Archaeology of the New Testament

MAGA4Ever said:
What kind of weirdo never played dodgeball?!
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I don't ever remember playing it. Throwing a ball at people seems like a lame sport. I preferred the skill sports. I remember playing little league baseball, pee wee football, little league soccer, flag football, basketball, tennis.
 
Cypress said:
This is basically freshman level literary analysis...
The accounts of Jesus are authored in the mid to late first century by eyewitnesses or people who knew the eyewitnesses. Jesus is a historical person, as confirmed by multiple independent sources from Christian, Roman, Jewish, Greek, Gnostic, and Syrian authors.

The Torah is stories compiled by scribes a thousand years after the events they narrate. There is nothing remotely close to witness testimony/accounts in the Torah.
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Jesus' existence isn't in doubt. How many people do you think have been eyewitness to the miracles of Benny Hinn? He performs miracles all the time! There was a documentary about all the people who had serious physical problems and begged those around Hinn to have him cure them. He performed all of his miracles on a stage in front of thousands of people. You can watch YouTube videos of his miracles! So, if all it takes is eyewitness testimony, we may just have the modern day Jesus in the US right now.

So, where do you draw your line between fact and fiction? Is Passover just a story or not, and why? If it's not a story, then why is the Christian God murdering children when he has unlimited alternatives at his disposal? If Jesus' resurrection is confirmed by (alleged) eyewitness testimony, then is Benny Hinn a prophet of God? What about Apollonius? He was the Pagan equivalent of Jesus. After his death, his followers wrote books about his miracles, believed he came back from the dead and went to heaven with gods.


Cypress said:
God doesn't author or edit books.
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He's God. He could do literally anything he wants.
Cypress said:
Humans write stories or narratives that describe their understanding, or lack of understanding, of God. Anyone who is remotely familiar with Job or Ecclesiastes knows that humans thought God was, in some sense, inscrutable, and God that did not give them all the answers.
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Why is Job or any other book trustworthy as a source for reliable information?
Cypress said:
Fine, so you almost exclusively base your animosity about Christianity based on a few cherry picked passages in the Jewish Torah. While stealing Christian ideas about objective morality to express your moral outage about them.
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There's no "object morality". What Christians advocate is devine preference, not objective morality. And the preference of your divine being have included incest, genocide and slavery.
 
ZenMode said:
So, where do you draw your line between fact and fiction?
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By literary criticism and evidence.
Noah's Ark is not a historical biography. It does not pass any of the literary tests of historical narrative. The Gospels strictly speaking aren't historical biography either, but they contain historically verifiable content written in the first century by eyewitnesses or people who knew the eyewitnesses.

Benny Hinn is widely suspected of being a fraud, and nobody is willing to die for the belief he is authentic.

Even the foremost atheist religious scholar Bart Ehrmam says that the apostles genuinely believed they saw Jesus after the crucifixion.
Then, the only question you have to answer is whether they all experienced a mass hallucination; whether Jesus didn't die on the cross; or whether Jesus was actually who he claimed to be.

You are as much a strict biblical literalist as a fundamentalist Pentecostal. The only difference is the Pentecostal believes in literalism as a genuine matter of conscience. You cling to literalism out of a cynical ulterior agenda.

You allow without hesitation that scientific, artistic, engineering knowledge has evolved and advanced since the 1st century AD. Religious knowledge has also evolved and advanced since the 1st century.
 
ZenMode said:
all of his miracles on a stage in front of thousands of people. You can watch YouTube videos of his miracles! So, if all it takes is eyewitness testimony, we may just have the modern day Jesus in the US right now.
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Jesus wasn't the only healer. The bible has many others, like the Apostles and Disciples, and healers were common in history; even a Roman Emperor and a Jewish Rabbi.
 
ZenMode said:
Jesus' existence isn't in doubt. How many people do you think have been eyewitness to the miracles of Benny Hinn? He performs miracles all the time! There was a documentary about all the people who had serious physical problems and begged those around Hinn to have him cure them. He performed all of his miracles on a stage in front of thousands of people. You can watch YouTube videos of his miracles! So, if all it takes is eyewitness testimony, we may just have the modern day Jesus in the US right now.

So, where do you draw your line between fact and fiction? Is Passover just a story or not, and why? If it's not a story, then why is the Christian God murdering children when he has unlimited alternatives at his disposal? If Jesus' resurrection is confirmed by (alleged) eyewitness testimony, then is Benny Hinn a prophet of God? What about Apollonius? He was the Pagan equivalent of Jesus. After his death, his followers wrote books about his miracles, believed he came back from the dead and went to heaven with gods.



