move on. This is my entire issue with Bart. Biblical scholarship is a wide ranging tapestry with a multitude of perspectives and well reasoned theories and to the lay person like Sap reading his books it comes across as this homogenized monolith of skepticism. Do better independent research.

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And you're relying completely on pro-Christian apologetics. I've yet to see you cite non-Christian sources to back up your arguments.

The problem is there isn't much Jewish theology to review from that time period on way or the other. We can thank the Seleucids and Romans for that.

Where you have to be careful with Ehrman is like many Biblical focused analytical critics, he can go afield on secular Roman history circumstances, and especially those concerning the East and the nature of the transition of the Hellenistic rule of the Selucids and Ptolemies to the Roman period. It can lead to some strange assumptions about the reliability or not of the Gospels, when in some cases they reflect some pretty obscure facts.

k2aggie07 said:

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There isn't evidence of a single theology about Jesus amongst the original apostles because we have nothing from them and what we know about their relationship with Paul suggests a lot of disagreement.

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We have an entire world that says they preserved their public testimony in unison. We have a remarkably broad consensus for an illegal religion. And we have witnesses in the first generation after the apostles and every one after attesting to their teachings.

We have writings from three of the Twelve Apostles and St Paul.

The last sentence is completely specious. It doesn't even make sense with your first part (if we have nothing from them how do we know they disagree with St Paul?).

You act like decades are a long time. St Ignatius was made a Bishop by an Apostle (St John). St Irenaeus was the next generation after that via St Polycarp. The first generation. Was still living when the books were written.

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Right. There is also something else that could be mentioned---- most of the gospels appear to agree what
Jesus was accused of ----- notice those gospels don't end up saying "that was WRONG". The whole point is his divinity. And the gospels, even the latest one, John, were written inside 70 years by most reasonable calculations and their internal clues. In fact, John appears to have died around 100 AD, a very convenient marker to close the Apostolic Age, and to begin the Post-Apostolic age. You cited Ignatius and Iraneus -- they are all part of continuity --- Clement, who knew of John and his exile, extended back to Emperor Titus' time and earlier, and all these people formed a living chain. Look at our own time --- the 70th anniversary of the foundation of Israel, or 75th of WW II, and the last of them is just starting to leave the stage. Allowing for the emphasis on verbal and memorized tradition being handed down and the continual general stability of the general ancient world and travel lanes and Roman order of the Julio-Claudian and the first Pax Emperors from 30 to 100 and this just isn't that long a time by those standards.

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Nope. Try again. Give me Jewish sources on the messiah that align with Christian theology. Not Christian sources on Christian theology.

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The vast majority of those writings were written by first century Jews, who have a much better idea of the general idea of what first century Jews thought of the messiah then Bart Erhman or any scholar living today, do. Because, you know, they were first century Jews and all.

What you are asking for doesn't exist. There are no surviving rabbinic documents that say one way or another. Of course, it is your argument that rest entirely on the perceived notion that the Jews totally didn't expect the messiah to be divine. An argument you have yet to provide a single solitary shred of evidence to back up.

Great job.

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And you're relying completely on pro-Christian apologetics. I've yet to see you cite non-Christian sources to back up your arguments.

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Wrong again. I'm relying on a well read background from a variety of different perspectives on actual biblical scholarship. Not what some dude trying to sell you a book spoon fed you.

I'm also not beholden to one side of this debate or another. In some areas I think Bart and his circle make fairly reasonable points. The geographic inaccuracies in the Gospels, for instance, is a solid argument.

However, on this particular topic, the divinity of Christ, or I should say the perceived divinity of Christ from his earliest followers, they are completely wrong to the point of seriously second guessing their motives. There is virtually no evidence to support it and a mountain of evidence to support the official Christian narrative.

I don't know how many times I have to point that out until you finally get it. You've readily conceded the point by providing nothing to back up your claim. Which doesn't surprise me in the least because there is nothing that backs up that claim. In fact, I'm the only one who has provided the very little evidence there is to back it up.

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That's not my point and you know it. He's claiming the Christian idea of the messiah is consistent with Jewish theology on the concept. But provided nothing except for Christian theology to support that.

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False. I told you many of the 2nd temple writings fit very closely with early Christian theology. I already mentioned Jubilee, but Enoch is another one. Now, Enoch doesn't discuss the Messiah in particular, but it certainly lays the groundwork for the Christian concepts of fallen angels.

Again, the first century Jews who became Christians had a much better understanding of what first century Jews thought of the Messiah then 21rst century skeptics.

Silent For Too Long said:

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Quote:

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Nope. Try again. Give me Jewish sources on the messiah that align with Christian theology. Not Christian sources on Christian theology.

