edx-Course --> Early Christianity: The Letters of Paul

by fastJehu 44 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  bohm

  Phizzy: very interesting, i did not know of resurrection claims like that.

  apparently an important question to ask to determine how sceptical we should be is how noted Apollonius was..
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  NeonMadman

  There is NO evidence for miracles; not even Paul, who trumpets all other possible 'evidence' for Jesus being the son of God, mentions the miracles.

  Not one miracle, not one teaching from the Gospels, are mentioned in Paul.

  Have you actually read Paul? For example:

  "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

  Paul not only mentions the resurrection (which is both a miracle and a teaching from the Gospels), he also claims to be a personal eyewitness of it, and cites over 500 other eyewitnesses, many of whom were still alive when he wrote, and who he could easily have been asked to produce by any skeptics to the fact.

  The evidence for miracles must be extraordinary, since the claim is certainly extraordinary.

  Do you have evidence for that claim?

  I've had that argument thrown at me by skeptics in the past, and, frankly, my experience is that there usually could be no level of evidence that would be found to be "extraordinary" enough to warrant acceptance of the claim. In other words, it's basically just a "conversation stopper," as we used to call them.

  If you really want to consider the existing evidence for the resurrection of Christ, I'd suggest starting with the works of Michael Licona and Willian Lane Craig on the topic. A Google search should produce an abundance of them.
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  Witness My Fury

  "Miracles" is obviousy the term used to convey the ones purportedly done by Jesus during his ministry, ...we know that and you know that.
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  NeonMadman

  Furthermore, as best I can tell, you did not address my proposition:

  I simply argue the description of certain events taking place in year 70 imply the book was written after year 70 with high probability.

  Perhaps you should inform me as to how you think I should respond to this statement. It's pretty much a bald assertion, based on the concept that prophecy doesn't happen, therefore any writing that tells of a given event, even if that writing claims to be recording a genuine prophecy, must be regarded as having been written after the event in question. I understand what you are saying, and I disagree with the presupposition behind the question. I believe that if we are considering whether a given writing contains genuine prophecy, we cannot start with a presumption that prophecy is impossible. Doing so involves circular reasoning, presuming the conclusion as a premise. Am I missing something here?

  now, you are not actually addressing the arguments I made with that claim (I hope that is clear) but rather making a counter-argument why you think jesus is a prophet. This is not the argument, the argument is regarding the dating of the books of the gospels.

  Yes, and the crux of the argument about the dating of the Gospels hinges on your presupposition about prophecy. Unless I misunderstand you, it is your position that the Gospels were almost certainly written after 70 CE because they contain a prophecy of an event that happened in that year. Since you discount real prophecy as a possibility, the books must have been written after that year. However, if Jesus actually was a prophet and if true prophecy is possible, then the books could easily have been written before that time. Therefore, the issue of Jesus as prophet is integral to the argument you are making for late dating of the Gospels.

  Also, I was not making a counter-argument why I think Jesus was a prophet. I do, but that's irrelevant. I was addressing your allowance that genuine prophecy might be rare rather than nonexistent. If that were the case - if we are to acknowledge that prophecy might really occur at some time or times in human history - who would be a better candidate to provide it than Jesus of Nazareth? This is not an argument for his prophethood, but simply an observation that he would be more likely to be one of the rare cases of a true prophet than probably any other person in human history.
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  Band on the Run

  I studied NT at Columbia University and read many commentaries on Paul. There are flawed arguments here. If I can see them immediately, I wonder what else is wrong. I wish people would cite/reference their sources of information, such as dating for Mark. It does not have to be standard reference form. A mere mention of an author or book is enough. This is not information that is known by the general public. Unless you are a famous NT scholar, please reference your sources of information. It makes a big difference. Perhaps your scholar isi biased or you did not read several sources and are unaware that a minority view is referenced.

  I expected much better quality from Harvard.

  I like when people post such info on this board. There is so much fluff here.

  I see no problem with Paul focusing on theology and not factual details of Jesus' life. It does not mean he did not know Jesus narratives. I know that scholars do not believe that Luke and Acts were written by the same person. If I recall correctly, there is a major theological difference between the books. It does seem, however, that James' relation to Jesus and Peter's relationship as an apostle outranked Paul's status. Paul had to acknowledge their primacy. Paul set the tone for future Christianities more than they did, however.

  If believers believe in these writings completely, there are so many missing elements in the story that I wonder. Did we miss certain scripture that existed? What about the oral tradition on which these people relied? I also find it hard to believe that Twelve disparate apostles agreed. Did Jesus truly declare Peter, a leader? No one defers to anyone else in their internal debates. Jesus is very vague. Enough with parables. Also, enough hinting about messianic claims. Jesus seems coy during his trial? Are you the Messiah of Israel? Are you the son of Man? Are you God? What are your feelings for Mary Magdalene? Are you an apocalyptic fiigure or Mr. Feel Good?
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  NeonMadman

  "Miracles" is obviousy the term used to convey the ones purportedly done by Jesus during his ministry, ...we know that and you know that.

