You know something C. I'm glad I came to this website because the conversations I've had with members made me realize something I never considered before and also shed light on a statement found in Acts. For Jesus disciples to want to make all the prophecies fit him, they would have had to know about them all and they didn't. Furthermore, the meanings of certain obscure prophecies which the Apostles attributed to Jesus enraged Israels rulers. It is always important to try to determine if people have a motive for lying and it appears they didn't have one.
If, according to you that testimony is needed from eye-witnesses, how so is the existence of Jesus verifiable if you admit that they needed to know him? And you do not need to know a certain character just to have him/her fit the context of a story or prophecy. It's like demanding that you must personally know Mickey Mouse to have him fit in his own cartoons made especially for him. And yes, they totally had motivations to lie when you consider the fact that large chunks of original 'scriptures' were cut out from the compiled Bible in the end.
Not wrong, just unproveable.
Essentially the same thing. It is, by your definition of proof/evidence/testimony, impossible to prove any event that occurred even a year ago.
Everything you offered, heiroglyphs etc. are nothing more than testimony. You either believe the writer or you don't
Considering it's their own culture they record, I have no other option to believe what they say about their own culture and then see if they practiced, for example, cannibalism with both their own records and the accounts given by the people who happened to meet the people.
It is true that technology has made testimony far more accessible to us, but if you're going to argue that the Bible is unreliable because all we have are copies that were written after the facts, then yes, we can throw out every other ancient writing in existence
Too bad that other ancient writings are actually corroborated by OTHER ancient writings and did not go through ridiculous processes of determining which story of Jesus made him look more Godly and what didn't like your Bible did.
because where manuscript evidence is concerned, the Bible can't be equaled in either volume or closeness to events described.
What? That's a shit ton of literature from hundreds of cultures you're dismissing right there. Besides that, a lot of the events the Bible describes never even happened.
Do you believe Platos Tetraologies is authentic? I'm just showing you a bad argument against the Bibles authenticity. Street juggler huh? Does that mean you can be ruled out as an unbiased observer?
I'm atheist. I'm totally unbiased on the topic of Christianity
-sarcasm- And yes, street juggler. More feasible than a sack of flesh possessed by a Holy Ghost walking around and healing people randomly just by touching them.
You do when you're speaking about the identity of a person or group. Oh, you most certainly do.
No you don't. Here:
That's one of the most unfortunate people in history. Getting buried under volcanic ash, this guy was from Pompeii who died and was well-preserved for millions of humans to gawk at in museums 1700 years later. You sure as hell don't see witnesses who were there at Pompeii writing about the event except for contemporary historians that weren't at Pompeii when it happened. Pompeii wasn't rediscovered, again, until 1700 years later.
Even without the contemporary historians, we can pretty much determine what happened, when it happened, roughly how many people died, what weather they were experiencing around the time of volcanic eruption, what food they were eating, what clothes they were wearing, the architecture of their buildings and so forth.
The Israelites (with the exception of Moses) never actually saw God and as for people who claim that God "spoke to them", I'm extremely skeptical. As for the Messiah, He said people that have seen Him have seen God and I wouldn't expect God to say anything other than Jesus said.
Would you seriously believe a guy if he said that anyone who saw him was seeing God today? No? If not, why? Most likely because of the lack of evidence. Again, the evidence plays an important role in all of this. Which brings us full circle: there is absolutely no evidence apart from gospels and apocryphal written by people who never even met Jesus about Jesus healing people. If the Bible, its authors and faith were the minimum requirements for the existence of a god, then there is nothing preventing any other deity out there from becoming real.
Herodotus relied heavily if not entirely on 2nd hand information when it came to military matters, so his inaccuracies are understandable, but I do admire your perception for realizing the need to use any aspect of a writing or applicable source when examining history.
Okay, now what about the remains of the military equipment used, the literature, the arts and so forth that showed evidence of the Second Invasion?
"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) Lk.2:1-2
"This contained the number of citizens, subject kingdoms and taxes. All these details Augustus had written with his own hand"...
Tacitus Annals, Book 1
"So Archelaus's country was laid to the province of Syria and Cyrenius one that had been consul, was sent by Caesar to take account of people's effects in Syria. Cyrenius came himself into Judea, which was now added to the province of Syria, to take an account of their substance." - Josephus, Antiquites of the Jews, Book 1
Um, all I see is "taxes", "kingdoms", "Caesar", "Syria", "Jews", and "Syria". Where is the Jesus?