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The vast majority of those writings were written by first century Jews, who have a much better idea of the general idea of what first century Jews thought of the messiah then Bart Erhman or any scholar living today, do. Because, you know, they were first century Jews and all.

What you are asking for doesn't exist. There are no surviving rabbinic documents that say one way or another. Of course, it is your argument that rest entirely on the perceived notion that the Jews totally didn't expect the messiah to be divine. An argument you have yet to provide a single solitary shred of evidence to back up.

Great job.

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All you are doing is citing Christian sources that had a reason to argue for their view of the messiah and then claiming "nope, that's really Jewish." Try harder.

Silent For Too Long said:

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That's not my point and you know it. He's claiming the Christian idea of the messiah is consistent with Jewish theology on the concept. But provided nothing except for Christian theology to support that.

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False. I told you many of the 2nd temple writings fit very closely with early Christian theology. I already mentioned Jubilee, but Enoch is another one. Now, Enoch doesn't discuss the Messiah in particular, but it certainly lays the groundwork for the Christian concepts of fallen angels.

Again, the first century Jews who became Christians had a much better understanding of what first century Jews thought of the Messiah then 21rst century skeptics.

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Jubilee doesn't support a divine messiah. It does partially explain where some of the apocalyptic ideas came from. And you admit Enoch isn't talking about the messiah. But keep insisting that people arguing for a specific theology must be accurately reflecting the expectations of people who disagreed with them.

It seems to me that some of this is going at it from the wrong direction. Look at the Jewish anathemas of Christians and the books they threw out at Jamnia from scripture, most of those that tended to back up Messianic views, whether apocalyptic or Christian-to-be, as it were, in view. By 100 AD the rabbis have purged much that would have tied in with Christian `predictions' that are routinely cited. But since it comes after the destruction of the Temple, it is part of the `re-booting' of Judaism they are having to do, and trying to set up a situation less likely to clash with others and repeat some of what had just happened. Maccabees is jettisoned partly for this reason.

The point being look at what the Jews denounced after the fall of Judea of their own prior beliefs heading into and before the Jewish War to get some idea of what the Christians were taking for granted, and the reason rabbis like Gamaliel didn't find it so out of line either.

What's lost are ideas that messiah is going to come quickly. I'm still not being shown any evidence that Jews expected their messiah to be God or be divine in any way.

Dr. Watson said:

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What's lost are ideas that messiah is going to come quickly. I'm still not being shown any evidence that Jews expected their messiah to be God or be divine in any way.

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That sounds kind of contorted. What are you really saying --- that there is no evidence that Jews existed that had a Son of Man or Son of God, or the Messiah, or savior, that would be divine was ever expected? That doesn't fit with the fact that he was clearly seen as not "just another prophet" they were expecting. Even the imagery of Daniel appears to invoke a celestial birth. Also, if going to make elaborate arguments from silence, isn't a more logical one that follows is that: the early Apostles had so many converts precisely for the reason that what they said did make sense, and could fit some expectations? Maybe not understanding---it just seems you are trying to deny on the basis of some of Ehrmann's stuff that even the expectation of a divine Messiah didn't exist in 10-25 AD? (to pick some years)

Christianity was significant in Jerusalem. The Apostles preached at the synagogues in the diaspora. It's far from "clear".

And you still haven't provided a single ounce of evidence for anything you are claiming is "clear."

But keep insisting you understand what the first century Jew's perspective of the messiah was better then they did.

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My point is that the messiah as a God figure is not something found much at all (if at all) in Jewish thought.

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Simply not true. You act like you are completely unaware of Isaiah 9:6-7.

But go ahead and provide a single solitary source that backs up your claim. One. Just one sap. You can do it.

I got nothing but love for you Sap, but this is why people get so exasperated discussing things with you. You pretend to be an expert on everything when you are clearly out of your element, and you never have the humility and intellectual honesty to admit you may have been mistaken. It's pretty obnoxious.

k2aggie07 said:

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Christianity was significant in Jerusalem. The Apostles preached at the synagogues in the diaspora. It's far from "clear".

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James martydom circa spring 62 makes clear the community in Jerusalem is large enough to at least provoke the Sanhedrin authorities to try to quash it.

Yes, and their flight / failure to help against the Romans when the temple was destroyed was viewed as having enough significance for them to be a scapegoat for the tragedy. If there was only a handful of them this wouldn't have been conceivable.

Silent For Too Long said:

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I got nothing but love for you Sap, but this is why people get so exasperated discussing things with you. You pretend to be an expert on everything when you are clearly out of your element, and you never have the humility and intellectual honesty to admit you may have been mistaken. It's pretty obnoxious.