  So Paul does write of the greatest miracle of Jesus, but doesn't specifically mention his lesser miracles. And because of that, you are making an argument from silence that Paul knew nothing of Jesus' life. There are a lot of things that Paul doesn't specifically mention in his letters; should we conclude that he didn't know about any of those either?

  I note that you haven't mentioned Barack Obama in this thread; may I assume that you are unaware of his existence?

  The gospel stories were known through the oral tradition of the church (and oral tradition was very reliable in those days), and possibly through the writings of Mark at least, if not the other Gospels, at the time that Paul wrote. There was no need for Paul to reiterate them, particularly since the purpose of his letters was didactic, not narrative. You'll need more than an argument from silence to make a case to the contrary.
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  NeonMadman

  Other "Prophets" and "Miracle" workers existed around the time that Jesus is reputed to have lived, and such stories abound regarding them, with just about as much "evidence" as that for the claims made for Jesus.

  Apollonius of Tyana is one such...

  It was also claimed that Apollonius raised the dead, and that he himself was resurrected, the stories about Jesus of Nazareth are far from unique, and have zero evidence that stands scrutiny.

  Forgive my taking the liberty of omitting your Wiki quote for the sake of space. It's right there in your earlier post if anyone wants to read it.

  On the Appolonius issue, I would refer you to the work of J.P. Holding, who has an article on the Appolonius/Jesus issue at http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/apollonius.html.

  Holding has focused heavily on the "copycat" claims made about Jesus such as are found in the Zeitgeist film, and has written a book on the topic, Shattering the Christ-Myth. It's very detailed, and if you'd like to read a solid work on the topic (rather than the dozens of web sites making comparisons that simply don't comport with history), I recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Shattering-Christ-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/1606472712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389468375&sr=8-1&keywords=shattering+the+christ+myth.
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  Phizzy

  Interesting Neon, but we could swap "experts" who have an agenda, like the pro Jesus writers you quote, with some I could come up with that do not agrree, all day long.

  My point was , as I said, that the Jesus stories are not unique, they bear significant similarities with other myths and legends, and they are equally unprovable.

  A lot of your arguments are quite difficult to take my friend, i.e "oral tradition was very reliable in those days". just think about that statement, and the fallacy jumps out.

  Back to the O.P.

  I would go along with what the course sets out, there is no evidence that Paul knew much, if any, of the stories later penned in the Gospels.

  I would go further and say that Paul was schooled on what little myth and legend had grown up by the time of his conversion, and so his view was coloured by accounts of Jesus that are probably not very close to the real life of Jesus.

  The whole basis of modern Christianity is mired in Myth, legend and Doubt.
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  NeonMadman

  Also with regard to "copycat" claims regarding Jesus, I found the following interesting. It's a quotation from the article, Jesus, the Recycled Redeemer, by Greg Koukl on page 3 of the Sept./Oct. 2009 issue of Solid Ground, published by Stand to Reason (www.str.org):

  In 1898, Morgan Robertson published a novel entitled Futility. The story was a fictional account of a transatlantic voyage of the cruise ship Titan traveling between England and New York. The largest vessel afloat displacing 45,000 tons, the Titan was considered virtually unsinkable. Yet in the middle of the night in April, with three massive propellers driving the ship forward at the excessive speed of 25 knots, it collided
  with an iceberg and sunk. Since the number of lifeboats was the minimum the law required (though twice that was needed for its 3,000 capacity), more than half of its passengers perished.

  Fourteen years later in April, the world’s largest luxury liner with a displacement of 45,000 tons – the indestructible Titanic – departed from England on a transatlantic voyage to New York. In the middle of the night, the Titanic’s triple screws drove the ship at the excessive speed of nearly 25 knots into an iceberg and sunk. Since the Titanic was fitted with less than half the number of lifeboats needed for its 3,000 capacity (the minimum the law required), more than half of its passengers were lost.

  This real-life coincidence makes a crucial point. Regardless of the similarity between two accounts of different events, the second cannot be summarily dismissed as an invention simply because the first turns out to be fiction. Whether or not the details of the Titanic’s disaster are accurate is determined by its own body of evidence, unrelated to the fictional story of the ill-fated Titan that came before.
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  Phizzy

  But we do have solid facts, eyewitness accounts and physical evidence about the Titanic.

  we have nothing of the sort for even the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.