Perhaps not, but you don't have to believe something happened to report it. If the things that that the Bible attribute to Jesus Christ were true, don't you think that some historian somewhere would have written something like 'It is said that a man called Jesus is going around the area raising people from the dead'?
LOL...but He was written about. Unfortunately every single account is discounted simply because it mentions His name. Guess its kinda hard to be heard when the minute you mention the name of Christ, people close their ears.
Even the men that were alleged to be his disciples didn't even bother to write anything down until 50-100 years AFTER he was gone.
Ever heard of Corrie Ten Boom? In 1942, she was a busy lady. She was hiding jewish refugees from the Nazis. She was arrested in 1944 and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp..set free accidentally due to a paperwork error and a week later all of the women in her age group were put to death. Anyhow...she wrote a book about her experiences called "The Hiding Place" maybe you've heard of it? The thing is...she wrote her book in 1971...thats 29 years after her ordeal. Is her story less accurate...less trustworthy because she waited so long to write it?
I also want to ask you about your date....you say that no one wrote about Christ until 50-100
AFTER He was gone? Or did you mean to say that the books written in 50-100 ad?
Maybe you know where I am going with this.....
Jesus died in 33 AD. Matthews gorpel was written around 50 AD...that just a mere 17 years after Jesus was gone...a far cry from the 50-100 that you claim. Even if they were just 20 years old when Jesus was crucified, 50-100 years would make them 120 years old. Only one of them died of old age and that was John. The last book of the NT, Revelation, was written around 94-96 AD on the island on Patmos, where John was in exile. The last book was written 63 years after Jesus was gone. Had John been 20 or 30 when Christ left us, that would make him 83 or 93, which is a lot more realistic than 120-130 years old that your date would put him at.
Anyone who wants to stop and think about that for a minute will come to the same conclusion. Your dates are wrong. And that throws your whole premise off. :nod:
And the reason why Matthew didnt write for 17 years after Jesus left was because he was busy carrying out the Lord's commands to preach the gospel to the world. He and the others were traveling on missionary journeys and establishing the early church. They did what they set out to do and they wrote about it later in their lives after much had been accomplished.
Even the inventor of Christianity (Paul) didn't mention anything about a miraculous virgin birth
Is this a requirement for all NT writers? :confused
and if I remember correctly, it was only the author of the Gospel of John that mentioned that the man-god had raised someone from the dead (need to check that one so don't quote me on it).
I checked for you...He also raised Jarius's daughter in Mark 5:35-43.
Is it not strange if not incredible that the other 3 gospel authors (whoever they were) failed to mention such an important event? So while Jesus was allegedly alive, curing leprosy, raising people from the dead, healing the blind, turning water into wine, walking on water, turning food for a few into food for thousands, casting out demons and talking to the people, none of these deeds appeared even note-worthy to the men who later claimed they knew him personally.
Thats because each gospel writer wrote from a unique perspective meant to show a specific character of Christ to the readers...
Matthew's main focus is to show that Christ is the promised Messiah and King of the Jews. His opening geneology documents Christ's credentials as their king. The entire book is designed to appeal to the Jews of the time...to convince them of Who Christ is. He traces Christ's lineage back as far as Abraham...who as you know was "the man" to the Jews.
Luke, on the other hand wrote to show Christ as the redeemer of all mankind, going all the way back to connect Christ to Adam. Luke is the historian...recording eyewitness accounts and the only one who wrote everything in chronological order.
Mark shows Jesus as the suffering servant of God. He talks about what Jesus did more than he talks about what Jesus taught. He leaves out any of Jesus' geneology and picks up the story at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He shows us the human side of Jesus.
John...in a nutshell...he wrote to convince people that Jesus is God. He writes about the signs and wonders of Christ. He includes a lot that the synoptic gospels do not.
I am giving bare bone facts...but enough to get my point across (I hope!) You seem to want your cake and eat it too...you want all 4 gospels to say the same exact thing when in fact, they all work together to give one complete portrayal of Jesus Christ. Each gospel is aimed at a specific group of readers yet they are harmonize with each other. And imo, thats a beautiful thang!
It is a collection of self-serving documents that set out to convince us that it's all true.
lol....so its all a lie then? I'm sure you have heard the question "who would die for a lie?"...11 of the 12 apostles were martyred for their faith. What you are suggesting is that they all went willingly to their deaths to promote a lie. We arent talking about something they took on faith and mistakenly died for...we are talking about a group of men who willingly gave up all they had, were tortured, suffered and killed for their faith. Tradition has it that Peter watched his own wife be crucified for the faith....what kind of man could sit by and watch his wife be killed without trying to save her? He could not lie...she could not lie to save herself....believers cannot denounce Jesus Christ as Lord. The apostles truly believed what they witnessed...they died for it.
If you are going to claim that the Bible is true....because the Bible says it is, then you must be consistent in that claim and accept that the Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, the Illiad, the Rig Veda, the Elder Edda, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Enuma Elish and Hesiod's Theogony are also all true....because they say they are.
Nope..I dont know about the majority of those books you listed but I do know that the Qur'an does not hold up to the same rigorous standards of canon that the Bible stands up against. The Bible is the most unique Book ever written in the history of mankind. It stands alone.
......but that doesn't prove that Jesus Christ existed valley....
not to you maybe. Most unbelievers acknowledge that He lived. But your mind is made up and you've obviously been searching for reasons to support your belief so I guess there's not much more to be said.
Well they would...they were Christians!!
yeah..and they lived at a time much closer to the actual events than we did so they
would know all about their recent history, wouldnt they!
I'm not discounting them, I'm just looking at them for what they are....second and third hand accounts of stories that a small handful of historians had gathered about a man-god written hundreds of years after the event were alleged to have happened.
Again..you're bending your dates there a lil bit... The first gospel was written a mere 17 years after Jesus left us. The last book of the NT was written approximately 63 years afterwards.
And yes yes..I know you will probably want to talk about copies of copies and how the manuscripts were transmitted down through time...i'm fine going in that direction if thats where you want to go next. I gots plenty to say about that too.
Christianity is only able to produce, a very small handful of historians who it claims wrote about this Jesus Christ, none of them eye-witnesses,
umm...are you forgetting Matthew, Luke, John, Pete and James? They were eye-witnesses. And Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus and wrote about that experience. No eye witnesses? :confused
none of them contemporaneous and every one of them failing scrutiny.
Failing scrutiny? How so?
Every one of them has been debunked by the scholars and historians who have spent their lives studying these things....
:24: I'm sorry to laugh...but come on...how about showing at least a modicum of intellectual honesty here. I dont know where you are getting your information but every Bible writer who wrote of Christ has not been debunked by scholars and historians. They may have tried to come up with a few theories on why something written is not true...but seriously...
debunked?
Oh i've got to see the evidence for this...go ahead...lay it on me...
opcorn2:
.. but Christianity continues over and over again to wheel out poor tired old Josephus, Tacitus et al, as evidence for their man-god.
well I for one consider those to be secondary sources.
You know..you remind me of a beggar who starves to death while circling a buffet table. You stare at the floor looking for crumbs to eat and ignore the sumptuous feast that is on the table. Loosen up a little...it wouldnt hurt one bit to step outside of the box and take a closer look at matters of faith. I promise..it wont hurt a bit so dig in!