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I'm not pretending to be an expert. I'm asking you for Jewish commentary on the messiah that supports Christian arguments that the messiah was intended to be a divine figure. And so far the best you can do is give me Christian theology. I keep asking and you keep trying to throw it back at me. You complain about Erhman but offer no actual rebuttal of his arguments.

k2aggie07 said:

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Christianity was significant in Jerusalem. The Apostles preached at the synagogues in the diaspora. It's far from "clear".

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Define significant? Small groups can be extremely disruptive. That disruption doesn't necessarily speak to size.

Dr. Watson said:

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I'm not pretending to be an expert. I'm asking you for Jewish commentary on the messiah that supports Christian arguments that the messiah was intended to be a divine figure. And so far the best you can do is give me Christian theology. I keep asking and you keep trying to throw it back at me. You complain about Erhman but offer no actual rebuttal of his arguments.

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See this is where you seem to be completely missing the point. Erhman hasn't actually established why his theory should be taken seriously. It flies in the face of mountains of evidence against him and he has no source material to pull from as evidence to support it.

I absolutely have rebutted his arguments, with actual evidence. You can pretend all you want that the evidence isn't good enough, but it's infinitely better then zero.

I don't know how many times I have to write this until you understand it. Erhman has not made his case in the first place. He has virtually no evidence to support it. You have provided zero evidence why you think he might be right.

Also, keep in mind the core issue here is what Jesus's followers perceived him to be. The Jewish Christians who wrote about Jesus then would obviously be the best source of material on what they thought of him. Even if they weren't first witnesses, they were at worst writing down what they learned from the first witnesses. It's all we have and it unanimously agrees that Jesus was divine.

On the flip side, one more time, lets examine your "evidence." Modern Jewish opinion on the messiah and a couple of off hand comments from 3rd and 4th century church fathers that one sect maybe, possibly, didn't believe Jesus was divine. That's it. That's all Erhman has going for his narrative.

Can you honestly tell me the two are even remotely the same? Honestly? It truly baffles me how anyone could come to that conclusion.

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I don't know how many times I have to write this until you understand it. Erhman has not made his case in the first place. He has virtually no evidence to support it. You have provided zero evidence why you think he might be right.

Also, keep in mind the core issue here is what Jesus's followers perceived him to be. The Jewish Christians who wrote about Jesus then would obviously be the best source of material on whatthey thought of him. Even if they weren't first witnesses, they were at worst writing down what they learned from the first witnesses. It's all we have and it unanimously agrees that Jesus was divine.

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Is that what Ehrman is really arguing? There are some erratic things about his approach, but this seems new. Besides, the unique part of Christ was him turning out to be the Son of God. But he was condemned by the Sanhedrin for it ---- why didn't they use arguments of saying the whole claim is impossible, rather than that it was blasphemy to imply he was the `one'?

Ehrman also appears to use (unless it is Watsons?) a weird angle of considering NT as `just Christian sources" when basically most of the early Christians were ex-Jews, or even still considered themselves Jews. It something of a mistake to dismiss and consider pre 92 AD sources (Council of Jamnia) as `Christian' when until the Jews re-set their canon they are more properly understood as Jewish sect. With the possible exception of John, most of the NT falls before 92, and some apparently before the destruction of the Temple (August 70). When Claudius expels squabbling Jews from Rome in 48 he is ejecting various sects. Only later would one be called straight up Christians. At that time it makes more sense to think of them as the Nazarene sect of Judaism.

I had already gotten Win At Life's book --- it is likely the Messianic Christian takes probably address this supposed factor very well, as they accept Jesus. That is another way to approach the question.

Dating John's gospel

Scholars say this, scholars say that...How does one determine which scholar is right? One must evaluate the reasons and evidence themselves. Read the gospel of John, read the evidence on both sides of the argument. How do we know it was the last gospel written? How do we know it was written before 175 AD, 100 AD, 90 AD 70?

Once all of the evidence is gathered who makes the cases and defends the position with the most reaonable facts?

For me I would have to place the dating of John earlier than 107A.D with certaintity as that's when Ignatius died. Ignatius quoted John's gospel in letters he had written.

There are very good arguments for an ealier date.

In Chapter 5, verse 2, John wrote, "there is in Jerusalem, by the sheep-gate, a pool (the one called Bethesda in Hebrew) which has five porticoes." John used the present tense word "is" () when describing the existence of the pool, yet the pool was destroyed in 70AD when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans. John also provided very little detail in this passage as he described the healing of the sick man. When Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, the ailing man simply responds, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up

I really respect this guy's approach to evidence. Here are reasons he provides for an earlier date.
J Warner Wallace

DirtDiver said:

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Dating John's gospel

Scholars say this, scholars say that...How does one determine which scholar is right? One must evaluate the reasons and evidence themselves. Read the gospel of John, read the evidence on both sides of the argument. How do we know it was the last gospel written? How do we know it was written before 175 AD, 100 AD, 90 AD 70?