He's God. He could do literally anything he wants.

Why is Job or any other book trustworthy as a source for reliable information?

There's no "object morality". What Christians advocate is devine preference, not objective morality. And the preference of your divine being have included incest, genocide and slavery.
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actually, the golden rule is objective morality.

see my sig.
 
Steinbeck said:
Jesus wasn't the only healer. The bible has many others, like the Apostles and Disciples, and healers were common in history; even a Roman Emperor and a Jewish Rabbi.
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In the Bible, there are several instances of healings performed by individuals other than Jesus:
Apostles: The twelve apostles were empowered by Jesus to heal and cast out demons, as recorded in Matthew 10:1 and Mark 6:12.
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Seventy Disciples: Jesus empowered a group of seventy disciples to heal and cast out demons, as noted in Acts 8:18-19.
1
Other Apostles: The unnamed apostle, along with other apostles, performed healings, as mentioned in Acts 8:18-19.
1
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa: A Jewish sage credited with healing through prayer, as mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud.
1
Vespasian: A Roman emperor who is said to have healed a blind man and a man with a withered hand, as noted by the historian Tacitus.
1

These examples illustrate that healing was not limited to Jesus and his apostles, but also occurred through various individuals and groups throughout biblical history.
 
Cypress said:
By literary criticism and evidence.
Noah's Ark is not a historical biography. It does not pass any of the literary tests of historical narrative. The Gospels strictly speaking aren't historical biography either, but they contain historically verifiable content written in the first century by eyewitnesses or people who knew the eyewitnesses.

Benny Hinn is widely suspected of being a fraud,
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Jesus was also accused of being a fraud by followers of other "sons of gods". So, we agree that eyewitness testimony means basically nothing, right?
Cypress said:
and nobody is willing to die for the belief he is authentic.
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That doesn't make any of the claims of the Bible or Jesus true. It just means that people believed they were true. Lots of people died because Marshall Applewhite convinced them that they would be teleported to a nearby comet if they put on Nike's and drank his Kool-aid. Do you think

Belief means nothing.
Cypress said:
Even the foremost atheist religious scholar Bart Ehrmam says that the apostles genuinely believed they saw Jesus after the crucifixion.
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Sure. People, in similar situations today, believe they see dead loved ones. Followers of Apollonius believed they saw him after his death. Do you think they did or do you believe, of all of the "sons of gods" before and after Jesus, the Christian son of God just happens to be the one legit one? If so, why? Nothing you've presented as distinguishing factors is unique to Jesus or his followers.
Cypress said:
Then, the only question you have to answer is whether they all experienced a mass hallucination; whether Jesus didn't die on the cross; or whether Jesus was actually who he claimed to be.
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Or, like other stories, were simply made up to give credence to the claim that Jesus was actually the son of God and not a charlatan like the other sons of gods that also came back from the dead.
Cypress said:
You are as much a strict biblical literalist as a fundamentalist Pentecostal. The only difference is the Pentecostal believes in literalism as a genuine matter of conscience. You cling to literalism out of a cynical ulterior agenda.
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I'm pointing out that you are cherry picking what is/isn't true in the Bible based apparently on what is convenient for your beliefs.
Cypress said:
You allow without hesitation that scientific, artistic, engineering knowledge has evolved and advanced since the 1st century AD. Religious knowledge has also evolved and advanced since the 1st century.
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Correct. A lot of the things we used to attribute to Gods we no longer do because of science.
 
Steinbeck said:
In the Bible, there are several instances of healings performed by individuals other than Jesus:
Apostles: The twelve apostles were empowered by Jesus to heal and cast out demons, as recorded in Matthew 10:1 and Mark 6:12.
1
Seventy Disciples: Jesus empowered a group of seventy disciples to heal and cast out demons, as noted in Acts 8:18-19.
1
Other Apostles: The unnamed apostle, along with other apostles, performed healings, as mentioned in Acts 8:18-19.
1
Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa: A Jewish sage credited with healing through prayer, as mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud.
1
Vespasian: A Roman emperor who is said to have healed a blind man and a man with a withered hand, as noted by the historian Tacitus.
1

These examples illustrate that healing was not limited to Jesus and his apostles, but also occurred through various individuals and groups throughout biblical history.
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but where are you on shooting the Gaza babies in the head?

had to be done?
 
ZenMode said:
It's divine preference. Subjective. That's it.
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nope.

it facilitates cooperation.

do you think there would be no laws if god didn't exist?

morality to have a hight trust society.

and behaviors and attitudes that facilitate that are easily identified.

you're just of a criminal exploiter mindset, a predator, and hate morality.
 
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