Once all of the evidence is gathered who makes the cases and defends the position with the most reaonable facts?

For me I would have to place the dating of John earlier than 107A.D with certaintity as that's when Ignatius died. Ignatius quoted John's gospel in letters he had written.

There are very good arguments for an ealier date.

In Chapter 5, verse 2, John wrote, "there is in Jerusalem, by the sheep-gate, a pool (the one called Bethesda in Hebrew) which has five porticoes." John used the present tense word "is" () when describing the existence of the pool, yet the pool was destroyed in 70AD when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans. John also provided very little detail in this passage as he described the healing of the sick man. When Jesus asks him if he wants to be healed, the ailing man simply responds, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up

I really respect this guy's approach to evidence. Here are reasons he provides for an earlier date.
J Warner Wallace

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DirtDiver,

Thanks for posting that, a very interesting write-up. Ehrman's dates tend to go for way late and unconvincing against Roman history, but an argument for John having an earlier date is very intriguing. That was one where a 90s date seemed fine. Yet it appears to make a plausible case and I will have to dig into it a bit further. All had agreed John's gospel was last but there had been a debate whether the persecution connected with him was the Nero ones of 64 and 67-68 or the ones of Domitian in the mid-90's.

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You mean questions on why there are so many errors in the Bible?

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In the many thousands of manuscript copies we possess of the New Testament, scholars have discovered that there are some 150,000 "variants."

Let's really think about the "so many errors"


th g5At 8 me chldranz hmewk
Te ot at my kids skool work
ThE got #$28 mi kyds homewrk
th3 gote ate m chlz hmwork

Can you reconstruct the sentences above?
What is the meaning?

Note:
There's a 100 percent error rate.
There's only 5 words spelled correctly.
How's it possible to understand the gest of the sentences above with a 100 percent error rate?

Out of these 150,000 variants, 99 percent hold virtually no significance whatsoever. Many of these variants simply involve a missing letter in a word; some involve reversing the order of two words (such as "Christ Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ"); some may involve the absence of one or more insignificant words.

Really, when all the facts are put on the table, only about 50 of the variants have any real significance - and even then, no doctrine of the Christian faith or any moral commandment is effected by them.

For more than ninety-nine percent of the cases the original text can be reconstructed to a practical certainty.

New Testament:

• The more copies we have (even if there where an enormous amount of errors), the more we are able to reconstruct the original.
• It could be that in the wisdom of God, He protectect the originals by removing them and only having copies available.
• How does this compare to other works of antiquity?

There are more [New Testament] manuscripts copied with greater accuracy and earlier dating than for any secular classic from antiquity.Rene Pache adds, "The historical books of antiquity have a documentation infinitely less solid."


Dr. Benjamin Warfield concludes, "If we compare the present state of the text of the New Testament with that of no matter what other ancient work, we must...declare it marvelously exact."

No other book is even a close second to the Bible on either the number or early dating of the copies. The average secular work from antiquity survives on only a handful of manuscripts; the New Testament boasts thousands. Norman Geisler

The degree of accuracy of the copies is greater for the New Testament than for other books that can be compared. Most books do not survive with enough manuscripts that make comparison possible.

A better example:
Manuscript #1: Jesus Christ is the Savior of the whole worl.


Manuscript #2: Christ Jesus is the Savior of the whole world.

Manuscript #3: Jesus Christ s the Savior of the whole world.

Manuscript #4: Jesus Christ is th Savior of the whle world.

Manuscript #5: Jesus Christ is the Savor of the whole wrld.

That still doesn't account for outright contradictions of dates and concepts.

It simply points out that the most advanced civilization in the world for the past 2000 years happened to trend towards a singular religion and the book of that religion is remarkably held in tact through those 2000 years for that very reason.

If one were to believe that a supernatural creator of the universe that is omnipotent and omnipresent wanted humanity to follow a guide to life that was contained in a book and thereby inspired and influenced humanity in such a way to create that book, it should be at least void of outright errors.

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If one were to believe that a supernatural creator of the universe that is omnipotent and omnipresent wanted humanity to follow a guide to life that was contained in a book and thereby inspired and influenced humanity in such a way to create that book, it should be at least void of outright errors.

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No, that is a hyper-skeptical retroactive view. They just don't seem to have seen "inspired" as reading in that way. The clue is many contemporary cites or commentaries on a piece of the writing sometimes point out "this seems to have really meant X". The Chroniclers often make very interesting almost modern emendation remarks on context of a passage. In a few cases they themselves citing a source we no longer had. And yet they never take it to throwing out the idea it is inspired. So if they don't see it as an issue to the issue of whether divinely guided, there is no reason to put extra accent on a atheist hyper-skeptic look back imo.